Under the Milky Way

Burguesinha

Finished the colors up. This is a little more muted and flat than my coloring tends to be, but I kind of like it. What do you think?

Happiness Hit Her Like A Bullet In The Back

Sometimes, a wonderful thing can actually just end up nearly killing you.

WIP: Copacabana

Finished inks on a piece I've been sneak-peeking on Twitter and Facebook. In what passes for my free time, I'm revisiting my story "Somewhere In Between", and this image is intended to be the cover. Brazilian readers, or anyone who has been to Rio, will recognize this as the sidewalk pattern along Avenida Atlântica in Copacabana. (My friends will recognize it as that crazy wave design that Megan draws whenever she's feeling homesick for Rio.)

Color coming soon!

The Artist

Tonight's wind-down sketch is one of my favorite images from the movie "The Artist". You never realize how few neutral tone markers you have until you try to do a scene from a black and white film...

Birthday Presents

For some reason, it seems the majority of my family and friends' birthdays are in June, and there's an usual concentration of them between the 16th and the 23rd. As a fun sketch after a long day doing storyboards yesterday, I scribbled this one of Joan from Mad Men for one such friend's birthday today. 

Samba e Amor

So, Tuesday (June 12) was Brazil's version of Valentine's Day, Dia Dos Namorados. As a little nod, I collected a bunch of sketches and art of the two main characters from my webcomic "Somewhere In Between"...hopeless romantic gringa Molly and her Brazilian love interest, Marcelo. Then I got a call that afternoon to do some storyboarding work which kept me busy for the past two days, and is going to stretch into today as well.

This is normally the part where I make some joke about this post being late in classic Brazilian fashion, but seeing as how one of my carioca friends managed to get a birthday gift to me before anyone else (including my own mom), I think it's more accurate to say this post is late in classic Los Angeles fashion...meaning, it started out early to arrive ridiculously late. Blame the traffic. 

Zou Bisou Bisou

Today's warm-up sketch. With apologies for getting that song stuck in everyone's head now. 

Smash!

An older sketch this morning. No reflection whatsoever on my mood today, although apparently, on October 12, I was NOT a happy girl.

Monster

Today's café sketch resurrected an old character I created ages ago...I'm a terrible writer, especially in the genre of horror, so I never did much with her. But at times I go back and draw her again. Her story is that her creator built her, Frankenstein-style, as a blank slate that he could then mold into the "perfect" woman...only to lose interest and become repulsed by her, before eventually dismantling her.

To be fair, she does clean up well, in spite
of all the stitches.

Orange hair

Garotas de Ipanema

A series of pin-ups inspired by the Rio de Janeiro beach culture and the beautiful, confident carioca women that people have been writing cheesy songs about for as long as there has been a Rio. I used to be a cold weather, only-happy-when-it-rains, scarves and boots kind of girl. Although I loved the beach, I hid beneath layers of clothes and SPF 80, fearing the sun as much as showing off any bit of my less than perfect beach bod. 

Well, Rio beat that out of me, and fast. I'm still religious about my sunscreen, but now that I've been converted to the cult of the barely-there biquini (and tricked by the carioca men into believing I look good in one), I use about twice as much...

Scribbles

Just a couple of random sketches from last night and this morning...

São Paulo

During my first trip to Brazil, I never left Rio de Janeiro...I was broke, only knew one person in the entire country, and my Portuguese was rough at best (and incomprehensible at worst), so that was pretty much as far outside my comfort zone as I was willing to go at the time. This second time around, I was still broke, but managed to arrange a week of traveling to two other cities in southern Brazil, São Paulo and Florianópolis.

I had heard São Paulo described as "ugly" and "crowded" compared to Rio...that it was nothing but buildings with no green anywhere. I didn't find this true at all. There were plenty of lush trees and parks throughout all of the skyscrapers and high-rise apartment buildings. Of course the geography of the place isn't quite as naturally stunning as Rio's beaches and mountains, but calling "Sampa" an ugly city is hardly fair.

São Paulo did feel much less like a foreign city to me than Rio does...you arrive in Rio and immediately you know you are not in Kansas anymore. Sampa, on the other hand, seems to have built itself up as a global city from the get-go. It felt like the older, more responsible lawyer firstborn to Rio's wild bohemian baby of the family...complete with the sibling rivalry.

"Porra! Why are there so many windows? This is taking
FOREVER to draw..."

I hope to get the chance to go back and explore more...I definitely am more of a carioca at heart, but I loved São Paulo.

Café sketches

One of my favorite artist clichés is to go to a café in the morning before a long day of drawing, and sit and do warm-up sketches before my serious work.

Sometimes I draw what I see...

...and sometimes I just draw whatever's in my head at the moment. (These are two of the characters from my webcomic "Somewhere In Between", Molly and Marcelo.) 

País Tropical

I haven't yet posted anything in color here!

I've become a fan of the Tombow dual-ended brush pens...I probably should just cave and get a watercolor set, but I always feel like I'm too wimpy with watercolors, and always end up with a mushy mess. With markers I'm usually too saturated and cartoonish but at least it looks like a big, loud, colorful mistake instead of an overworked dull one.

Basically I was marvelling at the effect that Rio's tropical climate had had on me after a week. (I may have been exaggerating a little.) For all the things I do love about LA, the arid climate is not one of them, and you'll never hear me happily talking about "dry heat". I am not a desert creature.

Verde!

Just a little doodle in the garden outside my friend's condo. 

Corcovado

More Rio sketches. At the tail end of my second visit to this city, I finally made it to one of the major landmarks, Corcovado.

While waiting to take the train back down from the Cristo Redentor (or Christ Redeemer) statue, we had time for a caipirinha and I had time for some sketching. It must be a total pain going anywhere with me, all I want to do is sit and draw, which takes so much longer than snapping pictures! 

Yes, this is a butt shot of Jesus. The cafe
didn't exactly have the best view. 

Carioca com caipirinha.

I had to stop at these three sketches because a thunderstorm rolled in and it started to rain. (Yay! I love rain! Oh no! My sketchbook pages don't!) With a view like this, I could've stayed up there scribbling all afternoon:

Favela

One of my sketches from near the end of the Brazil trip. This favela (according to Google Maps, Favela Morro dos Cabritos...I never asked the name of it while I was there) was right next door to my friend's condo where I stayed in Copacabana for most of my visit. 

While working on T-shirt designs for the Rocinha Media School, in Rio de Janeiro's largest favela Rocinha, I found a certain zen in drawing the crazy stacked buildings of the favela communities. I'd just pick a point to start from, put pen to paper, and draw outward from that point. No pencil underdrawing, no straightedge...it wasn't important that my favela sketches looked 100% photographically accurate, but that they captured the structured madness that is the favela. These buildings have been built up over decades on top of each other, painted bright colors, added on to...it seems almost everyone has satellite TV...there's always laundry out to dry and amazing cooking smells in the air. 

I want to do a whole series of favela drawings, larger and more detailed than this, but the same basic concept and approach...freehand pen sketches of sprawling, stacked buildings. With all their satellite dishes. Hey, you think maybe I could make a friend in the favela who'd let me come over and watch "Game of Thrones"? 

(This would of course require me living in Rio.)

(I am totally OK with that.)