Archive for the ‘journal’ Category

Ink is not soup

Thursday, July 17th, 2014

With real paper! And ink!

Holy crap, you guys. How long has it been since I’ve put pen to paper for not-writing/form-filling purposes?

This hardcover sketchbook that Bren brought me while I was in the hospital has been staring at me for MONTHS, and finally I guess I cracked and opened it up. (It helps I had my favorite kind of ink pen, the almighty Uniball, on hand. Yeah, that’s it up there in the pic.) But then I stalled, because I realized this was really nice paper, and my Uniball alone wasn’t enough to do it justice.

I had wanted to play with grayscale markers for awhile, and it looks like this will be my chance. But just any old gray marker from a $10 Crayola box won’t do, this is good paper and good paper demands good marker. I’ve been looking at this 12-pack of Prismacolor Neutrals for a few days, and I might just spring for it– it’s at a pretty generous discount, and after getting an unexpected bonus from a Gourmet Ramen client, I think I can justify a little fun. If I were to order it now, it wouldn’t get here until Monday even with Prime shipping, so I’ll just wait so it will (hopefully) get lumped with the Galaxy Note 10.1 screen protector I want to get. (grumble grumble something about Amazon breaking up shipments even after telling them to hold and ship all at once)

In the meantime I did scribble something on the inside cover. It started out as an attempt to replicate this circular-linear pattern I saw in Ar Tonelico (I think it’s actually the installer port tattoo that appears on Reyvateils?) and then I started playing with extrapolating the lines and then it kinda just… went out of control. Next thing I know I’m generating new, similar patterns in varying scales. No doubt it’s going to sap this poor Uniball dry, since it’s not meant for large fills. I’m torn on whether or not to put in hexagon outlines in the background, or reserve it for when I get the markers.

IN OTHER NEWS, I grabbed the Mac retuned port of SimCity. Ordinarily it’s $20 on Steam, but Joystiq Deals had it on sale for $5. I’d missed this game so much, and because I don’t have access to Blastoise I couldn’t play it on Windows! But now I nabbed the Mac retune on the cheap (“retune” as in “updated to be compatible with the newer versions of OS X”) and, uh, I kinda burned away the past two days on that game rather than working on the Law and Order piece like I was supposed to. But, I’ll be back at the Painter thing later tonight. Why not now? Because I’ve got YouTube subscription videos to catch up on, and this ramen is probably going to put me to sleep soon after.

Multitasking is for winners!

Saturday, July 12th, 2014

Before I go twitter-trawling and otherwise soliciting for more Gourmet Ramen commissions, I’m doing a couple more pieces.

The first is, for lack of a better description, “Law and Order: The Animation.” Well, the theoretical poster for it, rather. Star Trek and Star Wars got their own animated series, why can’t Law and Order? Granted, this being Instant Ramen Sketchbook, my take on things would be more anime-like. (Until there is a real Law and Order anime, we’ll just have to make do with the likes of Paranoia Agent, Japan’s take on the police procedural with a decidedly more paranormal twist)

In any case, it specifically involves the SVU cast (pre-season 13, so yes that means you get Stabler) plus the original’s Jack McCoy, because he’s awesome (and somehow managed to stick his fingers in a couple of SVU episodes ANYWAY, so why not). I don’t often do fan art of live-action TV characters (or real people, despite recent Gourmet Ramen pieces), so it will be interesting to see how this unfolds. I’ve got the wireframes for the main four detectives and Cabot, which just leaves Cragen, McCoy and Warner to be scribbled. I know there are quite a few others that deserve inclusion but I have to stop myself at those or else I’d be overwhelmed when it comes to laying down the line art!

By the way, while I’m on the subject of Law and Order art, this show from 2010 makes very interesting use of DirecTV program guide descriptions as prompts. Hah! “Death of a Bully” is especially hilarious.

The second piece I’m doing is for Night Attack, because it’s been way too long since I did anything for that podcast (in fact, I think the last one I did was back when it was still called NSFW Show). I don’t have anything specific in mind YET, but when you consider how kooky it is, coming up with an idea for that painting isn’t going to be very difficult.

Ear-piercing Bark

Wednesday, July 9th, 2014

Allcaps is not enough!

The third of the three Bulldogs of the Apocalypse. (I dunno who’s Noise, Headbutting, and Flatulence. I think they share or take turns on all three.) Louie is… supposedly named after the third of the three Duck Triplets of Disney fame. Where BabyGirl’s bark has multiple syllables and Wilson’s is a deeper, more guttural woof, Louie’s is just… ear-piercing. And often times he does it just to be a troll.

This painting I did in an all-night session. I think I only took one longer break to get some ramen because I’d been at it so long, but I knew that if I’d stopped and resumed the next day it’d take much longer to get going again… and it would dog (huh huh) me so I couldn’t sleep. THUS!

That ramen bowl was about… 6 hours ago, I think. Now I’m hungry again. D’oh!

Spoiled White Female… Dog

Tuesday, July 8th, 2014

Woo-woo-WOOF!

This is not a thinly-veiled gendered slur. She really is a coddled little (hah) pup, all white with some small spots, mostly concentrated on the ears. But… yeah, spoiled! Prime example: when my mother is on the computer, this dog does the most entitled-sounding whine-that’s-almost-a-bark, as if to say “mooooom! pay attention to me!” and it’s the most obnoxious thing ever, and even though my mother snaps at her to stop it, she later gives in and cuddles her.

That’s BabyGirl.

Who the hell names their dog “BabyGirl” and doesn’t expect them to be a noisy, spoiled princess, anyway?

In any case, this is the second of three bulldog paintings. The last one’s being done tomorrow.

By the way, I caved and friended my mother on Facebook. (She had already put my account on follow since I was in the hospital.) I can certainly look forward to being bombarded by (what do you expect) bulldog pictures up the nose. But she mentioned trying pass along potential Gourmet Ramen clients (because man, do those bulldog owners love their swag), so I guess I can tolerate it. These dog paintings are also easy to do, even at HD size.

Giant Bowl of Noodles

Sunday, July 6th, 2014

Woof. Trees are weird. Toot-toot!
Toot! Human After All Who says there aren't dog ladies?
Keke! Sonic Screwdriver not included. But not without a paddle!

You’ve likely seen these already via Twitter and Facebook, but any excuse for a repost is good enough! Plus this blog needs to stop being giant walls of text. Boring! (Especially considering it’s owned by a painter…)

All of these were done on commission. While I’m taking a short break before actively tweet-trawling for more clients, I’m pretty much always available for some pixel-flingin’.

ALSO: If you haven’t already and you’re the Facebookin’ type, please like and share Instant Ramen Sketchbook’s FB page!