Claire & Charlie

This blog has moved! Readjust your bookmarks to the new one!

Another piece of unofficial Lost fanart. I made a sketch of Charlie & Claire that I really liked and thought it might be cool to add a different piece of island color as a backdrop.

You know, there are some shots of the island where you think "wow. It's actually really beautiful." I'm kind of a tropical paradise cynic. In most cases I think the U.S.'s northern coastlines are more lovely; the steely grey ocean and rocky seaside cliff feel. That show plus this year's Paper Bicycle trip to Santa Monica is helping me rethink sunsets on the beach.

Locke

This blog has moved! I'm still posting here a few more times, but you should probably readjust your bookmarks to the new one soon!

I watched a LOT of Season One Lost this weekend.



I haven't really watched it in a few years. It's as good as a show can possibly be. It still is! So good. I don't want to hear about it, people. Fringe pales in comparision.

The watercolor class at Light Grey Art Lab this weekend instigated a strong desire to paint, and this show instigated the strong desire to make some art of characters. The hardest part was choosing who to paint (first). Locke has always been a lot of fun to draw.

This blog is moving!

It's about time I have a slightly more formal collection of art on the internet. It only needed to be slightly more formal; I sort of like blogs more than anything.
So I got this. A website with a blog right in there. I confess I'm a little nervous about officially moving (it's moving!), so I'm going to post here a few more times, just to be sure I've got everything. I'll be posting all of these posts on the new blog, too.

So go on over. Make yourself at home.

This is a small watercolor piece that was going to be the first in a series of six for the Light Grey Art Lab opening. I finished one, panicked, then displayed some different art instead. This one is good, though. It reminds me of a friend.

Portal 2

I love this game. I love it enough to draw things from it. Portal is the first regular-old non-DS game I've ever beaten–that probably creates all kinds of bias right there, but consider this: it's the only regular-old non-DS game I've wanted to beat, and then was compelled to immediately start the next installment. Please make more, Valve.

End of a sketchbook

End of a time. All of the crazy, incredible happenings at Light Grey Art Lab have been top priority for awhile–tons of things to prep for. Definitely check it out, especially if you live in the Twin Cities.
There's always time for drawing, though. Here are the last bits from the sketchbook.

The Thing You Love

Valentine's Day is wonderful.

The internet has informed me that it is a fairly controversial holiday, but if you consider it a holiday to celebrate the people you love or celebrating people in love, it's a marvelous thing*. Take it another step and celebrate people that love.

Whether or not you're attached, I sincerely hope you have at least one of these people in your life. If you yourself are one of them you probably do–they tend to flock. I mean somebody who really cares about something. It isn't limited to any particular thing–cooking, painting, medicine, family, music, math, people, animals, business, culture, exploring, writing–the list is limitless. It doesn't even matter what it is! These people make the world a better place by existing. They love something and it is incredibly attractive. A lot of times, as mentioned, they find people to be around that care about things too, and then you've got yourself a whole roomful of passionate people and the results are almost like magic.

The actual making or doing or caring about something doesn't always feel like magic. The excessively-used phrase is "blood, sweat and tears", and not without reason. But as life would have it, this makes these people that love even more attractive; this is the metaphorical knight-fighting-a-dragon-in-a-burning-castle-to-save-his-princess.

I may be romanticizing things there as well, but remember, I like Valentine's Day.

*Red and pink look really good together, especially on desserts.

Sketchbook

My present sketchbook is this lovely one that was a gift from Alyssa. This place turns old books into sketchbooks. The inside has both blank paper and some pages from the book, which I like very much to quell my vandalizing urges. They're really sturdy, too.

So far, I've drawn some things in it:

TV things all over the place. Sherlock dudes in the lower left, Fringe family sort of in the middle–I'm almost grateful Peter doesn't look quite right, I could draw him all day. A few things in here are things that have or will become more finished pieces, like that Doctor Who in the upper right.

Thank you and get well

A motorcycle with flowers is the obvious choice for a thank-you-and-hope-you-feel-better kind of illustration.

Eleven Again

A sister of mine deserved a painting, so I made her a tiny one of Matt Smith. All of my sisters like Doctor Who (but none of the brothers are into it, somehow). Matt Smith is Anna-Marie's first doctor. Felicia came in on David Tennant and I was there with Christopher Eccleston. I expect Martina will become hooked on the next one, whomever that may be. Sam Jackson, she hopes.

That City I Love

This one might not necessarily be Minneapolis. Or St. Paul. They've certainly influenced this painting, but even more than with the other city paintings, I was more interested in depicting the impression a place can give.
Next week I'm going to L.A. I love L.A. I've only been there once, and between then and now my brain has painted it into this glorious place that it almost certainly isn't. The great thing about it, though, is that I think part of our existing experience is in our heads. I think we make our places beautiful or terrible.

This painting is for my godfather, who travels the world. I've learned a lot about loving places from him.

watercolor and acrylic on 180 lb cold press paper

Last year's remnants

I finished that white sketchbook on New Year's Eve! Two years in a row, finishing sketchbooks minutes before midnight, and I don't even care for New Year. Big New Year cynic. Maybe this is a pattern for improvement.
Here's some sketches from the last of that sketchbook. The lower half are characters I made up, the upper half is mostly One Piece, plus a Merida (Brave. Drawing her is incredibly fun). Random bits. That mermaid sketch is the precursor to a painting I made for my friend.


So what's on the plate now? I signed up for the Sketchbook Project. I'll post photos of that later. I've got to do some serious documenting for this sketchbook, since I'll be relinquishing to the mercy of a traveling sketchbook library and probably won't see it again.