Vacation time for me

Well, I'm leaving for a while! I want to start up all my old abandoned projects, as well as learn some new crap, like animating and stuff. I'll be back on here eventually I think, after I've learned some new things. I'll probably turn off the comments after a couple days, but I'll leave everything up. If I actually succeed in one of my new endeavors, I'll come back and post an update. Here are some random and unrelated last few drawings:

Ok, now I'll answer some questions you guys asked me in my last post.


Ryan G
"Katie, do you feel that you have to clean up your art for it to be commercially viable. Is it like screw it, ill do it like they want me to do it just so itll be seen by a wider audience? Great stuff by the way.."

I guess I feel like more people would respond to a cleaner drawing than a messy one, but that's not the only reason I want to work on cleanup...once you get good at it, it's really useful. I'd like to be able to paint and stuff. t's so hard to not lose elements of the original drawing, though.

Trophiogrande
"Who are some of your favorite illustrators?"

I have a lot of them! There are a lot of modern illustrators I like, but right now no names are coming up...I like a lot of Japanese illustrators whose names I don't know anyway. Oh! I like Kirsten Ulve...she's really cool. I love most the illustrators that Shane Glines has on his site, Cartoonretro.com.

Clinton
"How did you render this?"

With markers, and one of those gold pens. Same as usual! :)

Anonymous
"Dont you draw anything else besides girls? It's getting old"

Well, it's not getting old to me...in fact, it's really fun. If it's old for you, then there are plenty of other artist's sites to check out. I get this comment quite often, and I don't think it's very fair to demand what another person should and shouldn't post on their own art blog. I've already said that I know I need to practice drawing other subjects more, but it's my own choice to post or not post them here, because drawing girls is my primary interest. Another thing, I don't think the subject matter is so important so long as the drawings don't get too stale. Lots of people draw the same girl over and over and make tons of money, but I do my best to try and have a wide variety.

Jason White
"amazing stuff! it would be cool if you also did some purely non-conventional paintings at the same time. i would love to see you do some more punk girls, maybe some goth girls and possibly some rave girls."

Thanks! It's funny though...I never think that the girls I draw are conventional! I guess I try and stay away from drawing "classifictions" of people...like, "this girl is droopy and moody, I'll make her goth" or "this girl is peppy and annoying, I'll make her a cheerleader." I'd like to get good enough one day that I can capture the essence of someone's personality without giving clues. I guess I don't really like the idea of girls who classify themselves, anyhow...for now I am mostly drawing what I wish real people were- happy and random and living in a world where it's ok to wear a one-piece sweater with one sock outside. I would like to be like that!

Rebecca
"Have you ever thought about doing comics?"

Yes! I'm gonna go do some right now! Or...maybe tomorrow...

Jesse
"How does it feel to work at SPUMCO?"

I'm not there now, but it was fun when there were projects to work on! It's a lot of hard work though!


Well, that's all for now! Feel free to email me and crap!

Trying to be conventional

I always wanted a chance to try illustration. I'm so envious of people who get jobs doing those spot illustrations in girls' magazines, or for fancy make-up companies. I sometimes think about pursuing it seriously, but I wonder if my stuff would fit in. I used to do more graphic-type illustrations, but stopped when I realized I was just ripping off other, more talented and established artists. My "illustrator" drawings were just more boring versions of other people's pretty pictures.

Anyhow, I was thinking about it today, and tried to cheat by cleaning up one of my normal weird drawings with what I thought might be a gimmicky inking and coloring style. Here's the original doodle:
...and here's the cleanup:
Of course I like the original better...it always happens that way! I might add a simple background to it later anyway.

I am going to try and experiment more with clean up- maybe even bring out my dried up water colors and crap. It'll be fun!

Here's another doodle from the day. I was trying to draw a more normal-type cutesy bad-ass girl, but it kind of just turned out the way I usually draw girls. Sometimes I wonder in the middle of drawing something if I should try and make the girl prettier, or weirder. I couldn't really decide with this one.

MAN

Here it is, the second ever man drawing on my blog. Everyone is drawing Uncle Eddie, so I wanted in too! Eddie is one of my favorite mans.
Sorry they aren't really finished!
Here are some post-its from this morning's bored doodling session:
I guess I'm all theroried-out from the last post...but I started drawing again a couple days ago, and now I have a whole pile of pictures to post later on. I have some new projects I'm starting, too. More on that later!


***Sorry, I forgot to add these answers to the questions people asked! Here they are:

Acetate:
"By the way...are you going down to Comic-Con?"
" How'd the big show go?"
"What exactly is this "lip bulb" thing?"

I will probably be at the con this year...I think they're going to have a thing for the new Ren and Stimpy DVD, so I will probably be there for that, and wandering around for a day or two.
The show was great, thanks for asking! It was great getting to meet some of the nice folks who read my blog.
The "lip bulb" is that middle part on a top lip...like the little pointed part. Urrgh, it's hard to explain, ha! Some people have it, but other's don't. It's not the philtrum...here's a "diagram."


Clinton:
"Katie, how do you scan your drawings in without getting those evil grey borders invading your drawings? My latest scans are full of them. How do you photoshop them out?"

Most of the time I don't draw in a sketchbook, so I don't have to worry about grey borders! But I'm pretty sure you can use the "brightness and contrast" or the "levels" in photoshop to get rid of them.

R:
" Hey, K! Do you do commissions? And how much would one set me back if ya do?"

Right now I'm supposed to be doing a few commissions for friends of mine, but I'm not doing a very good job of finishing them right now. So I probably won't be picking up any more until I'm better about procrastinating. Hopefully in the future I'll be able to handle doing commissions better!

Shawn:
"Hey, Katie! Where do you find light flesh colored markers and those pale yellow ones you use? I have so many marker colors, but I have no tasteful way to color flesh."

Ugh, flesh colored markers never ever look like flesh, it's so true! Most the time I layer weird colors together, or use colors that aren't real fleshtones at all...like orange or grey. But otherwise I use the lightest markers they sell, and then use the darker markers to add to it. Most brands have a few super light colors...you can't tell by the way the marker looks on the outside though, so just test them all until you find the right ones. :)

Kali Fontecchio:
"lips are always fun to draw. And to see if you're as weird as me, when drawing yourself, do you amp your lips up waaay more than they really are? I know I do! Just curious :)"

I think I amp up all my features! I'm one of those weird people that has big everything- big eyes, big nose, big mouth, big teeth...sometimes I wonder how my face fits on my head. Does that sound weird? Urrgh, sorry, ha! I'd like to see one of your self portraits, though! :)

Anonymous:
"P.S. What is your all time favorite Ren & Stimpy cartoon?"

I have too many favorites!! "Space Madness", "Stimpy's Invention"...I really love all of them. I guess "Big House Blues" might be my favorite though, just cause it's so cool looking.

Lacie:
"Did you just randomly draw these girls or look at pictures?"

Most of the girls from my mouth post were drawn from magazines, although a couple were made up. Maybe I should do a post sometime comparing referenced drawings with non-reference drawings...what do you think?

Alex:
" Are their any tutorials on drawing assholes so I can put Cory's theories into practice?"

I will Ask Cory to do one, and if he refuses to give out the address of his blog, I'll just post it on mine!


Thanks everyone for contributing mouth theories! Those comments were fun to read...

GIANT MOUTH...post

My two favorite things to draw are mouths and legs, but for some reason I feel a little funny talking about them here! I can't tell if I'm giving away "secrets," or just stating the obvious! Anyhow, since people have asked for it and I'm always obsessing over them, here is the mouth post!

There are a few things I always look at first when drawing someone's mouth...does she have that little "lip bulb" on the top lip (I can't remember who coined that phrase, but it's a good one!), or is there just a little hole? Does the mouth point down or up when making a nuetral expression? Is the top lip bigger, or the bottom one?
(Also, I REALLY like overbites and underbites, and I'm not going to even get started on teeth here...)

All those things change how a person makes expressions, too. I've really been wanting to do some photo experiments- I want to take pictures of all my girlfriends making the same mouths shapes, and compare them all to one another. This would be great for animating lip synch, and just comparing the vastness of human shapes in general. Maybe I'll do a post about that later, and people can help me out with supplying pictures!

Here's a funny observation about mouth construction- you know when you're constructing a drawing, and you draw the center line, and you draw the eyes and nose and chin and whatever all lining up accordingly? The mouth doesn't fit on that line! It actually sticks out, like a weird human muzzle. I tried to draw it here, in sort of an exaggerated way:
My friend Robert Cory pointed this out to me a long time ago, but he used a much more vulgar way of describing this phenomenon. Maybe sometime he'll get a blog and describe it in his own terms for you!

Here's another one: in a three quarter view of a mouth, the part of the lips that are farther away from you are thicker. This is kind of hard to draw without making the face look like there are nasty worms on it. John K. is really good at it though. His bad catholic school girl drawings influenced me a whole lot. I tried to draw some here:
Well, I can't really think of much else to say! It's one thing to make observations and attempt to put it on paper, but then trying to describe it in words is even harder! So...here are some faces that I drew tonight while becoming completely fixated on drawing weird human orifices!
I know someone's going to call me "weird" for this!