La Lune Chuchote que …

I just couldn’t resist. I wonder if I can find a nice widget online to add to my Blog so that it can be followed here? I will have to investigate. But for those interested, here is the link to my Twitter:

http://twitter.com/annierodrigue

Enjoy!

I did it! I finished this one. It’s been waiting on my desk for so long! I was scared that painting would take too much time, but it turned out to be faster than expected!

One of my new year resolution was to do more backgrounds in my illustrative work. Hopefully, I’m on the right track with this one!

They are my friends Josiane Tremblay (artist) and Mathieu Lafrenière (writer) characters from their comic book story they are doing along side mine. We had a Christmas exchange, and this is part gift to them. (Yes, I am aware that I am really late! ahahah! Hopefully they will forgive me!)

“The Shadow Monster”
11×14 watercolour, acrylics and ink on hot pressed paper.

I have to be honest, I have been neglecting a lot of things online. Haven’t been around much, chatting, writing, talking much. Is it too late for 2010 resolutions?

I will try to fix this. January was CRAZY! It finished the wrong way too I think. Let’s try and make February better. Lots of things to look up to. But while I am getting ready for a con this weekend, I got bored/stressed/overwhelmed, so I decided I should try and calm down. Writing seemed like a nice way to go.

I haven’t painted in a while, but last weekend, I changed that and picked up a pencilled and inked illustration that had been waiting for me for the whole month and started adding colour. I am not done yet. But if I finish the convention preps fast enough today, maybe I’ll be able to put a few more hours on it. It will be worth it. It’s rather big and complex too. I tried to push myself a little. Hopefully it shows in this one.

And I wanted to share comic book stuff. I figured it would be better to do that, then to stay silent for the next I-don’t-know-how-many months. Yes? I’m note even sure it interests people at all. *laughs* But I kind want to share this project with people because it means so much to me.

The icon is a character from the comic also. I got tired of the sweet little mermaid face. I’m afraid you will have to endure crazy lady Tagara from now on. (or until I have something better)

One of the pencilled pages. The middle panel is not finished, I want to have some background. Nothing fancy, but I just haven’t gotten there yet.

And I’ve been doing a lot of backgrounds on this project. I think I’m getting the swing of things. I scanned to of my favourite background-ish thumbnails (the pencilled panels are not finished yet, but started)

This little sketch kept me awake a good part of the night. Unfortunately, I don’t feel the idea and design are good enough to make a painting, but I still think the sketch is good enough to share. Last night, I wanted (again) to draw/ paint something with a tiger, so I tried to come up with an idea that could work without being too fancy because of the very limited extra time I have this month.

And now back to that comic book project!

It is time for new Kraftin’ Kimmie Stamps! ( http://www.kraftinkimmiestamps.com/ ) This month, my designs are Steampunk inspired characters! I’m having lots of fun drawing the victorian inspired dresses and suits, and adding the goggles too. But my addition to the hop is a little different. I decided not to do a card design, but rather, do a painting with the little character. So I took out my watercolor paper, and burned it to give the nice old map feeling and from there I stamped little Genevieve and painted her with nice sepia tones and blue tones. Couldn’t resist painting the map texture in the back too.

Of course, the blog hop is as usual! If you wish to be elligible to win free stamps (because we all love free stuff!) all you have to do is hop from blog to blog and leave a comment on each of them!

The blog hop starts here: http://kraftinkimmiestamps.blogspot.com/

And the next stop from my blog is TARA! : http://inkingontheedge.blogspot.com/

I kinda want to share some of the illustrations I did that are comic book related. I know I haven’t really said much about it here. I’m not actually sure what to write, because right now, our plan is to first start printing it in French, and after, if we feel ready to do it and if we have enough time, we will translate it. So because of this, I can’t really share the official blog. (But I will put a link still just in case some are interested: http://www.lengrenage.com)

Needless to say that this project has kept me busy for many months now. And I’m very very slow because it’s a huge learning process. While I do get better with every new page, it also means that the older pages need a lot of revisions.

At first, I didn’t know how to draw a plane at all… now, I’m no expert, but at least I know where I am going a little more. *laughs* As far as style goes, it wasn’t too consistent at first, but now it’s getting there too. I’ve also opted for a screentones… printing black and white should technically be cheaper. But there is also the fact that I’m really loving what can be done with screentones, so I want to learn how to use it in my own work.

I’m not master of tones though. So what I have today is rather simple. Lineart is inked with good old trusty pen and nib. Screentones are digital.

And there are my 4 boys. They are the “main” characters in my story.

As promised, today I am posting some life model sketches! I usually go to these sessions every sunday for about 3 hours. It’s a mix of poses of different lenghts: 30 secs, 1 mins, 3 mins, 5 mins, 10 mins and 20 mins. I must admit, I can’t recall how long the poses from the sketches I am posting here today were. From the looks of it, probably 10 minutes and up.

Lately, I have also started trying to do life model sessions with watercolour, but it’s very difficult. I never get the same results I would when I do them with charcoal. (I think the medium just takes too much time to dry and layer, so I’m never able to do as much details as I would with charcoal) Chances are I will not go to any sessions until Christmas though. So I will probably be posting new sketches only starting 2010.

It is now the December release for my new stamp designs at Kraftin’ Kimmie Stamps (http://www.kraftinkimmiestamps.com/ ). I can’t believe it’s already been 3 months since this whole adventure started! I’m slowly learning what kind of designs/images stampers are hoping to see and for the first time, I tried painting one of my stamps designs. Kimmie was kind enough to send me a bunch of craft material so I could make a card of my own and then I took out my watercolour and started painting Josephine! (I haven’t had the chance to paint a lot since the Princess and dragon painting, so this was very welcomed!)

The idea of the blog hop is fairly simple: you want a chance to win Kraftin’ Kimmie stamps? All you need to do is hop from blog to blog starting here: http://kraftinkimmiestamps.blogspot.com/

Leave a comment in each blog from the hop and get a chance to win! That’s it! =D

The Next Stop in the Blog Hop is… Kimmie!:  http://kraftinkimmieskorner.blogspot.com/

My apologies for the (very) late entry. November’s been quite busy! Busy with orders and commissions! (Thank you so much for everyone who’s stopped by my site, ordered from me or commissioned me! I haven’t felt so busy in a while)

I know I promised one of the blog readers, the lovely Rose, some sketches of my last live model sessions. I will post them on Sunday! I will also be posting one of my new stamp design for Kraftin’ Kimmie Stamps this Saturday!

For today, I have this fun commission to share. Betty e-mailed me to commission some custom stamp designs for her family and for herself too! I must admit I had a blast creating those two stamps. And two more are on the way. I came up with a fun witch design (doesn’t she look a little fishy with her bubbling cauldron? ) and the second stamp is for her daughter, a cute gothic lady with her books!

And these are the stamps make out of these designs! I’m always so surprised to see stamps made out of my work because they are so accurate when you stamp them.

And I couldn’t resist sharing the newest artbook I bought. Artbooks are my guilty pleasure. I collect so many of them! And I enjoy browsing through other’s work for inspiration but also to learn new techniques (or at least I try my best to analyse other’s work to understand what technique they could have used for a particular illustration). Why is this one so special? In fact, it’s not any more or any less special than all my other artbooks, but the truth is that it’s been ages since my last artbook purchase. I was jumping when it arrived in the mail today!

This book contains the artwork of one of my new favourite games, Gyakutensaiban (In North America, it’s titled Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney). After playing to first game, I’ve fell in love with the character designs in this game. Even the animation, though limited to a few frames per move, is super interesting. And this book contains all the characters designs, almost all their poses and the pictures are so beautifully printed! Love it!

So step 11 is the dragon! I’ve actually scanned a few images to show the progression of the dragon, because this step is really all about painting scales and shading them until they feel right. No real secret here!

And from there, I finished the full dragon and did a few highlights on the scales with acrylics. And that’s it! Painting finished! =D