moving!

Time for a change!

I've had a this blog and a tumblr since the beginning of the year, but having two blogs is kind of a pain, so now I've decided to move all my blogging to my tumblr exclusively. I've changed the layout and added a comment feature to make it a little more flexible:

All my future blogging will be @ arcribbins.tumblr.com

I won't be updating here again, so please update your bookmarks/feeds :) See you over there!

PPJ Logo: The Process Report

Last month I did a logo design for Wise Guys events for their game, Pickpocket Junction.  They were submitting the game to a festival and needed the finished product in three days.  I laid out a schedule that could get us to that deadline and we worked together (through e-mail correspondence) to create a logo that would be satisfactory to all of us.  I thought it would be nice to lay out the process of creating their logo as an example of how I work.

On day one, we discussed the kind of design they were looking for and I drew up some preliminary thumbnails in Illustrator (in matching grayscale, so color wouldn't create a bias):

From there, we discussed which designs they preferred.  The center column was the one they decided to go with, though they asked me to incorporate the "floating hat" look seen in the left-column designs. They also suggested adding some train station imagery to better suit the theme of the game.  The arcing arms made a nice tunnel, so in the designs I sent them on day two, I added a train and some tracks:

The train was a hit (it's my favorite part of the logo too!) so after another quick e-mail exchange, we had settled on the elements of the design and just needed to pick the color palette.  They wanted the pick-pocketed items to look like the colored cards used in the game and we discussed how the whole design could reflect those colors as well. These are the color options I sent back later on day two:

The second color palette was my favorite, visually, but we all decided the third choice better captured the old-timey feel the game would have.  I added multiple colored cards to that design to brighten it up a little, which the Wise Guys decided they wanted to see in the final design. 

And here is the final design that I sent them on day three (with my watermark here):

 

 I wasn't totally happy with how dark the train was, so I changed its colors slightly for the final.  I also cleaned up the train tracks and recolored the cards to the clients' specifications.  Three days turned out to be just enough time to get through the various stages of the process, and I'm happy to report the Wise Guys were very pleased with the final product!

Materials & Process

I answered a question on Tumblr about the materials and process I use in my dailies.  Check it out here!

So how bout that Wacom Inkling?

By now, everyone's heard about the Wacom Inkling, right?  It's this cool little device that consists of a pen and a little receiver that sits on the top of your page and records your drawings stroke for stroke.  Then you plug it into your computer and it gives you a digital file you can edit in Photoshop or Illustrator.


I thought it might be cool to take on trips since the whole thing takes up less space than my pen and pencil case, so I got one and started playing around with it before our upcoming family vacation.  I'd seen side-by-side comparisons of scans and Inkling files, so I wasn't expecting amazing accuracy.  But I was pleased when the initial test drawings I did with turned out pretty accurate.


Then I tried some larger drawings and had some...rather warped results.  Such as:

Scan vs Inkling: IT'S SCARING ME

But I know what the problem was now!  This should have occurred to me, but as my sketchbook pages are not completely flat (it's not a spiral bound), the receiver was getting confused.  Hence all the jagged and misplaced lines.  I'm guessing I'll have much better luck with using an actually flat sketchpad.

One more comment:  At first I liked that the pen was a ballpoint (I draw with those a lot) but after a few drawings it started to annoy me.  Like all ballpoints, it doesn't always make the line you need on the first try.  But it THINKS it did.  So while the line may be invisible on the page, it'll be there in the Inkling file. For inking pencil sketches this is particularly annoying since it's hard to tell if there are lines missing.  Not sure if there's a good solution for this besides using the software to eliminate the extra lines before exporting (allegedly it can do this, though I have yet to figure it out.)

But I'm taking it on my trip and I'm going to continue to play with it.  It is a very fun piece of technology and I'm not too dissuaded by the drawbacks.

Illustration Friday: "Shiny"

When I watched Lana Del Rey's "Born to Die" video, my take-away was mostly "Wow, her hair is really shiny."  So I did this sketch and watercolor-ed it up for the Illustration Friday theme.

 The likeness isn't that great on this one (I was looking at a bunch of pictures for reference and I think it would have been better if I'd just picked one) but I do like it as a painting.  Just watercolor with some violet pencil on top.

Illustration Friday: Hurry!

I've decided to try my hand at drawing another comic so I've been spending the last few days coming up with a short story and designing characters.  The Illo Friday word "Hurry!" was perfect for this concept, so I did this mono-color watercolor of the main characters:

I thought it turned out pretty cute :)  I posted my preliminary character design sketches to my tumblr yesterday, but they're also here if you missed them.

I'm looking forward to this project!  The working title is "Zombie Day" but don't worry, there are no actual zombies.

Process on Today's Daily

I had this thought that I should take some process pics of today's watercolor.  Unfortunately I was trying to use my phone camera which doesn't have a flash, so they turned out extremely dark.  This took about 3 hours from starting the sketch to finishing but I was working at a very leisurely (read: unfocused) pace.  No hairdryer this time!

Recently I've been starting all my watercolors just painting over the whole sketch with a light color (this was the yellow of the the background) and building up all the colors from there, bit by bit.  I lost track of how many layers of red it took to make the hair look like that, but basically every time I use red in my watercolors I wish I were working with gouache instead ;)  Here's the final from the scanner:

Are you going to finish that?

I'm an idea person—I've always had lots of ideas. I keep a list in a notebook in my purse and try to hoard enough of them to keep me going and minimize the amount of time spent wondering "what should I be working on?" Ideas are fun! Ideas are the easy part.

 Turning those ideas into finished projects is another story.

"Are you going to finish that?"

The terrible truth is that it's only been in the last four years or so that I've started finishing things at all. I don't know if it was the result of my feeble long-term attention span (which we know isn't atypical for one's teens and early-twenties) or a lack of direction (what would I do with these things when I did finish? I had no idea), but I'd surely started and failed to finish hundreds of stories, comics and art pieces by the time I turned 22.

I try to think of all these false-starts as opportunities for creative growth. They were practice. I'm reminded of this quote from Monica Wood in The Pocket Muse: Endless Inspiration:

"Imagine—in full, horrific, Technicolor—that the first thing you ever wished to publish had actually been published."


It's good to know I'm not alone in my cringing there.

But at a certain point, you have to say "I'm ready and I'm going to FINISH THIS PROJECT once and for all." And then you realize "ready" may have been an overstatement and you type "how to finish things" into Google to procrastinate.

"Finishing something" shouldn't be much different than "working on something," right? Is there really more to it than "just keep going"? It certainly feels like there is—personally, I associated finishing with late nights, stress-eating, and breaking dates with friends so I can sit in front of my computer or art desk and slog along in lonely isolation. Since I'm not THAT terrible at planning projects, this is more often a fear than a reality. But some associations are hard to shake!

Still, despite these associations, but I have to say that a hard deadline—however unpleasant at the time—is the best motivator I've encountered in the battle to Finish Things. A friend relayed this anecdote to me that has stuck in my mind about how Oliver Sacks used the hardest of deadlines to finish a book he was struggling to write. He told himself, "You have ten days to write this book; if it's not done by then, you commit suicide."

And it worked: Under the "imagined threat," he managed to find his stride and finish the book with a day to spare. I'd think most of us need not go quite that far, but hey—it worked for him.

You can hear Oliver Sacks' story (and more) on this Radiolab podcast. (Thanks to Julie for the link!)

Girls!

This is a piece I started for the Illustration Friday prompt "vocal" last week, but didn't get a chance to finish. I've been doing a super-cartoony Zodiac series on my Tumblr (round-up coming soon) and I wanted to try my hand at something a bit more realistic. Ideally I'll do a couple more like this to put on my next round promotional materials. Maybe I can even come up with a good caption for this one...

I'm working on a textier post about my relationship with Finishing Things that'll hopefully appear in the next couple of days. Yes, more blog posts with words! I'm not sure what's gotten into me.

Oh no, artist block! (pt 2)

My first post on the subject of the cursed writer's block was mostly about recognizing it. But just as important is the matter of dealing with it.

I have a whole book on the topic. The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron was something I picked up from the library in 2010 and later purchased, because I felt like the author really spoke to the woe of being a 'blocked creative.' I liked her ideas—though they definitely swung to the spiritual side (it is subtitled A Spiritual Path to Creativity) of things, she also laid out some concrete suggestions.

To grossly paraphrase, her block-beating strategy consists of:

1) Write three journal pages ('morning pages') of brain-dump every morning.

2) Once a week, go on an "Artist Date" that entails doing something you really enjoy, alone, that appeals to your inner child.

I wrote morning pages with decent regularity for a year and half but stopped during our wedding-planning phase last year after it was suggested (rightly so) that journaling when I'm that stressed out just ends in spiraling. So I'll endorse morning pages with a 'maybe.' But the Artist Date—that one's a keeper. I'll bet a lot of creative types already have these once in a while—you know, the times you take a trip to an aquarium or an antique shop or a museum, shopping for inspiration. But once a week? That might seem excessive, but when it comes down to it...why not?

Today I decided it was time to give ye olde Artist Date a try and took a two-hour drive to the Maryhill Museum in Washington, where I'd never actually been before. I found it funny that instead of the 'fine art,' the things I found most interesting and inspiring were the antique chess sets and the Théâtre de la Mode exhibit.


I spent almost an hour sitting with the little mannequins and sketching my favorite couture. Will that lead for more art-ideas for me? I'm not sure. But I did shake that irritable feeling I'd been having all week. And on the drive home, I found myself with a lot of unrelated, but free-flowing ideas: Oh, here's an idea for a story. Here's an idea for structuring my days better! Hey—maybe I should try a 24 hour comic!

Seeking out inspiring places and objects is a no-brainer for getting a creative boost. But it's not always feasible at the drop of a hat. It took me about a week to make it happen (I'd been meaning to go to the Maryhill for a while, truth be told!). So I'll end with a look at some of the more "immediate" solutions I've been trying which have helped me keep my daily blog from fizzling out:

• Bribing myself: "You can go to the gluten-free bakery if you take your sketchbook and promise to work."
• Being a hardass with myself: "You sit in that chair ,and you don't get to go to the gym or eat or shower before you produce something that doesn't suck."
• Drinking coffee and/or alcohol in an attempt to improve my mood (*not necessarily recommended)
  
• Looking through out sketchbooks for inspiration. Both of these had a history in old sketchbook scribbles.
• Heavily relying on Photoshop, where I can erase and redraw that line 50 times if I really want to.
• Alternatively, denying myself references and non-permanent drawing tools. Drawing with Sharpies.
• Doing redraws of old, less-than-stellar pieces. This has the bonus effect of boosting my confidence because...well, compare:
  

But that's all I have on the treatment schedule, and, at the end of the day, there are only so many old ideas to find and recycle. It would be nicer to stumble upon a cure. So will my Artist Date help lift me out of the slump? Stay tuned, I guess. But I am feeling better already!

Oh no, artist block! (pt 1)

So here's the thing... As much as I don't want to admit it, this past week-and-a-half I've been suffering from a nasty case of ARTIST BLOCK.

Most of the time, I try to pretend that creative blocks—whether for art or writing—do not exist. (There's no reason why they should exist, right? It's so easy to tell yourself 'it's all in my head'! ) But when I'm actively in the middle of one and trying every tactic I can think of to try to claw my way out, maybe it's better to address it head-on.

this illustration doesn't have to be good! I'm blocked, people!

As someone who writes as well as draws, I'll say artist block is different from writer's block. It's harder to identify the an art block—for me at least, there's none of that staring-at-the-blank-page that happens with writer's block. I know I can always put the pencil on the page and draw something.

It won't necessarily be something good. It almost certainly won't be something inspired.

In What It Is , Lynda Barry discusses how children experience creative blocks in their play. Reminiscing, she writes "No one stopped me from playing when I was alone, but there were times when I wasn't able to, though I wanted to—there were times when nothing played back." I know writers who describe their blocks as their characters "not talking" or "refusing to talk." For my artist blocks, I'll say "my lines are not cooperating."

But I'd never given it that much thought. I have trouble even telling when I am blocked—if I'm producing work basically every day, can I really be blocked? Well, here are some of the symptoms (outside of 'everything I draw looks like poop') that clued me in:

• Lack of new ideas
• Refusal to use the ideas that I have in reserve—if I draw those now, I'll just be unhappy with the results!
• Refusal to start anything "ambitious" (see above)
• Being super picky about things like which pencils and which sketchbooks I'll use. I can no longer abide by those No. 2s from Office Depot. If the paper's too thin, forget it!
• Wanting 50 photo references for everything I draw.
• General irritability. Which I pass off as PMS, but I come to realize is mostly frustration. (Ok, the PMS doesn't help)
• Reluctance to interact with other artists/creative types (to avoid thoughts of 'oh yeah, I could be doing much better.')

Just writing down that list (yesterday) was a good first step for me. I'm sure everyone experiences blocks differently, so it's important to get a handle on how to recognize your own. So, yes, I admit it—I'm blocked! And it's not ideal, but at least I know it's not permanent. And at least now I know what kind of animal I'm dealing with.

So what now? I have a few ideas. With the commitment of my daily tumblr, I've been making myself muddle through. Tune in tomorrow for part two of this post, where I share my devious treatment strategies...and post some old, embarrassing art to boot.

Illustration Friday: Intention

I think my art might be suffering a bit from me being sick for like a week, but I had this in mind for the prompt and wanted to make it happen anyway. FUN FACT: I drew this while lying in bed ;)

The line is from "Wrecking Ball," a song by Mother Mother, and the medium is sepia Micron pen with a touch of Photoshop.

March updates!

First and foremost, I redesigned my website and vastly improved my bio page. There's even a slightly blurry photo of me now. Hoo-ray!

Secondly—now that the month is over—I've compiled all my February Project pieces onto one page. I was overall pretty pleased with how that turned out. All fifteen pieces were hand-drawn with the same Pilot Fineliner pen, which I consider a victory. Click the image below to view the whole series:


One of the things I was interested in exploring with this project was how to marry my interests in art and writing outside the route I've always gone before—comics. A few of the quotes are pulled directly from stories I've written and others were made up on the spot. Though these pieces were inspired by my own characters, I tried to choose themes that were universal or at least relatable. It was interesting to see what resonated with people. There were several fans of the tacos!

Thirdly, the all-women-contributors issue of The Medulla Review just came out and I've got a piece of flash fiction in it. Check it out!

Illustration Friday: Fluid

Not sure where this one came from! Ink and watercolor.

I finished my "February Project" yesterday, so I'm planning a round-up post of those 15 pieces here with some commentary. Until then, you can see them all on my tumblr, of course!

Illustration Friday: Suspense

Part of a series of text-based illustrations I've been doing on Tumblr inspired by one of my stories. Tis the season for conversation hearts, after all!

My new favorite Photoshop trick

I'm more or less self-taught in Photoshop, which has meant I've had to figure out a lot the short cuts for myself. Up until recently, I've done all my coloring with the brush tool (coloring book style!) but it's always kinda time consuming and since I discovered this easy method for laying down my flat colors, I'm not going back.

I can't remember reading about this particular trick in any of the tutorials I've consulted over the years—so even though I'm sure other people are familiar with it, I decided to put together this mini-tutorial. The line work does have to be on a separate layer from the coloring for this to work—I colored underneath the lines here as the white space was all transparency, but you can also just set your lines layer to 'multiply'.

I split the tutorial into two images, so click on through:



And just for fun, here's how the finished picture turned out :)

Illustration Friday: Twirl

Watercolor, ball point, colored pencil and a little bit of gouache.

I'm aiming to hit at least two Illo Friday prompts each month this year. We'll see how it goes! The daily tumblr's been keeping me motivated.

Illustration Friday: Grounded

So this is where this week's word took me!


Illustration for a doofy sci-fi story I was writing a while back. It's okay—the stranded pilots will soon be accosted rescued by space pirates. Photoshop.

New Tumblr!

As promised, I started an art tumblr for original drawings and quick illustrations:

http://arcribbins.tumblr.com/

Expect regular updates, as my intention is to have a picture post every day.

Just saw the Illo Friday word is "Grounded" this week. Seems like a good one; I'm sure I can come up with something.

hey, it's 2012!

My husband and I spent most of December driving around California, visiting family and the occasional tourist attraction. It was an amazing month, but we're both glad to be back and getting back into the routine of normal life. James recently received the good news that he passed all of the CPA exams (which had consumed his life for the latter half of 2011) and we're both stoked about the new year.

My holiday cards were a hit with our friends and family, and I also turned out this watercolor painting for my grandma, who wanted something with jellyfish. It's completely different from what I usually do, but it was a fun experiment:

Then later in the month, I got to see these guys at the Monterey Bay Aquarium!

When we were in Monterey, we had some downtime in the motel that we spent watching The Next Great Baker on TLC (we're Cake Boss fans). One of the challenges was to create a wedding cake that embodied one of the three themes offered: vintage, princess fantasy or Hollywood glamor. Naturally, that led to me drawing the lineart for this, which I later painted with watercolor:

There's so much I want to do this year and though the year may have started out with hitting up a bar for brunch in my pajamas (hey, there was a special) I'm feeling very optimistic about getting things done this year. I'm definitely going to keep writing and continuing to submit short stories for publication—and hopefully, with the support of my writing group, I can find it in me to finally finish the second draft of the novel I started in 2008. On the 4th, I'm going to be launching a tumblr blog with all original content to keep up with my sketches and smaller projects.

I'm also going to be making a more serious effort to use my twitter account. We'll see how that last one goes.