. . . I’ve just been REALLY busy. I’ve pretty much been spending the entire week getting work done for the art exhibition at my school, plus I worked an extra day to cover someone, plus tried to work in some sort of way to get my homework done.
I was originally going to submit two pieces. I haven’t been happy enough with the stuff I’ve made for graphic design, and my drawing class is a really basic drawing class designed for people who have never drawn before that somehow my transfer credits didn’t cover, leaving me feeling really underwhelmed and not really producing anything I really feel like showing off. That just leaves my screen printing class, which we can draw whatever we want as long as we screen print it.
So being on a watercolor kick lately, I figured I’d do a couple of mixed media pieces with watercolor and screen printing.
Because I also work, that leaves me with little time on weekdays to get stuff done. On Mondays and Tuesdays I’m pretty much on the go for 13 hours nonstop and do a full circle around the KC metro area between home, school, and work.
So it took me several days to get the sketches just how I liked them, gather my supplies (ie finding time to go to the store and buy the brushes and paper I needed), and screen printing emulsion has to dry overnight before I can expose it to my drawing thus creating a stencil.
So finally had everything how I wanted it the other day, I was going to work on them back to back. For the first one, I spent a couple of hours laying down the basic colors I wanted to use. I had planned to do a wash, print, then tighten the colors.
So everything went fine, went to print, and all that came out was this black smudge, ruining all of my work.
I seriously almost cried.
So I moved to the second one, and it barely printed. I don’t know if I didn’t give them enough exposure time or I just didn’t wash out the screen enough after exposing it, but I was determined not to make the entire week a bust.
I managed to salvage the second one. I had to redraw a large portion because it just didn’t come out so I’d hardly call it a screen print anymore. But they accepted it anyway (we can only submit class work).
So long recap of my week is long. Apologies for not updating in over a week. I have the pencils done. I just wanted to get the pic turned into the art show and just take a day’s breather before working on something else. I’ll ink the page today.
Here’s the piece I submitted to the art show to hopefully tie you over until I get an actual comic page up:
Bluebird by ~bratkitty on deviantART
Considering how much of it I had to rework in a pinch, I’m actually pretty proud of it.
Also I’ve had an obsession with burlesque dancers lately.
Hey, no worries about the lack of updates. You’re not the only webcomic writer/artist/creator who has these dry spells, for lack of a better term, because you’re simply busy with stuff outside the Internet. Heck, a lot of the guys from That Guy With The Glasses have to work to supplement their own lives, and it takes a lot as a webcomic writer to even live off your work. Not everyone is Penny Arcade (thankfully) or Megatokyo.
And that is a gorgeous picture! She looks like she has some meat on the bones, so to speak, and that’s great. Not many people would draw women like that.
I must say that there is nothing wrong with burlesque dancers. The ones over here tend to give better shows with the more intense crowds. I will agree with Jamie that not many people draw women that are not much more than skin and bones. That part makes me a little sad myself.