The other weekend, my boyfriend and I took a trip down to Atlanta to visit the Georgia Aquarium. The place was ginormous! They had everything from whale sharks to otters. I did some gesture drawings of the fish there using my pen. Later, I water colored them while waiting for my car to get new rear brakes, eheh.

The cuttlefish were one of the most fascinating fish I saw at the aquarium. They are incredibly mobile. They can choose to use either their fin ‘skirt’ to swim like a regular fish or shoot backwards like a squid. Their front ‘mouth’ area has tentacles for grasping their food.

The Japanese spider crabs were humongous (and looked awfully delicious). I loved how they lumbered through the tank’s floor with their spindly legs. They were so alien-like.

The otters were probably the toughest for me to capture with my pen. It was a good challenge trying to catch their movement since they have the energy of a 5 year old. The one otter I drew was trying to pull out an ice cube formed within a plastic bucket.

The belugas were beautiful. What the sketches don’t fully convey is how ripped they are! They seriously have 6 pack abs. Their muscles were so well-defined that it almost looked like there was a human inside a beluga suit.

One thing I tried to practice was something I read from Walt Stanchfield’s notes: he stressed the importance of using a continuous line when gesture drawing. And I have to say, it really does make a difference. I feel more loose and relaxed drawing in this manner.

Have a Happy Easter weekend, everyone!

I wish I had the fearless attitude of this li’l t-rex. Although, it’d be nice to have some foresight too. 😉

A gesture drawing with some flat colors of my mentor/friend, Hongman, who is moving on to another job in Seattle. It’s from my desk’s vantage point, and that’s really what I saw on his monitors from a day-to-day basis.

Hongman is possibly one of the hardest working animators I know, very talented, and humble to boot. He was one of the first friends I’ve made at VCS, and he never complained about my pestering him with my novice questions. Good luck, Hongman! You’ll be missed!

Last year, I traveled to Japan to visit my friend who was teaching English at a high school over there. The beginning of my trip started out a little rocky; the 2nd leg of my connecting flight to Tokyo was canceled due to a typhoon, leaving me stranded in Texas for a day. Luckily, I sneaked onto a flight the following morning, sitting in the center of a 5 seat row. The first two pages are my fellow passengers to the left and right of me.

When I finally arrived, my friend was kind enough to let me tag along when she went to work. I had a blast drawing the high schoolers because they were so lively…but it also made it hard to capture that spirit. I was also intrigued by their little nuances in how they wore their school uniforms. So much personality!

This was the first time I tried to really document another location with sketches. It was extremely fun, and now when I look back at these sketches I can remember more specifics than if I just shot it with a camera. For the sketchbook, I used a water brush, watercolor pencils, pencil, and Sakura Microns/Copic Multiliners. The moleskine’s thick paper held up pretty well to the water media, but it’s hard to make a mark with straight up water color. I found I had to draw with the water color pencil and then apply water to the line to make it keep. I’ll try to find more time later to post more from my travel sketchbook…unfortunately at work we’ve entered crunch mode so updates will be sparse.

While browsing through my directories, I realized I never posted this one up. I drew it maybe 9 months ago, (so it’s somewhat old) but it was gift art of a character created by one of my art directors at Vicious Cycle. His co-authored comic series, The Black Coat, follows a revolutionary war hero/spy and his adventures to thwart the British. The two characters portrayed in my drawing are The Black Coat and the girl, Robin, who lost her mother to a serial killer in the first volume of the graphic novel.

I had an idea for this week’s Illustration Friday topic, but I think I bit off more than I can chew and ended up rushing the whole thing. I was so disappointed in it that I chose not to post it…maybe one day it will appear on my blog.

Right now I’m torn between many things I want to do in my spare time. Between Illustration Friday, weekly life drawings, and working on my character for personal animations, I’m hard-pressed to drop one of them because I love working on all. However, my professional goal is to become a better character animator, so my focus is going to shift towards Asher and my personal animation practices.

Just because I’ll be working on 3d animations doesn’t mean I’ll avoid sketching, though. Drawing is the most liberating thing for me, creatively, and I certainly don’t want to lose that. 😉 There will definitely be weekly posts of sketches, but they may or may not pertain to Illustration Friday.

Anyway, since I didn’t have a new illustration this week, I decided to post more life drawing sketches from the past few weeks. A couple in brush pen and one set of short poses in sanguine:

The model was definitely a superhero.

Getting on the right path using the brush pen, but I’m definitely still an amateur. Look at those wobbly lines! (Not to mention the proportions…)

My heavy hand gets me every time when I lay lines down with the brush pen. I also blame my impatience when I first start drawing the contours of the figure.