My 2 cents on Walking and other things

I have no problem with spending my days climbing ladders, biking 40 km, going to muay thai, lifting heavy crap, but after two months of uh....my princess feet not really touching the ground, it seems I am no longer capable of walking. Last Monday I spent a day without my bike and I thought I would have a breakdown by the end of the day. (I might as well be married to my bike I fear..) The morning I spent on TV dressed up as the Grinch. No I'm not kidding, watch the video. Afterwards I had to spend the day walking form place ot place in a suburban town and wow....Canada is a damn big country. Being the frugal "lady" that I am, I decided to not take the bus (also my wallet usually has a stick of gum and an empty debit card) and walk everywhere. And while I may not have looked exactly like the above image, I came pretty damn close..

So onto some more interesting things dans ma vie!

Here are a few sketches of some fantsatic ladies from the trip I took to Boston with my parents at the beginning of the month. And no, none are exaggerated. The crazy looking one with the coffee my dad and I called "shustrik" which roughly translates as..spaz. The woman was constantly on edge and never seeemd to like the idea of putting a lid on her coffee...then run around with it crashing into people. We enjoyed her company. : )

Life drawing has been going down the drain the last few weeks, but I'll put up a whole post on Tuesday of this week. I managed to lose a whole newsprint of half decent sketches from the last few weeks...and the rest I have is papsmear...but I'll make you cringe either way. Mostly I've kind of broken myself back down to basics and started to focus more on form and rigidity of the body instead of my usual curvaceous flowing stuff. (especially after someone told me I have my "style" > : ( though Im undecided whether its a good or bad thing) ) Anywho, more on that come Tuesday.

I've also been working an event called "Screemers" in Toronto for the past few weeks, which mostly sucks balls, as it's composed of poorly dressed fat people or drunk teenagers getting the crap scared out of them by a few haunted houses. I just sit there selling glowing swords because I can..But amidst my shift I saw this fantastic pikachu costume, and the guy wearing ti was just...I'm not sure how to describe him but I think I captured his whole persona pretty well. AMong other things, I saw a few fights, (blood and stretchers and everything) got profusely hit on by a really hot blond girl (which only confirmed my boss's hypothesis of me swinging both ways...no idea where that came from) reunited a long lost love, lost a bunch of money and started a light show with some shuffling by taping together glowing stuff and doing my kung fu moves. Yeah, while most people my age spend it partying with friends,  that's how I spend my holidays...

And lastly, today I watched an AWESOME movie (I actually watched TV for the first time in...over a month and a half at least). It's a french films called "Le Roi et L'oiseau" (The King and the Bird) based on one of H.C Andersen's fairy tales which I grew up on. It was done in the 80's and took over 15 years to make. The character designs were so fantastic, the emotion so vivid and the story was so good I could not resist sketching some of the characters from the film for later reference and stuff. It might come off a bit slow to those who are not avid animation fans, but seriously, give it a go. Also for the snobs who stand by Miyazaki...guess which film gave him a ton of inspiration for his future work? Yup, you guessed it, Paul Grimault's work. 

Lastly, did you guys see my hand stuff, particularily my hand rotation?? Any critique (bad or good) would be super helpful as I know there are mistakes but I cant quite see them yet. Check them out here!

So enough ranting for this week, see y'all Tuesday!

Who wants to join into the epic art challenge??

So...did I do it?   Check it yo, by clicking here.

Whoa...but wait, that's only 50!  Indeed. I have set the bar a bit too high. I also went on a trip for the long weekend and then straight to work so I had one week where I did not even touch a sketch book. Plus my work hours have gone up to full time....so. We are gonna call it the 20 week challenge, or at least that's what I'm going to go by. Check the link for full details and go join. Cause I want you to improve and get into your programs of choice too. (cough cough, Marco and Angie...) Or just be awesome. Either way works.

Otherwise, life drawing was a waste of time the last two weeks for me and I threw out quite a few newsprints in frustration. The few okay things that I did manage to cough up I'll lump in with next weeks post. Now I need some sleep. Tootles!

ps: if you haven't already GO CHECK THE LINK YO: The Epic Art Challenge 

Common Tongue

I've been finding it difficult to talk to people lately..till I met this fantastic store clerk

The weekend has been productive more or less, and mostly I didn't structure any psecific art projects, just went from one thing to another to get the creative juices flowing. Here's some of the work:

A few character designs of people I see regularly around my area...trying out different styles of cartooning...

I've never yet done caricatures and this was my first go at it, some turned out better than others, but need tons more exaggeration. I feel like I'll offend people if I go all out on these. Sensitive friends you know?

Some quickie light studies from extra life...

And to finish off..my papa's birthday present! Wish I had more time to add some more detail to the whole piece but overall I'm content with the composition and colors. Acrylics and illustration board.

In other news, as of...next week I'm going to be starting a 10 week art challenge which I'm calling the 10x10 (maybe even longer, haven't decided). It's gonna be a puke inducing art marathon, where every week I will pick a different area of drawing to study and go all out, creating between 50-100 pieces of work per week. I'm going to write up a full schedule for this which I will do my best to stick to, and post my results on...a separate blog page, along with the books I referenced, artists I was inspired by and so forth. You're welcome to join in, especially if you're also working on a portfolio for yourself or schools. It's gonna be intense though, so all social life aside! Here's an example of 2 weeks:

Week 1) Draw 100 hands, ten of each in the following styles/mediums

a)     1 minute gestures

b)    Skeletal views

c)     Muscle views

d)    Quick paint sketches

e)    Makers or pencil crayons

f)     Your most uncomfortable medium

g)    Digital

h)    Hyper realistic

i)      Using only lines (weighted lines)

Week 2) Draw 100 different expressions, using 10 different styles, and several different mediums.

Sound easy? No idea yet, but on top of my busy work and extra life schedule, this should be pretty tough to pull off. But if I can do it, so can you. SO...Shape up yo!

First World Problems

Yesterday was a day filled with first world problems, beginning with my morning coffee having...egad: MILK instead of cream. My morning routine which kind of both confirms my existence and wakes me up was disrupted by a snotty nosed teenager with his whiney voice. I'm not in China anymore dammit, let me enjoy the saturated fatty things in life already!

Also as I was biking home (for like an hour) another snot nosed justin beiber girl thing timed a red light for me right before a huge hill and did this cocky snot nosed smirk as she slowly crossed the road listening to her boy bands. I swear I ripped muscles trying to bike that hill in third gear....and Yes I'm going draw her and she ain't gonna be pretty. Anywho, I could dig my own grave here with endless rants of immature problems, but this is an art blog, so shall we?

Isn't it ironic how you put in like 9 or 10 hours of life drawing a week and all you keep are maybe 20 drawings? Progress is such a slow thing...anyhow, here is week 2 and I'm back to using newsprint and CONTE! Damn I missed conte. Am I buying it like a good art student? Nope. Not gonna spend 2 bucks on compressed carbon. Still being a bum and picking up leftover scraps after life drawing. My goal is to not buy a single piece this year...ta da?

So let's begin with my 30sec-1minute gestures. Nothing special but I'm happy with the exaggeration of the poses.

I'm pretty happy with my 2 minute ones lately, and most of the models did those poses

for ages so I got a few I liked. I feel like I'm starting to get more detail down in 2 minutes...

I totally have a girl crush on this chick, she was just so pretty and such an awesome model! Also I've never had a model who looked so comfortable in her skin. Sexy! 

This was neat as this last model was my very first model back when I did life drawing one day at age 15 or 16...I think her name is Vivian but mostly I just remember her really badass tattoo. Maybe I can dig up some of those drawings at some point to compare! Also trying some different conte strokes with these 3, kinda like where it's going...

More stuff (yes, color!) coming at the end of this weekend. Got the house to myself

and my projects for 4 days in a row and I plan to use them well. : )

Croquis du jour

Anyone else feel like the world's biggest idiot when going to the bank?? The kind manager bankmanguy would have been better off telling me about astrophysics than....bank related things. What happened was a nice bank teller I've been chatting with every time I'm at the bank noticed my poor banking decision and told me to switch to a better account where I can save like 80 bucks worth of interest every month instead of my current...30 cents. So I was totally down and met with this bank manager who ended up having to speak to me like to a 5 year old. On top of that, being completely mystified and way out of my depth, I ended up answering all his questions with extremely vague statements. It went something like: "So, you'll be depositing money into this account quite frequently?" "Yes, I just started working." "Good for you, and what do you do?" "Um...anything that's asked really. My job is pretty physical." (I work at a warehouse btw...) After that one he stopped asking any more questions and I wasn't sure why for a good minute there...yup. I can be bright. 

Hey...

Hello my dear readers! I's been like.....a pathetically long amount of time and I honestly just realized I never explained my M.I.A situation. So here goes:

After getting fed up with my teaching job in Huangyan, I gave my two months notice and had a summer to decide what to do with. Considering I had a TON of anger to vent (and I'm not someone who ever gets angry) but at the same time did not want to leave China with a negative mood, I decided on studying kung fu for a few months in a remote place roughly halfway between Beijing and Shanghai. Was it the best idea which turned into the best summer I've ever had? Yup, undeniably. From amazing training which made me feel like the biggest badass, to the amazing, crazy, weird, sexy people I hung put with (a few six packs a day keeps the doctor away ; ...and no, I did not life draw any of them unfortunately...) to the homecooked meals which in a really weird way reminded me of my childhood back in Ukraine, to crazy weekends and a life completely different from the previous ten months, it was all just perfect and I wouldn't change a thing. Unfortunately that made leaving super hard for me and now I kind of sit back home marinating in criticism of life back home and all its....normalness. My mind has become a blank canvass and I can't seem to get one decent idea on a page. Even bus people have become dull and I used to love creeping on those bus people!

Anywho...hence  the drawings below are just pure lifedrawing and nothing else. I literally have drawn NOTHING in the last two months, save for a tattoo for a friend which I posted below, and a few more China comics which I will continue working on and drop you a link. The tattoo I worked on for a week or so with my friend, as he was super nitpicky and wanted everything just right. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out considering it's not a very traditional tattoo style either.

So right now I will be back to regular updates, as I'm starting to dive into portfolio mode pretty soon. Yes, still full steam into Gobelins. My friend kind of put it into perspective that I have a 2.5% chance of getting in. Plan B? No freaking clue. Probably travel and work some more abroad. Still so much to see out there!

The model was pretty bleh and made repetitive standing poses, but I think here I'm slowly getting into the emotion of the poses again. This was Day 3. 5 minutes for most of these.

 Day 2. Ed was my model! And Ed is my absolute favorite model of all time, but of course it had to be my second day with a pencil and I couldn't get one decent drawing out of him. Waste...

And here is something to chuckle at. Day 1 work. Yes. I know. Let's not talk about it. Go scroll back up and admire the voluptuous model with the big boobs. 

Doodling in Yunnan (a big update!)

So...I just got back from my vacation to Yunnan province in China. Thoughts? A completely different world from the East. Different manners, people, priorities, aesthetics and so much! Maybe I've just grown uber cynical about the capitalized east but the west seems to know where its at in terms of preserving their culture, art, and non material values. Art and music is actually appreciated for one! I'm quite happy with how much sketching and painting I got done considering my idea of ignoring people did not work and I made a ton of new acquaintances from all sorts of places, and did a LOT of things. I'll talk more about the sketches.


I did about 5 or 6 of these sketch paintings and here are my favourites, top being Shaxi a tiny little village in the rice patties and mountains, the second is Black Dragon Pool (which has dried up ages ago so I'm not sure why they call it that..) and Lamu's House of Tibet which is a very indie little restaurant on a busy street but when you enter it its super quiet and perfect for a nice read or sketch.
The best part about this one is that none of it is exaggerated.
Traditional colours and costume of the Naxi people of China.