I’ve been drawing an awful lot lately. Just like my other phases, it comes and goes, but I do love doodling on some paper or sketching in Photoshop; it’s very soothing and meditative to draw for extended periods of time.

I can see why some people engage in addictive behavior though. It is so enjoyable for me, that other things slide like chores and even remembering to bathe and feed myself.  I’m surprised my stress-rash hasn’t popped up lately. Maybe the drawing is a healthy outlet for dealing with the ’shit happens’ in my life? Except for the basic human needs and hygiene thing…

With the volume of output I’ve got going on lately, I really should collect the complete and mostly complete work I’ve got, package it up, advertise and sell it on an online store here. Doing that would legitimize my absent-minded fasting. Of course I need to polish the mostly complete stuff, but feh, that’s “trivial.”

After I get that done, I could dig into the file of sketches I’ve got going or scans of work languishing in archive for more material, and I could go even further back and look into my filing cabinet or any of my dozens of notebooks for doodles. There is a limit to this madness of course. If I go too far back, the quality of artsmanship goes way down and I don’t really care to share that stuff. Also, I say “trivial” as I have to make the decision to stick with the particular style a work started off as or scrap it and make it Modern Steve.

This isn’t a bad plan though, I might be able to get some extra coin from this by selling prints. Fortunately I’ve had the foresight to work at a ridiculously high resolution for a long time now so printing will be trivial. See? No quotes that time!

I’m not an original thinker on this one (Google Image Search), but I want to make a suitable-for-framing personal take on Team Fortress 2 with female characters. There’s only one out there that’s any good, and I think I could be on par with the quality, but be thematically better.

This might take awhile, and I’m definitely going to make each individual class member full size, meaning that if I wanted to, I could make a print of just that class and be happy with its resolution. This will be my most ambitious project yet, but it is very reminiscent of something I did in high school.

I made sketches of everyone in the drumline, including myself and the directors and put them all on a shirt. It took a few retries, plenty of scanning, and laying out on a computer that could barely handle the task, but it turned out pretty awesome – and it was in glorious color! There must’ve been thirty or so people in the section, so it was no small feat to pull it all together, but I think this will be even bigger and better because:

1. Just like webcomics, nobody knows who your friends are on the Internet, so leave them out of your comic; make new characters or use pre-existing characters that people know
2. Hi-resolution baby! Each of the class members will be printable at 14 inches tall and look nice. The drumline shirt only had to look good on a t-shirt at a couple feet away
3. My computer doesn’t suck nuts!

I’ll post my progress as time permits, hopefully I’ll have at least one to show off this week!

Not much to say, check it out!

Harley

All in all, this took only a few hours to complete from thumbnails to end-product. Not perfect, but no piece is. I’m glad this kind of fell out of my head the way it did and Ame helped a little on the editing process.

Rarely do I get the bug to work on a piece to its completion. It’s hard to say completion though because I pick every last nit to the end and it’s never good enough. “I should have done it this way,” or “I should have left that out,” or “this spot doesn’t look quite right.” I could work on one piece halfway to doomsday and not be done with it.

It’s funny though, I’m laughing at myself a bit for what I can’t get right. When you’re first starting out, anatomy is just a word. Caution to the wind! Arms look like this, I’m sure of it! The sure sign of an amateur is when they say, “But I just can’t seem to get the boobs right.” Then, you realize that hands aren’t something to be put behind objects just so you don’t have to draw them. Sometimes I still say, “Fuck it! The still living corpse of Liefieldbe damned, I’m obscuring these hands (Which almost rhymes – I’m surprisingly proud of that).” Somewhere in all this there’s an anime/manga phase (all of us did it), and I’ll admit it, no matter the shame: I had an offshoot of Furry in my history.

Anymore, I get caught up in small rendering problems. I’m not a trained artist, but I think I know what “rendering” means. Other balance problems bug me, or bad anatomy “uglies.” I need to look at the piece I’m working on again and fix the problems with it as best I can with as much elegance as possible and mark it as done. It’s on par with the other work I have on my wall and I may decide to print it as well.

Ultimately, I’d like to set up shop here and sell prints or do commissions and be like Brandon Bird. I’ve mentioned him at least once before – I wouldn’t say I idolize him though. More like… statuettize.

Indiana: Give me the whip.
Satipo: Throw me the idol. No time to argue. Throw me idol, I’ll throw you the whip.
Indiana: [throws the idol] Give me the whip.
Satipo: Adiós, señor.

Today was my first day back to school in a long time. I arrived plenty early to my class so I had ample time to wander around to try to learn the campus. Since it’s been awhile, I kind of forgot what it was like, and sweet Jesus the boobs. Boobs everywhere. It’s the first week of classes and all the girls want to look cute and all I gotta say is damn. I know I’m engaged to Ame, but the policy is well-known and quite strict: Looking but no touching or speaking lest I cease to be. It’s a pretty easy rule to follow I think.

I’m only taking two courses this semester, Calculus II and Physics (along with its lab), but I’m not seeking a degree. I just need to build my academic vocabulary so I know what the hell I’m doing when I finally pursue my Masters in Physics. There’s nothing on paper preventing me from applying to the grad program, but let’s say I got in. What then? I would be like Towelie, not having any idea what’s going on.

My Calculus teacher is just a grad student, so he can’t teach worth a damn – and he’s Polish, so it’s hard to understand him on top of it all. Fortunately, I’ve taken the course before, and this is a refresher. Too bad I barely finished it the last time with t a D+.

But man the boobies…

Boooooobs!
- Steneub