At deviantART there’s a tag going on where an artist gives away 10 free pieces of art to the first 10 people who comment on their journal entry. The catch is, once you sign up for your freebie, you must post the tag in your journal as well, and do 10 free pieces of art for the first 10 people who comment on your journal entry.

For whatever reason, I signed up for a piece from clickypenpixie, so I now have 10 9 pieces of art (I drew one already) that I owe people. I actually signed up to encourage Andrea, because she’s a really talented traditional artist, but her account is filled with mostly photographs. Frank (~Lefthanded) signed up, so I decided to draw something for him that I’d already been planning to draw, and in the process, challenge myself as an artist.

It starts with this drawing I did of Frank’s characters, Symon and Rose.

Before I finished the final inking of this drawing, I was inspired to draw a follow-up piece, depicting what happened after this picture was taken of them. I thought it’d be good practice at drawing more dynamic figures, since pretty much everything I draw is characters standing around. So I sketched it out.

Hmm. . .There’s so much that went wrong with this sketch, and only a few things right. One of the “right” things was Symon. Rose, on the other hand, I wasn’t happy with at all. She’s too big, her anatomy isn’t right and I didn’t know how to fix it in a subtle way, and the interaction between the both of them just isn’t right. After much deliberation, I resigned myself to completely redrawing Rose, though I put a lot of effort into saving the initial version. I had drawn her whole body, but I cropped it to minimize how horrible the original looked.

Here’s where the benefits of technology come in. So I wouldn’t have to draw over the outline of the erased figure, I scanned the sketch into Photoshop, then erased Rose’s figure, then turned Symon’s pencils cyan, and printed them out on a sheet of acid-free card stock paper (much cheaper than Bristol).

I proceeded to redraw Rose referencing from a drawing that Frank had done a few years ago of the two sparring. I had never seen this drawing before, but it really helped to inspire me.

The redraw came out a lot better. The blue is the original with Symon, and the red is the redraw with Rose.

Finally, I inked it using Sakura Pigma Mircon pens.

After I finished inking, I realized there were a few inconsistencies in Rose’s attire, but I like the second version better. I simplified her shoes. The detail was pain to draw the first time, and I think it was a bit distracting.

Today I drove my mom up to the high school were she works. School is starting soon and she has to prepare her room, making a bulletin boards and stuff. I’ve volunteered to design a mural for one of the classroom walls. It’s just supposed to be high school students in the appropriate uniform being studious. So, I need to do some sketches for that. I’ve never done a mural before, so I figure this will be good practice, since I have been asked if I possessed that skill for commission purposes.

Anyway, I ended up having to stay with my mom longer than expected, but after leaving, I decided to stop by my hair stylist’s (Sonyia) shop to see if I could either make an appointment or be squeezed in as a walk-in. Fortunately, she was able to make time to do my hair, and it turned out to be one of the shortest salon stays I’ve had in a while. She said there’s a bit more breakage in the front, which is most likely my fault for not tying a scarf around my hair at night and sleeping on cotton pillow cases, so I’m gonna try to be better about my hair care habits. But I like how she styled my hair:

After that, I went to a popular restaurant, where I acquired a healthy and balanced meal.

I thought I’d share this wonderful offer. I logged into my facebook account, just to see if anything new was going on. I had two new messages from the Apple Students club.

It turns out that Facebook is running a promotional offer with iTunes, making free music samplers (containing 25 songs each) available every Monday in the month of August. You must be a member of the Facebook Apple Students group in order to receive a message that includes the code which can be redeemed on iTunes to get your free music for the day.

So, now I’m presented with the task of listening to all these songs of the Electronic genre, to see if they’re any good. It’s pretty cool so far. I also downloaded (yes, I paid for it) the new album from Corinne Bailey Rae. It’s good stuff.

This has definitely been one of my most artistically prolific months in a while.

Yesterday I finished the pencils and inks of my commission from Arson. I especially like the last panel. There’s still text to be inserted, so it’s not finished, but getting this far definitely lifts a weight.

Next, I did the inks on the Vyper fan art of Symon and Rose.

Finally, I finished my piece for the draw-off at Penciljack.

To to do the rest of the week:
_register for classes this Fall.
_get my financial aid worked out. Because I’ll be 24 this year, I’ve been declared an independent, even though my parents still support me. So, I have to fill out more paperwork proving that I am, ligitimately, a bum.
_make an appointment to get my hair done.
_start doing the text on Tril’s commission.
_get my parents gifts for their 26th wedding anniversary, which is tomorrow.