Music practice - in progress, part 2

Here's the progress so far on Music Practice.  I added some more musicians, cleaned up all the lines, fixed the face on the first musician so it doesn't look so doofy, and did a first pass on coloring it.  All in all, not bad.  I certainly use more attention on the background and setting, but this would be an acceptable frame for a comic, I think.

Is this a sustainable style?  Hell, no!  This took longer than I'd like to spend on a single frame, and it's probably too hopeful to think I'll get good enough soon enough for this style to be sustainable.

I recently started a comic workshop at work taught by Rad Sechrist, one of the talented story artists.  (See "Explorer: The Mystery Boxes" for his comic story "The Butter Thief".)  We had the first class last week and he had some really good practical guidance to give, including, don't sweat all the details because most people are paying more attention to the story than the art, and it's more important to finish something than to get it perfect on the first try.  Hoping this workshop will give me the kickstart I need.  I'm starting to apply some of his brainstorm techniques to further the plotting process.

Cardboard Moroccan Cat Palace Update

Cardboard Moroccan Cat Palace has been set up in its rightful place behind the armchair and up against the window for quite a while now and I'm please to say Dynamite has taken to it pretty well.  At first it was probably just for the cat nip we sprinkled inside (Cardboard Moroccan Cat Drug Den?), but since then she has claimed it as her own and uses it for gazing out the window, cat naps and just getting away from her humans.  I'd call this an unqualified success.  Maybe the next cardboard palace will be a Chinese style palace, or a Boston style apartment with bay windows.

Oh hai!

Rubbing up on the cardboard corners to mark her scent.  Note the little kitty-teeth-shaped holes.  She sometimes nibbles on her home.

Hopping out for a snack or a snuggle.

Back for a mid-day cat nap.

"Music Practice" - in progress

I've been struggling lately to find my style to create my own comic.  Color or black and white?  More stylized or realistic?  Graphic outlines like Jeff Smith's "Bone" or painterly swaths of color like Daniel Lieske's "Worm World Saga"?  Or somewhere in between?  And if so, where?

In an effort to figure that out, I tried to do a frame of a music recital or music practice at the Academy, and used a scene from House of Flying Daggers as reference.  Here's how it looks so far.

We'll see where this goes.  This is after a few already aborted attempts this weekend.  It's been frustrating and demoralizing at times.  Definitely thought a few times that this will never get anywhere and I'm a naive idiot for even trying, but onward.  No failure is as bad as not trying.

Yang Shou scenery

I'm trying to stretch my painting muscles on scenery, which isn't my usual subject matter.  This is also an exercise to try and get into the frame of mind to further along Project Apricot.  I definitely don't have very good technique for landscape painting and as a result not much patience for it either, but I suppose it's a start.

This is forcing me to get more familiar with other brush options and work in a way very different to what I'm used to.

Superhero Hoyts

I've been working on this on and off for a while and recently finished.  It's a drawing of Hoyt as a few different of his favorite superheros, and of course with his city in the background!

Chinese New Year Wontons

A belated "Gong Hay Fat Choy!"

This year I celebrated by making a big batch of wontons.  Yum.  I started with this recipe, which turned out really well.  I added veggies and wonton noodles to the broth, and then topped it off with a drizzle of sesame oil, which really took me back to the Cantonese noodle shops the last time I visited China.

These wonton froze really well and I've already polished off the last of the batch.  I should make more soon.  It makes me feel more Chinese to know I can cook up some yummy Chinese noms when I want to.