Announcing....

Hold onto your panties everyone.  It's coming soon... Cardboard Moroccan Cat Palace!  Hopefully to be a masterpiece of architecture and artistry.  I'm super excited...

sketches of Iris from Project Apricot

I've been hard at work in my free time lately forging ahead on Project Apricot.  Plotting is moving along and so is character design.  As part of that process I've been compiling style sheets for each character to establish the way they dress and developing their visual look.  So far I'm only doing this for the characters in the modern world because it's much easier to get a wide range of clothing options from the internet.

Some of that research has inspired some character sketches.  Here are two of Iris in clothes she might where and with hair both pulled back and loose.

I want her to look relaxed, comfortable, and just a bit disheveled. 

I'll probably color these later since I'm leaning towards doing this comic in color.  ... Yeah that's a new development.  I had always assumed it would be black and white, but I've gotten much stronger with coloring since I conceived this project about 6 years ago and I think it can add a lot to the tone.  Argh... it'll be a lot of work though.

Calligraphy and Ting Tongs

It's another new year and we started it off with a trip to the Asian Art Museum to see their Chinese calligraphy exhibit.  It was just the momentum I needed as I'm deep in my planning for Project Apricot!  I'm super excited about Chinese calligraphy again and will soon bust out my supplies to start practicing again.  It'll be great.  Really.

I really like Chinese as a written art form.  The above is standard script, but I especially love the semi-cursive and cursive writing.

I also recently made some home-made Ding Dongs (which I named Ting Tongs) for a friend who was lamenting the demise of the Hostess company.  I followed this recipe and it came out pretty tasty (and no shady chemicals or preservatives).  It was definitely messy, but yummy and won thumbs up from everyone who tried one.