Over the Garden Wall

First, a little mood music (theme song for the series this piece is a tribute to): 

Have you pressed play? Good. Let's move on to the art!

I recently watched the mini-series called "Over the Garden Wall." And I loved it. If Dante's Divine Comedy was combined with a Brothers Grimm fairy tale with a touch of today's cartoon sensibilities, you'd get this show. It's innocent, weird, dark and thoughtful in some places and very silly and touching in others. Overall, the effect is incredible story-telling that sweeps you up into the adventure of two lost brothers and a forest full of secrets. It's the best animated story I've experienced for a long, long time - watching it reminded me of being a child again, suspending the need for plot logic (since when I was  young I didn't really get that anyways) in exchange for atmosphere and commitment made to the process of storytelling. You see, the viewer of "Over the Garden Wall" isn't given the full context of the story until towards the end of the series - but when it is delivered it packs a punch and make the series even more excellent.

This piece was inspired by one of my favorite moments in the show. Even if you haven't seen the show, I hope the piece suggests how interesting and quirky the story is:

Like many of my pieces, this piece started out very different from how it ended up. But I'm really happy with the end result I achieved, even if the road to get here was a little winding ;-)

~m.d.

Attack on Titan (with progression shots)

I took a nice, LONG break from drawing. . . with Sakura-Con and the wedding, I was going crazy creating art stuff and got a bit burned out. I needed a rest.

But I've recovered now and have picked up my pencil to start drawing again ;-)

When I started drawing this piece, I decided I wanted to document its progression. I don't know about anyone else, but as an artist I am fascinated by the process of art. Even when I'm the one making it!

So here we go:

First layout out the shapes and lines. Everything is pretty rough at this point, but it's a matter of figuring out what I like and what I don't like to evolve proportions as the piece progresses. 

I've cleaned up some lines and fixed some things I felt were weak or incorrect in the initial sketch. My lines are starting to get stronger.

There's some odd shading I'm going to attempt, so here I'm penciling in some of the areas I'm not sure about to see how the ideas I have will look. I'm also starting to bold some of the important outlines.

Focused on bolding lines and building more shading shapes. I'm also starting to test some different shapes for the background elements.

More bolding, more shading.

The shading part takes a lot of time. . .

Building up some darker values.

Finished pencil piece. This piece isn't intended to be a finished piece in and of itself - there are things purposely left imperfect or unfinished because I know they'll be resolved when I digitally color the image.

This piece is based on a scene in the anime "Attack on Titan" - one of the grittiest, creepiest animes I've ever watched. It also has some of the most intense moments I've enjoyed in an anime series, including the one I drew here. This is the main character, Eren, sacrificing himself to save the life of his childhood friend. He's actually in the mouth of a giant monster, about to be swallowed. In the anime this moment is always shown from a side angle - never straight on like this. Yet, when I picture the scene in my head, this is what I see.

Hope you enjoyed looking at the steps that brought this piece to life!

~m.d.

Sakura-Con 2014 - PREPARE!

Lately, I've had TWO HUGE projects on my plate. And as of tonight, I'm done with ONE of those projects (at least, done until the second project is over). And that one huge-but-now-completed project?

PREPARING FOR SAKURA CON.

I've dedicated this last week to wrapping up all the art, designing, and ordering necessary to be prepared for the Con coming up in April (the weekend after the wedding reception for my brother, which is the OTHER huge project I'm working on - I know, right?!). I'm exhausted and excited.

Oh! So here's my latest piece JUST COMPLETED yesterday - inspired by the movie Spirited Away:

It was a massive struggle and didn't turn out how I had planned, but I'm really happy with how it did turn out (and the fact it turned out at all, to be honest!). It was the last piece of art I planned to have complete for Sakura Con and I feel like it's a strong addition to my collection.

I also updated several of my pieces to prep them for printing - including changing this piece up a bit so that the message I wanted to capture is literally part of the art now:

The shape of the crop and the yellow/purples of the text/boxes was, funnily enough, inspired by the fact this Con is always over Easter weekend (the colors I picked feel Easter-y to me and the oval crop shape was me thinking about an egg). I like the spring feel and the overall lightness visually that the crop and text ended up giving it.

I also designed/ordered new bookmarks to bring - they were a big hit last year!

My little prints of Ludo from the movie Labyrinth sold really well last year (surprisingly!), so I took a chance on creating a Labyrinth-themed bookmark with him on it (third from the bottom for those who don't have a clue what I'm talking about). Even if NONE of them sell I love how it turned out and will personally use my stock of them to mark my own books ;-)

It's a weight off my shoulders to have all this stuff taken care of and at the printers. Fingers crossed everything prints well.

Now my plans are to sorta relax tomorrow, allow myself to do a couple of fun things, and switch gears so I can really get into reception planning. I'll probably do some shopping for the reception decoration supplies I need, but other than that I'm going to force myself to take some time off or I know I'm going to burn myself out.

Phew. I'm going to bed.

~m.d.

Spirited Away © Disney

Inuyasha & Kagome

One piece of art I really wanted to have for Sakura Con this year was a new piece of Inuyasha/Kagome fan art. Over my early years as a fan artist I did several Kagome and Inuyasha pieces but I never felt like I did their characters or relationship real justice in my work.

Some examples of what I'm talking about:

I put a lot of thought into what I wanted to do with these characters now.

I decided to create a piece based on very popular images of Inuyasha - but re-imagined my own way. Basically two images/visuals inspired this new piece:

One, there's a popular official image of Inuyasha (I should probably mention here that he's the dog-eared one, in case you have no idea who in the drawing I'm talking about) that shows him with his hand extended. It's great because it looks like he's welcoming you in and the whole series is about joining him on his adventures in Japan's past. But it's also a very out of character image of him - his nature was more to fight or to ignore, not to welcome.

Two, I've always like how it looks when Inuyasha and Kagome are posed standing back-to-back.

I combined these two images/ideas and put my own unique spin on them for this piece. The driving idea behind my drawing was that I wanted to incorporate the popular visual of the extended hand, but as Kagome's hand instead - she was always the welcoming one and reaching her hand out with a smile is completely in character. For some reason, I also really wanted to draw Inuyasha eating his favorite food, instant ramen. In this drawing it worked, since I wanted to convey the "oblivious" aspect of his character (and giving him a surprised and a bit clueless expression with ramen hanging out of his mouth definitely conveys that).

I took some in-progress photos as I drew, so I was able to put together a rough slide show of its progression :

The biggest changes are always made in the step after I scan the pencil drawing and correct on the computer all the proportional issues I wasn't able to quite get right on paper. I think in this progression you can really see that.

Here's a static copy of the final piece:

While I definitely used references for parts of this drawing (and, as I said, was inspired by several very popular Inuyasha official images), a surprising amount of this piece was drawn straight out of my head. I'm really happy with how it turned out.

I think I captured the spirit of these two characters in a way that will speak to fellow fans - at least, it speaks to my own fluttering fan girl heart ;-)

~m.d.

Inuyasha, Kagome © Viz Media

(update 11/29 - I played with this piece a LOT over the year since I first drew it, trying to get it to feel just right to me. . . this is the result that I'm sticking with for now and calling "final"):

Princess Jellyfish

Last week I found/binge watched an anime called "Princess Jellyfish" ("Kuragehime"). It popped up on Netflix and my curiosity was piqued. Although the summary sounded strange, it didn't sound so strange I wouldn't give it a try (I kinda grade "strange" in anime storylines on a curve, hahaha!!).

And I'm glad I gave it a chance. I ended up with another new favorite series!

It's the hilarious story of a shy artist who lives in a house full of homely, unemployed, socially awkward female nerds. Each housemate has their own obsession - one is obsessed with trains, one with old men (?!), one with a TV show, and one with traditional Japanese dolls and clothing. They're all single and anti-men (they joke they're nuns, since they're too shy to interact with members of the opposite sex).

The main artist character has an obsession herself - jellyfish. She used to visit aquariums and discuss the beauty of jellyfish with her mother, who has now passed away.

One evening our artist happens to meet an assertive, beautiful, stylish girl - a girl who embodies being a princess, everything the artist's mother used to talk about her becoming. This beautiful girl meets our artist by helping her out in a situation, and subsequently ends up following her home and staying the night in her room. The next morning, the artist realizes that who she's let stay the night isn't a beautiful girl - it's a boy who dresses as a girl!

Shy, homely girl + outgoing, attractive cross dressing boy + a house full of nerdy girls = absolutely hilarious storytelling with some interesting character development (and an odd love triangle) thrown in.

So, I had to draw a tribute piece (note:  this has been updated from its original version):

The boy (Kuranosuke Koibuchi) is dressed as a girl wearing the "jellyfish" dress (although I've modified the dress that the anime and manga show slightly to match my own vision for a jellyfish dress) and the shy artist character (Tsukimi Kurashita) is the kneeling girl. Later in the series these two characters end up collaborating on creative projects - including dress design inspired by jellyfish.

The drawing itself was done in pencil and then colored in Photoshop with a texture applied for visual interest.

Now that this drawing is done, I should be able to focus on the art on my to-do list for the upcoming Con. . .unless I get distracted by another new show. . .

~ m.d.

Princess Jellyfish, Kuranosuke, Tsukimi © Funimation

Kikyo

This watercolor painting (with pencil showing through) I created mostly while I was down with a pretty gross cold. I had this image in my mind of the character Kikyo from the anime Inuyasha and felt committed to realizing my idea as well as I could.

The lineart took me forever to get just right - I'm grateful my sister Alicia can't help but be honest when she gives feedback, it helped me notice and fix a couple of issues ;-)

I plan to sell this as a print at Sakura Con - but I know it won't be a strong seller and I didn't create it with selling as my motivation.  This piece was more for me, more a challenge as an artist that I enjoyed. 

It reminded me of back in my early days of fan art, when I used to draw this character ALL THE TIME.

(here's one of the "best" Kikyo pencil drawings I did back in 2006)

It's fun seeing how far my art (and my Kikyo!) has come.

~m.d.

Inuyasha, Kikyo © Viz Media

Black Butler fanart

My sister recommended a new anime for me to watch - one she'd heard of but hadn't actually watched herself called "Kuroshitsuji" ("Black Butler"). Since I enjoy watching random stuff in the evening to help me unwind, and since they had the series available on Netflix, I decided to give it a try.

After watching it, there are things I liked and things I didn't like about the show - the interesting relationship between a boy and the demon he's contracted to serve him did catch my attention and fascinate me throughout. The butler/demon character, Sebastian, may now be one of my favorite anime characters.

Since it's been a while since I created any new fanart, I let myself get inspired by the two main characters in the series - the butler (Sebastian) and the boy he serves (Ciel Phantomhive, pretty epic name right?). I had some other ideas I considered for a pose, but this one seemed to work out best so I went with it.

I decided to try an experiment and take a traditional approach with this anime fanart - create a watercolor painting. Often the manga (graphic novel) versions of these series feature artwork done in watercolors, so it seems an appropriate medium.

I took a couple of cell phone photos of the process that I thought I'd share:

 Pencil drawing before any painting. I debated inking my outlines but decided that I wanted to try for softer lines in this piece.

 After a few hours of painting. I started by painting in gum arabic to protect the areas I wanted the paper white preserved and filling in the flat coloring of the clothes and skin. Then I came back to add shading and blend it in.
I was frustrated because it turned out I am completely out of black watercolor - and painting "Black Butler," you kinda need black!! I had to mix my own black using what I had, so my blacks turned out . . .interesting. But not necessarily in a bad way.

The finished watercolor painting (with a few touches of white acrylic paint and ink)! Not the best photo of it- this photo was taken next to a dim artificial light with my cell phone camera, which doesn't do well capturing details.

After taking a better photo, I worked in Photohop on a few digital touch-ups to the painting. Then I added a background (which I created using several different elements) to create the final piece:

I actually am pretty proud of how this turned out - every time I do something with watercolor paints that doesn't look completely awful, I'm usually pretty proud :) Watercolors are hard! But this experience has encouraged me to try a few more fanart projects from this traditional approach. And I do have a few more ideas, too. . .

~md

Black Butler/Kuroshitsuj, Ciel, and Sebastian © Funimation

Seattle Sakura Con 2013

Once upon a time, I did this crazy thing. I decided to go along with my sister to sell as an artist in Artist Alley at Sakura Con (an anime convention in Seattle, WA). And, many months of hard work later, on March 28th I found myself driving up to the Washington Convention Center to set up my display.

 

(driving under the convention center, in all its glassy glory)

 

Artists can come in and set up the day before the convention begins, so my sister and I took full advantage. We headed into the chaos of booth construction and found our own little half-a-table in the 500 section of the Artist Alley.

And now, the fun began.

Turns out I'm quite handy with planning and construction - the display was my design and I took on most of the building too (as is logical, since I understood the design the best). My first display design ended up not working (we were attaching wire racks directly to our PVC pipe frame, which then became too wobbly), so we tried Plan B (which luckily I had sketched up as well when I was figuring out possible layouts for our display). Plan B had the racks supporting themselves independently in an L shaped display, and it turned out excellently.

first display (in progress) = fail                                                 second attempt = SUCCESS!

And so, the filling of the display  began. But only to a certain extent - most of the product was coming with us the next day. You can see my nice big prints on display though :-)

Then, dawned March the 29th. . .and I, with only four hours of sleep and a bag full of grapes, ventured in the early hours once again north to Seattle.

(hehehe. . .too perfect!)

(my sister and cousin, both of whom came the first day with me!)

And thus, once again, we descended upon the convention center . . . although now, it was much more crowded with excited Sakura Con attendees. Luckily for us, we had about an hour to prepare before the doors opened on the Artist Alley.

 

(Katherine and Alicia getting everything ready - Alicia, my sister, sold her jewelry at the con which is what they're setting up)

(other artists getting their booths ready)

Aaaannnnddd. . . . ta-dah!!!  Our little four feet of artistic glory.

(no. . .we don't take ourselves very seriously. . . )

And thus, 2 days of an incredible adventure began. Sure, that adventure was spent mostly sitting doing nothing that can be labeled "productive" (I did a lot of people watching, joking, and staring off into space), but there were shining moments that made the slow parts sooo worthwhile. Moments when groups were gathered around my booth, and people (staring up at my large prints overhead) struggled against each other to be the first to get up to my table. Moments when friends from the online website where I post my fan artwork came up and introduced themselves to me in person. Moments when people smiled and told me my artwork was really good, or would use awesome adjectives to describe what I had created, and I could tell from their faces that they really meant every word. The moment when the girl recognized Izark and Noriko from "From Far Away" - and bought my print. And the woman who spent $30 on prints and bookmarks. And the native Japanese man who told me my kanji was "incredible" with true admiration in his voice. 

Another moment - or moments, I should say - was every time someone wanted to pay to own a piece of my artwork. It may seem weird, but as an artist, that's an incredible feeling. When the couple dressed as Marshall Lee and Fionna begged me to sell them my display 11x14 when I was all out, even though there were a couple dings and scrapes on that particular print. . .and insisted on paying full price for it. "It's pretty much a family portrait!"

And, of course, there are the cosplayers. . .

It was two exhausting days, but two days of concentrated awesome in moments of glory. And I will never forget it.

Prints that sold the most? These two were the stars:

Although, this piece also sold very well:

 

As did this one:
 

Those were the most popular prints. But I sold a smattering of everything - every piece I made sold at least one bookmark (can you believe that?!). And I sold a unicorn horn headband and a couple zodiac key chains too!! Financially speaking, I made back everything I spent preparing and even cleared a profit!! So how can I not be thrilled?! :-)

(the streets of Seattle filled with Con goers)

Plus, the weather during the convention was beautiful. So it made for two days of beautiful long drives.

What more could I have asked for?

Some people have asked me if I will do it again. I don't know if I will. Fan art is fun, but when it becomes about profit it changes how you creatively approach ideas. And I don't know if I feel up to creating enough new fan art (and getting involved in enough new fandoms) to keep myself competitive in that field. But it is a lot of fun. We'll see.

What I'm taking from this experience really is being encouraged as an artist overall. I feel brave, like I'm proved myself - and it's a good feeling. A feeling that I will take to some of creative projects I've put on hold as I've prepared for the Con (that I can now resume). To ideas for artwork I want to pursue. 

I always feel like calling myself an "artist" is a ongoing battle - that I must prove myself worthy of the title. The label of "artist" is not something I feel I can just take and wear, like a hat or a pair of shoes. It is not something that becomes a part of me I can put on and forget.  I would say it's more like a crown whose weight constantly reminds me of its presence. A symbol greater than myself that if I want claim to, I must fight battles and defend my right to it. Prove myself worthy as its wearer.

Well. . . battle = won. At least for today :-)

And so, it's farewell for this year, my Sakura Con friends . . .

(my sister at our booth right before closing the second day, note that several of the large prints have been replaced with smaller ones because they sold out!)

Thank you for the incredible, incredible adventure!!! ♥

~md

Surprise!

I surprised even myself when I came up with a quick idea for another new fan art and decided to attempt to finish it in time for the Con.

And so, this has been my project for this past week (up until about 10 minutes ago):

By some miracle I was successful in completing it (by the way, these characters are from the gender-bent version of the Adventure Time universe which is explored in a couple of episodes of the show). I call this piece "Sneak Attack!," hehehe.

Oh. My goodness. It is late. And Mary is tired.

Time to say goodnight for now. . .

~md

 Adventure Time © Cartoon Network