2023 Illustrations/Crafts

Wow, don’t even ask me where my mind has been the past 2 months since my last post (or more accurately, the last 2 years, if I’m being honest.) Looking back on it, it’s pretty much all been a blur. But as we get ready to throw ourselves headfirst into the holidays, I’m feeling a refreshing bit of clarity and peace, so it seemed a good time to dust off my blog and pop back in to say hello, catch up with all you lovelies, and get back to doing my thing and feeling more like myself again. 2023 wasn’t as big of a year for creative productivity unfortunately. I did manage to squeeze some time in for a few drawings and crafts, so here they are:

The angel and devil sketch I did was older but I went in and redid the line work and added color to finally finish it, so I’m counting this as a 2023 piece. 😉

I wanted to draw something with kind of a vintage retro feel to the art style but also wanted to add a bit of crassness to it as well. It was a fun piece to work on.

Cupcakes & Machetes and I had a blast decorating these ancient Greek inspired terracotta pots on one of our girls’ nights/crafting sessions. Hers is the Pegasus pot on the left and mine is the Cerberus pot on the right. That was also the night we discovered that you could order craft supplies from Michael’s via Instacart. Talk about a game changer! 😛

I had a blast making spooky Halloween wreaths with C&M and a friend of ours for Craft Club (like Book Club, but for arts and crafts!) Speaking of wreaths, I also made a Christmas wreath at that start of December at a very fun and festive wreath-making party hosted by Mr. Moth’s aunt. 🙂

Just a gargoyle (a Grotesque if you want to be technical) done in ink.

Pencil and ink on paper. Between having our own temporary front door spider we named Coraline and this drawing this year was a good exercise in facing my arachnophobia. 🙂

More crafting with C&M, painting cheeky little gnomes. 😛 The top batch are mine and the bottom batch is hers. We probably had TOO much fun painting these and coming up with the different sayings.

lol This was my very brief attempt at the Inktober art challenge this year along with the spider lady and gargoyle pictured above.

My piece I worked on for Imbolc earlier this year. I really enjoyed working on this one and hope to do more related pieces in the coming year.

I only managed to do like 2 drawings for Shark Week this year, but this lemon shark was my favorite. If life gives you lemon sharks, make lemon pun-based art.

I didn’t get to create as much as I’d have hoped this year, but 2024 is right around the corner and I’m ready to make the most of it. 🙂

Is there anything you wish you’d had more time for this year? What sorts of things are you planning on working on in 2024? Who is ready for the New Year??

Belated January 2022 Art Update

Man, February was an intense and upsetting month, so here’s to what will hopefully be better days as we move into March. I’ll do a proper February Wrap-Up Post soon, but first I wanted to catch up on a post I’d planned to do much earlier in the month. It may be a little late, but I wanted to share my art update for January, so let’s do this! 😀

Having the absolute best best friend a girl could ask for for over 2 decades has embedded a strong appreciation for friendship in me, so I just wanted to draw a fun little picture of two BFF’s taking a selfie together. ❤ They actually remind me a lot of 2 of the characters in the story I’m writing, so it’s another instance where one creative hobby starts to bleed into the other. 🙂

Werewolves are always fun to draw. I had an especially amusing time making that big toothy wolf grin. 😀

I wanted to do a quick experimentation in working out comic panels but since I didn’t have a plan of what to fill those panels with and was mostly looking at it as a bit of rough practice, I decided to go with something I was already familiar with. Hence, this Sailor Moon transformation I did in my own style. It’s meant to be messy and rough around the edges since I was mostly focused on panel layout and trying out a couple new techniques and tricks I was learning.

I managed to squeeze in some more art work in February over on my Instagram account, so I’ll try to make sure I share them over here in the near future too. 🙂 I’m slowly starting to pick up new handy little tricks here and there on Procreate, so hopefully I’ll be able to learn and draw some more in March too. I’ve been hard at work on the second draft of my book I’m writing (whenever I’m not too burnt out from work/life in general) so we’ll see what I can manage. 🙂

Did you find any time for any particular hobbies this month? ALSO, if you happen to have any handy tips for making more time for the hobbies you enjoy, please feel free to share! 

Week 1 of Corpsetober Art Challenge

Can you believe the first week of October is already over? I managed to do most of the prompts for the first week of Corpsetober, an art challenge that this year presents you with very innocent-seeming prompts, but then dares you to make them horrific, spooky, or Halloweenie in whatever way you see fit. It’s been a lot of fun so far, especially since I’m not stressing myself out to complete each prompt for each day.

Prompt 1: Sunday Funnies (Comic Strips)

I had to go with an absolute childhood favorite of mine for this prompt, and choose Calvin & Hobbes.

Prompt 2: Childhood Toys

I actually never owned a Furby as a kid, but I remember them being very popular, and the recent Netflix animated film The Mitchell’s vs. The Machines has an amazing scene with Furbies that this pic I drew was directly inspired by.

Prompt 3: Retro Video Games (The 80’s)

It was so hard to pick which game to go with, but in the end I picked Pac-Man. Not only because it’s awesome, but also because I knew it would be pretty quick to draw. 😛

Prompt 4: Superheroes

I thought Zatanna would be a good choice for something fun and spooky, with her pulling some tentacled creature from her hat. I’ve always wanted to draw her, so this was a good excuse to do that.

Prompt 7: Mermaids

I love drawing mermaids. ❤ Especially creepy mermaids. This Deep Sea Mermaid was fun since I gave her a color scheme for when she was closer to the surface, and one for when she was down in the darker, deep waters. She was inspired by a few different sea creatures, some of which include: the angler fish, frilled shark, and leopard seal to name a few.

Bonus Drawings Just for Fun:

Even though I didn’t end up doing 2 of the prompts (Memes and Doggos), I did end up working on these 2 drawings instead.

I hope you guys enjoyed my weird little drawings this week. Haha I know I certainly had a lot of fun making them. 🙂 What have you been working on this October? Any goals or projects you’re working on this month?

 

Art Update: January (and December)

Well, one of the things I was hoping to work on was practicing with other mediums (copic markers and digital art to be specific) so here are some of my more recent pieces done with that goal in mind. 🙂

I’ve been on a Rupaul’s Drag Race binge for several weeks and it had me wanting to draw some drag queens, and what better place to start than with Divine? It’s just a WIP at this point though because my red marker I was using died. D:

I love costumes and weird outfits so I could hardly resist drawing the spiky outfit from the Rodeo music video by Lil Nas X. Plus he’s got the whole vampire theme going on in the video so that just made it even more fun to draw because vampire teefs. 😛

I haven’t actually seen The Mandalorian yet (I know, I know) but I drew the little cutie pictured above on a Thank You card for someone I know to be a fan of the show. One day I’ll get around to the show and I’m sure I’ll love it, so no spoilers please! 😀

Well, I finally did it! I started playing around with my art tablet and came up with this pretty lady in purple pictured above. I have a lot of practicing to do with digital art but I’m looking forward to working at it and trying to learn new techniques. 🙂 Here’s hoping I’ll have plenty of new digital art to share in the months to come!

What have you guys been working on lately? Any fun projects or new hobbies you’re practicing at?

The Quiet Boy (Short Story) Review

 

My Inktober wendigo art from this year.

Who loves wendigo stories? Why, yours truly, of course! 😉 To be honest, I love legendary and mythical creatures of all sorts, but wendigos are always a special sort of treat in my book.  Needless to say, I am really excited to see the upcoming horror film Antlers, produced by Guillermo del Toro.

For those of you wondering to yourself, WTF a wendigo is, here is your quick Wendigo 101 lesson for the day: A Wendigo is an evil spirit from Native American Algonquian legend that will corrupts anyone who has committed the unforgivable crime of cannibalism. The evil spirit twists the human it is influencing into a monstrous version of themselves with a horrible, never-ending hunger, and a murderous cruelty that knows no bounds. Since these legends originate in Canada and the Great Lakes regions of the United States, it is no surprise that winters were hard where these tales originated. People didn’t always make it through the winter, and hunger can make people desperate enough that they’d do anything to survive, even taking part in an act as taboo as cannibalism. In a lot of ways the legend of the wendigo can be seen as a cautionary tale.

Last week I found out that this movie is actually based off the plot of a short story called The Quiet Boy, written by Nick Antosca, creator of Channel Zero. Always a fan of reading the source material before I watch a movie or show its based on, I tried to look up the story on GoodReads but couldn’t find it. Then I saw over on the Bloody Disgusting website that you could read the entire short story HERE on the Guernica site. So, if you’re interested, check it out.

Anyway, let’s get onto my review for The Quiet Boy, shall we? 🙂

Julia is just starting her teaching career when Teach For America lands her in a small town in the middle of nowhere, where the unofficial town motto is “Hills, Whores, and Liquor Stores.” Definitely not was she was hoping for when she dreamed of being a teacher. Still, our protagonist wants to do right by her fourth graders.

While teaching her kids about storytelling, specifically of the fairy tale and tall tale variety, one of her young students named Lucas catches her attention with the story he is working on. What she initially assumes is going to be another cookie cutter take on Goldilocks and the Three Bears, turns out to be something much different altogether, and something far more sinister.

Drawing from Lucas’ story in the Antlers movie trailer.

Worried for Lucas, she wants to help the boy, and learn more about what his home life might be like. Between the underlying themes in the boy’s story he is writing and the fact that Lucas always comes to school in old clothes, always smells like damp leaves and damp animal fur, and looks to be very underfed, Julia assumes things aren’t great at home. She also worries that Lucas’ father might be a drunk and not taking proper care of him or his younger brother. Her fellow teachers view Lucas as one of those lost cause kids,  but Julia wants to help him, and to learn more about what his life at home might be like. Due to how private and protective Lucas is any time she brings up home or his family, Julia decides to pay his home a surprise visit when she is sure he won’t be there. What she discovers is nothing she could have imagined. Things get dark pretty quickly from this point on in the story, but I won’t spoil the fun. 😉 It’s a quick read and I provided the link so you can read it if you’re interested in seeing what Julia finds. The story does its own thing with the wendigo legend, and I thought it was interesting the direction it went in.

I’d rate it 4 out of 5 stars, and reading it made me excited to see how it will be adapted into a movie when it hits theaters in April 2020. 🙂

No-Spoiler Review: Love, Death & Robots (Netflix)

It’s been a hot minute since I actually watched this one, but in the spirit of catching up on all the reviews I’ve fallen behind on, let’s do this! Before we get too far into this review, let me just start by saying this collection of (mostly) animated shorts is fully loaded with nudity (both male and female), loads of violence, blood and gore, profanity, horrific monsters and aliens, and sexually explicit content pretty much the whole way through. We’re talking lots of boobies and floppy wieners, guys, so if that bothers you, I’d keep on scrolling through your Netflix options. 😉

To give you an idea of what you’re in store for with Love, Death & Robots, I’ll give you a fun fact about the series. It was originally intended to be a theatrical rehaul of Heavy Metal. For whatever reason, this did not come to fruition so instead we wound up with 18 original shorts with unique animation styles and stories, most of which I really enjoyed. 🙂 Much like Heavy Metal, the stories often run in the genres of science fiction, horror and comedy. The animation is fantastic, with some of it being a more simplistic 2D style and some of it being so convincing it might take a couple minutes of watching it to realize it isn’t live action. Some of the shorts feel complete and others leave you wanting more because the possibilities it leaves you with are so endless.

A humorous trio of robot tourists exploring the ruins of a post-apocalyptic city, werewolf soldiers and other shapeshifters galore, farmers with mech suits who gotta protect themselves and their cows from insect-like aliens, and a haunted desert where the ghosts aren’t your typical human spirits make up only a sampling of what you have to look forward to with this collection of tales. Some were definitely better than others, but overall I enjoyed watching most of them. Plus, if you’re not digging one, fret not because they’re all pretty short. 😉 This is absolutely not for kids, and honestly probably not even for some adults. (Trigger Warnings galore for this anthology, just sayin’.)

If you’re a fan of exploring different animation styles and entertainment in the vein of Heavy Metal, it’s definitely worth binging your way through the anthology. Science Fiction and Horror with a dash of Comedy are the dominating genres in this series. I enjoyed most of the animated tales myself, but I could certainly see it not being everyone’s cup of tea. Most of them all brought something cool and interesting to the table, be it the animation style, plot, or characters, but I gotta give a special shout-out to my favorite (and also my LEAST favorite) stories.

My pick for the top 3 stories I enjoyed (in no particular order) would have to be:

1. Sonnie’s Edge
2. Three Robots
3. Shape-Shifters

And my pick for my LEAST favorite 3 of the series, also in no particular order are:

1. Alternate Histories
2. Ice Age
3. When the Yogurt Took Over

What about you guys? Anyone give this one a watch? What did you think? 🙂

My First Drawings of 2019

New Year, New Sketchbook

I mentioned recently that I’d try to make more time for drawing this year, and part of that goal is to fill up the new sketchbook pictured above! 🙂 I loved the cover when I saw it and figured the new sketchbook might help to inspire me to keep at it with my drawing if I had an actual set amount of pages to fill up. So far it seems to be working. I’m definitely rusty and I’m tinkering around with watercolor brush pens so that’s been fun. It’s taking some getting used to but I feel like I’m *starting* to get the hang of them. Anywayyyy, here’s some of the WIP drawings I’ve got going so far.

I did this Ignited Moth to be my profile picture and debut picture for Instagram. It seemed fitting to finally make a piece to go with the alias I’ve been blogging under the past couple years.

A WIP shot of the girl that kicked off the following WIP piece. I need to fill in a dark background for it and add some more details, but you get the idea. I’ve always been a fan of drawing monsters, so expect plenty of those in the art posts to come. 😉

It’s been interesting using the watercolor brush pens more. They’re definitely a good practice in patience for me. I have to go slowly and deliberately with each stroke and it can be difficult for me with my itty-bitty attention span. It’s kind of relaxing in its own way, too, though. Here’s a close up of the monster pictured above:

I don’t really know what exactly I was going for with this guy. Like a horse skull mixed with some sort of Krampus vibe is about the only way I could describe the creative notion behind him.

This drawing almost didn’t get beyond the sketch stage. I was originally going for a pinup Poison Ivy, then when it wasn’t going how I wanted I was going to do a whole Día de Muertos inspired makeup on her, but for now I’m leaving her like this. We’ll see what happens with her in the future. 🙂

Well, that’s it for today’s art post. I hope you guys enjoyed. What creative shenanigans have you been up to lately? What are your go-to art tools of the trade?

 

Two Hearts (Peter S. Beagle Short Story Review)

Peter S. Beagle’s whimsical fantasy tale The Last Unicorn is a classic. It’s one of my favorite books of all time, so when The Shameful Narcissist recently read and provided a link to a short follow-up to the story, of course I was eager to return to Mr. Beagle’s rich and enchanting world of magicians, unicorns and other mythical beasts.

The original tale is a clever and spellbinding journey all its own, so I was very hopeful that this newer adventure would be able to capture some of the magic woven in the first book. I was obviously hopeful, but I had to wonder, could Two Hearts manage to match the charm and whimsy of its legendary predecessor? Well, as Captain Cully would say: sit down, have a taco, and let’s talk about Two Hearts.

Although this short story features multiple characters we came to love in The Last Unicorn, you may be surprised to learn that the main character is someone new entirely. Sooz, a young girl from a small village plagued by a child-eating griffin, is done waiting for the king to send more knights who all seem to fall prey to the very beast they’ve been sent to slay. She’s decided to take matters into her own hands and runs away from home to seek the king out for herself, to get his help specifically. Young Sooz, you see, has heard all about brave King Lir and the dragons and giants he’s slain, the impossible riddles he’s solved, and the maidens he’s saved.

Unfortunately, no matter how noble the hero, the one thing they may never vanquish is time, and the king is now in the later years of his life, his mind often failing him. On her way to seek the king, Sooz befriends the infamous Molly Grue and Schmendrick the magician from the first tale. Although King Lir is frequent to forget and lose himself as he admits to Sooz, the mention of a familiar character always manages to bring him back, if even for only a matter of time.

Lir’s bravery and kindness propel him to agree to help Sooz and her village, but will the best intentions of an aging hero be enough to finally bring an end to the griffin? You’ll have to find that one out for yourself. 😉

I will tell you, however, that Peter S. Beagle definitely captured the enchantment of his original tale once more, much to my delight. Especially in the last third or so of the story. We finally get to see what has become of the characters he introduced us to so many years ago, and he introduces us to a brave young girl who would do anything to protect those she cares for against a hungry monstrous creature. For fans of The Last Unicorn, I would definitely say this one is easily worth the read. I enjoyed it and it made me want to re-read the original book again.

Monstress, Vol. 3 (No Spoiler) Review

Marjorie Lui and Sana Takeda’s gorgeously rendered epic Monstress is back with its third volume, Haven. If you’ve read and recall my reviews for Volume 1 and Volume 2, it will come as no surprise that this is something I’ve been eagerly awaiting all year.

Throughout the story of Monstress, our main character Maika Halfwolf has seen some shit. Potty-mouthed poet cats, crazy-ass witch-nuns with a deadly agenda, ancient gods that hunger for flesh, and bipedal shark people to name just a small few. Really, that is only the smallest of tastes for the complex and layered world presented to readers throughout the series. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Monstress has the most detailed and fleshed out worldbuilding I’ve ever seen in comic form. The more you read of the series, the more things begin to come together and take shape, especially in volume 3.

The kind of villain I can get behind: knows how to rock an all black outfit, loves a good book, and cuddler of dogs!

The artwork, as always, continues to shine in the third installment, and the characters are being forced even more out of their comfort zones (well, what little bit of comfort they were previously able to cling to in their war-torn world, anyway). Kippa is finding direction in her life and becoming stronger, Ren is forced to make a difficult decision, and Maika might even have to start playing nice(er) and make . . . dun dun dun . . . friends! GASP! 😛 Even the ever-growing, ever-hungry god Maika constantly struggles with is taking shape, both literally and figuratively.

Although we get more answers, there are still plenty more questions you’re left with by the end of Volume 3, but it only makes me look forward to Volume 4 that much more. Especially with such a doozy of a cliffhanger.

I Kill Giants (No-Spoiler Graphic Novel Review)

Joe Kelly and J.M. Ken Niimura’s I Kill Giants is a graphic novel that tells the tale of a young girl with a chip on her shoulder named Barbara Thorson, who just so happens to be an accomplished killer of giants. Or so she claims. The eccentric loner of her town, Barbara does all that she can to keep giants at bay, reputation be damned.

Barbara is a complicated character (as most humans are.) She’s got her points that will have you rooting for her, but she also has qualities and views that make her come across like an angsty little jerk-face at times. Given everything she has going on (real and/or imagined) she may just have her reasons, though. The more you read of her story the more it will come to make sense. Barbara makes mistakes and things get messy, which just makes her feel like a real human. She’s angry and jaded, but has her soft moments, too, where you just want to scoop her up like a little chipmunk (a chipmunk that will promptly bite the shit out of you the moment you let your guard down.)

This is a coming-of-age story, complete with its emotionally heavy moments, but it also has a lot of silliness and fun to it as well. There’s more to this one than meets the eye, but I’m not gonna get all spoiler-y on you. 🙂

As is often the case with graphic novels, this one makes for a quick read, but it packs an emotional punch within its pages. After reading this, it definitely made me want to check out the film adaptation that came out earlier this year. I could see this translating wonderfully on film if in the right hands.