For the past year, I acquired and tested new pens and art supplies that piqued my interest!
Many are impulse purchases, but I have found select pens that I want to stick in my utility belt of drawing tools! I have links to Jet Pens and Blick Art Supplies so you can get these pens for yourself!
Continue readingThe Knife Foxes are Nad Greentail’s pirate crew of miscreants. Many are deserters, drifters, and drudges from seedy corners of the world seeking easy fortune.
When not arguing with their self-appointed Tanuki Captain, they bumble around, hoping to catch victims unaware with their knives.
In this blog post, I talk about the long process drawing these knife fox bandits from paper to digital screen!
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I 3D printed a nib holder from Halftone Hospital at the Joliet Public Library and it’s Digital Media Studio! The print seems to have gone well and the part screw together well with my G-nibs! I can’t want to dive into a bigger drawing!
Continue readingThis is a short process article about how I draw my Dragon Knight Copic Marker illustration in five hours at Sablecon back in October 2023!
This a throwback to an older Copic Marker style that I rarely use but I can give you insight into the five hour process I spend drawing between sales and conversations with guests
Continue readingAs prolific as I am with this conventions, most of my knowledge is from the school of hard knocks. If you want a break-down of the arduous task of tabling at these conventions, take some time to listen to Alice the Author as she goes through her hour-to-hour break down of selling books at CODCon!
Most of this stuff I learned in the School of hard knocks myself, so Alice’s vid has fantastic insights on selling work at conventions.
A current new thing I’m doing with my setups for smaller conventions is to take a smaller amount of inventory with me. I don’t go more than a dozen of each of my large stickers, and I don’t bring every print or book I have with me on my trips. Library shows are a smaller one day showing, so even if I sell out, It’s not a big problem.
This system has also been a good way to not just manage my sale but analyze the rate my items sell. If demand is low for an item, I stop printing more and keep my table setups lean.
As I go around Artist Alley’s at conventions and hear about them, I write them down in a Spreadsheet on Google Docs. The majority of this list consist of events in my home state of Illinois. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start for any other artists seeking to do more conventions.
I have a full year packed with cool conventions and events! Take a look through my Convention Schedule to see where I’ll be next!
I’m on and off with my streaming on my Twitch Channel! From tech issues, scheduling conflicts, and that eternal feeling of being behind, streaming art videos is tough. Sometimes, I’m lucky enough to catch interesting stream clips to make as short tutorials for all who are interested.
This video tutorial talks about the common problem of how to reset your non-functional Wacom Driver without resetting the machine.
Your Wacom Tablet should be good to go! There are several ways to tackle this, but this was one of the few that I’ve learned. I keep falling off my regular streaming schedule, but when I do, I archive them on my second YouTube Channel for anyone to catch up!
Mia Copperbelle is a singer and dancer of a traveling cat band, spreading joy all over the land through their music.
Mia and the rest her merry bards are frequently harassed by the despotic Lion Kingdom. The Lions take no pleasure in the peace and love themes of the small cat band, and disperse any of their gatherings by lethal force. Despite the present danger posed by her father, Mia presses forward on her passion to be the greatest dancer of them all!
I had this Cat Dancer piece on the back burner for three years. Drawn traditionally in Brush, Ink and Paper and Later Digitally colored in Procreate and Clip Studio Paint. You can get a 9×12 Print for sale on my Etsy Store!
Continue readingTo help people out with their New Year’s Resolutions of learning to draw, I thought I’d drop in my two cents on getting started or getting into it.
A concern I find is the lack of time to draw. When I’m always on the go and away from my drawing desk at my day job, having a small sketchbook helps me jot down ideas!
Continue readingAs the year wraps up, I thought I’d share some of the tools that I’ve been using often to work on my art and art-related projects! The software I use is the similar to what I’m rocking before, but it doesn’t hurt to drop some new stuff I’m trying out too!
This is a simple 6×9 spiral-bound date book that I use to track my schedule. The pages are set up by week, so it makes it easy for me to plan it out. It’s portable to carry anywhere in my bags.
Together with this calendar, I also use black or blue Pilot G-2 Gel pens for general writing. The color packs are a great start to buy as well. From my daily tasks to my regular maintenance tasks to my annual events, I use various colors to organize the types of tasks I do.
Nice and simple leaves of paper help me with little notes that I need to add. When I fill my notebooks, sometimes I want to add other notes if I don’t have enough space. If I don’t want to erase what I already wrote, so I can use post-it notes. Sticky notes are also fantastic bookmarks for novels and calendar books. If you get them in different colors, you can even organize them by subject.
As of writing this, I have a day job, so I’m always on the go and never at my home studio. I keep having ideas but little time to draw them. With my SketchWallet, I can hold a sketchbook, credit cards, and cash in one spot, so I don’t need to fish for them. When you first buy the wallet, it comes with its own sketchbook from the start. Luckily, it can hold any other 3.5-inch by x 5.5-inch sketchbook inside.
My trusted mechanical pencil that I never need to sharpen! I have other sizes, but 0.5 mm is my best-feeling pencil. All the pencils have great lead capacity, so you don’t need to refill them as much. The side clip is a switch that retracts the tip of the pencil to save your point from breaking or stabbing you in the leg. Not having a large enough eraser can be a dealbreaker for other artists if you erase all the time. The next time might suit your needs.
Using my pencil’s eraser is a pain in the butt because it rubs down too short or pushes down into the lead barrel. The Tombow Mono Eraser is an eraser pen where it stores one long eraser. It’s cleaner to hold in my pocket than a kneaded eraser, and not as big to erase on like a white plastic eraser.
This is a mesh bag I use to stash my Copic Markers. It’s got a good zipper, and it’s sturdy enough to carry inside a larger backpack or by itself.
I got an iPad for the Procreate App and the potential of having a digital art setup to practice on. I wrote a review about my initial impressions along my first instances in the Procreate App! It took some getting used to, but over the year I got used to my iPad. I purchased more brushes for Procreate and I got apps like Pixaki, VisRef, and LumaFusion.
This USB 3.0 Flash Drive is a fantastic partner to my iPad. I can move files around my computer, phone, and pad with ease! I worry that it gets hot enough to be a problem. Even though it has 256 GB of space, I don’t rely on it too much for storage.
I began trying out Kdenlive around June on a lark. I was sick of dealing with Adobe Premiere’s issues, and I wanted to find alternatives. It was rocky at first, but after watching tutorials, I improved my video editing. The fact that this app accepts MKV files is a massive time saver! No more Remuxing VODs and I keep a higher quality video!
This is my personal list of things I currently used over the year to stay productive. It’s not perfect, but if you want something to start, you can try out what I have here. I keep a larger archive of my personal recommended tools on my Supply Page! I update it enough to have info that you can look at for your own art needs.
Sir Peer Keely is a royal knight of the Kingdom of Seraplume. Together with the mighty Blade Wing Knights, the plucky bungling budgie hero dedicates his life to protecting the Kingdoms of Sopranado from the rising menace of Sky Piracy!
This is a blog post about my process of drawing my bird knight illustration. It was a struggle, but I pushed myself to complete my art piece. After several months of self-doubt, I finished this Bird Knight Illustration. I juggled this drawing between the Procreate App and Clip Studio Paint to complete this artwork.
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