The First 52 Weekends

On October 13, 2013, my husband and I got married. This is the visual diary of our first year of married life. Every Sunday for our first year together, I will be posting artwork about what that week has been like. Sometimes it will be finished illustrations, sometimes it will be sketches. Sometimes it will be about love and sunshine and kisses, sometimes it will be about fighting over the dishes. It's a visual diary about married life.

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Wrist Injuries & Art 2 - breasts

I got an anon request for art supplies that help with with wrist injuries. It turned into a big thing, and I’m spending a little time during research to make sure my info is accurate beyond my personal experience. This one is for the men and women who struggle with support, and the link between muscle strain in arms and back. 

Keep reading

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Wrist Injuries & Art 1 - drawing

I got an anon request for art supplies that help with with wrist injuries. Sorry it took me so long, anon! I wanted to do a little research on this one, and I’m going to do a few posts about it since so that it’s not one big text poop. 

Here’s the most important thing to know to prevent carpal tunnel and muscle strain as an artist: use a light hand! In this post, focusing on drawing supplies - pencils, charcoals and inks. If your pencil/charcoal drawings are dark on average, you might need to reexamine your grip and pressure.

Extenders

Get an extender. Get it now. Get a handy two-pack that comes with one that will fit both your charcoal pencils and your china markers and one that will fit your actual pencils. This tool will change e v e r y t h i n g for you if you have any kind of repetitive strain injury - and even if you don’t!

Hold Your Tools the Right Way

I can’t express how important this is! If you spend all your time pressing a super dark line into a paper with your pencil, it’s going to put pressure and stress on your wrist and arm that can add up over time to create a big problem for you. Hold your pencil in a way that give you the biggest range of control for the least effort. Here’s some pictures of safer ways to hold your tools:

Soft Lead

A lot of people know this already, but there’s always someone who doesn’t, so … All pencils are graded to hardness and softness. Soft leads** (anything in the B range - the higher the darker) with leave a mark easier, and require less pressure from you. The less effort it takes to get a dark mark on the page, the more muscle tension you’re avoiding for yourself. I almost never use H grade pencils at all, unless I’m doing a composition sketch that requires tonal values. I never use them in figure drawing at all.

I like the Blackwing 602 - which is roughly equivalent to a 2B in softness, reputed to be the favorite of Chuck Jones and Don Bluth. The next step softer with that brand is the Blackwing Pearl - I haven’t tried these yet, and some reviews are saying that they’re not noticeably softer, but I thought I’d mention them anyway. Cheaper and also good are Tombows - which I believe are used by the Bancroft brothers, but don’t quote me on that.

And I love love love my chunky Faber-Castell (in the pic above), even if I did have to learn how to sharpen it with a razor.

**I should mention that pencil leads aren’t actually made of lead, because  poison. I chewed a lot of pencils as a child, so this is good news for me.

other art supplies posts: favorite supplies | supplies for tactile sensitivity | three books | cheaper than a cintiq | art techniques for injuries 1

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My favorite Art Supplies

Some recommendations that you might find useful. I get a lot of questions about ink wash.

Sketchbooks! Moleskine - by far and away my favorite brand, but usually pretty pricey. Rendr - a lower budget alternative to Moleskine.

Gouache! Holbein - be still my heart… it’s so silky … they feel so good, like you’re painting on the $50 bill that a small set costs … Art Advantage - A starter set costs something like $10, which is fine. I started with these gouaches in 2015 - I had been an all-watercolor girl before that. Most of what I painted in my Calarts application sketchbook was painted with this cheap set of gouaches. It’s what you do with it, and this is a cheap way to experiment with a new material.

Watercolors! Windsor Newton - a pocket travel watercolor box that isn’t too expensive and has a wonderful, pudding-like texture if you let water sit on it for a little while. Koh-i-noor water wheel - for less than $10, it’s 20 colors in very space-efficient, travel-friendly carrier. It’s not great for real, sit-down, finished watercolor pieces - the texture can be a little gritty, but it’s great for sketching on location and experimenting when you don’t want to use your expensive watercolors. Water brushes - The. Best. Take them anywhere, beat the crap out of them, then throw them away because they only cost $4 each.

Pen and ink! Pentel brush pens - if you find these anywhere cheaper than the eBay prices, I want to know about it! You’re looking for the all-black ones with the silver accents on the caps. I like to have an extra that I fill with a diluted mix of cheap bottled ink and water, so I can paint ink washes on the go. Microns - cheap (as pens go) and reliable! The 01s are my favorites.

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Interior Deluxe offers lighting tips, news and the latest trend information on our blog. Written by lighting design experts!

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Going to Calarts

I’m going to Calarts - and I need help.

Not with tuition. The school’s hella expensive, and I’m the one who chose to apply to there, so it’s my responsibility. Click through the link above to read.

Please support me. Here’s how you can.

Like and share this post. 

Signal boost for me. If you’ve ever liked any of my work, or found my blog posts helpful, and this is all you can do for me in return, that’s all I could ever want. Or if we’ve talked and you thought I was cool or nice. Thank you!

Support me by buying my work.

Society6 - buy merch with my stuff on it

Poam - buy clothes with my stuff on it SOME OF THESE ARE SUPER FUN, if you go look you’ll make me happy!

Storenvy - buy my actual art

Redbubble - stickers!

Hire me

COMMISSIONS ARE OPEN! You want it, I draw it. Message for deets.

Donate to me directly

Paypal

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Art Supplies: the three books that changed my portfolio

Drawn to LIfe - If you only ever buy one book about animation, this is the one to buy. Based on the lecture materials of Disney animator Walt Stanchfield, this book breaks down the hows and whys of animation drawing in a way that really, really makes it easy to understand WHY animators draw certain things certain ways, and the practical functions of those styles. Reading this book for me was like the animation equivalent of disassembling and rebuilding a clock to see how it works.

The Animator’s Survival Kit - Similar to Drawn to Life, this book breaks down important things about animation in accessible ways, but rather than focusing completely on the drawing, this book lets you know a whole lot about animation production. Don’t know what ‘on the ones’ or ‘on the twos’ means? This book explains that kind of stuff.

The Art of Urban Sketching - Not officially an animation book, this book is a great guide to drawing things - placing things into a space on a page. It’s hard to explain why this is so important to animation with only a few sentences, so I’ll just say that being able to create the depth of the world on the page I draw on is something that I couldn’t do the way I do if I hadn’t leaned on this book.

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Art Supplies: When you can’t afford a Cintiq

I couldn’t afford a Cintiq. I bought a Yiynova. I bought this Yiynova, actually. A 22 inch screen tablet monitor. It cost me less than $1000.

Yiynova’s run roughly half the cost of a Cintiq of the equivalent size. This is a big deal when you’re starving in art school, or when your parents want to encourage your desire to draw, but don’t have, oh, $2000 just laying around the house.

Yiynova sells a 22 in tablet monitor for $750. 

They sell a 19 in monitor for $450, which is insane. That’s practically affordable if you’re a teen who only has access to the money they make at crap entry level jobs. 

Yiynova tablet monitors are currently only sold through Amazon, by Panda City. I was incredibly wary of this, just as I was nervous when the packaging and instructions for installing my Yiynova had the distinct read of bad translation. 

I got over it quick.

My Yiynova is amazing.

It is not a Cintiq. You do, get what you pay for. But a good artist can still make paint amazing things with a $10 pack of gouaches on an old envelope. The controls are not extensively accessible through the pen itself. The pressure sensitivity is pretty damn great - but it’s not as sensitive or finessy as Cintiq is.

Even better: Panda City is amazing! After about two months with my screen, I had a wobble to the screen. It was like a shake to the pixels. I sent ONE email. The response: 

Instant response. No questions asked. Immediate replacement. I don’t get this kind of service with the people who make my cell phone, supply my internet, and definitely not with the company who made my desktop computer.

So, when my current Yiynova needs to be replaced, I will be buying another one. Don’t know when that will happen - it’s been going strong for two years, but Yiynova’s got my money!

So … give Yiynova a shot. They get the job done, and you won’t have to eat ramen for a year to pull it off.

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Click here to support Animation Residency at Calarts by Suzannah Rowntree

I've been working for a long time to educate myself at Calarts, and this summer I finally have the opportunity to. I've been accepted into their summer program. We are newly relocated from NYC to LA, which ate up a our savings. I'm trying to avoid taking out a loan to cover the cost of this. Pl...

I don’t like asking for handouts, so I tried to set this up so that it’s really just incentive to buy my artwork. Please consider helping me to climb my personal mountain!

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Route 66 Day 1: Pennsylvania

I get it. Pennsylvania isn’t actually part of Route 66. But even though I decided to drive Route 66 when my husband got the Los Angeles job offer, I still had to start from where I was, which was Yonkers, New York. 

I wanted to drive Route 66 because I wanted to get more familiar with the landscape of the United States. I’m a US citizen, but I didn’t live here until I was 18 years old, and I’ve always had a lingering feeling of needing to catch up on the general atmosphere of the country. Plus, traveling is a lot of fun, and you don’t get enough chances to do it in the US, I think. 

My family and my husband were less excited about the idea. “Driving across the US? In a car? Alone? While being a woman?”

“I won’t be alone, two cats will be with me,” I would reply, and this reassured no one.

I spent the first day driving to just outside of Chicago. I was going to spend the weekend there, visiting with family. This was poor planning on my part, as the first day of driving came to 860 miles, which was just too much. I drove through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Indiana in one day.

Pennsylvania was the longest chapter of the journey - and made the biggest impression on me. The rain was almost overwhelming, the reddish trees were completely bare from the long winter, and were and everything was a little bit grey. I drove through tunnels that had been carved out of the mountains, and by grey, weathered farms.

Everything seemed abandoned and dead, slowly being consumed by the mist that made it impossible to see end of the mountains, or trees, and  sometimes, more than a mile down the I-70.

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WEEKEND THIRTY THREE

Making the transition to working at home was interesting. My biggest problem was knowing when to stop for meals and showers. Stay with me, it's not a gross as it sounds. 

When my husband and I worked at the same office, the morning routine was really simple. I'd get up first, feed the cats, and eat breakfast. He'd get up, coffee would be brewed, showers would be had, husband would pour his coffee into a red-lidded zojirushi travel mug, and we'd drive to work. We'd eat lunch at 1pm, and make dinner at a set time every evening.

In the new world order, I still get up before him, eat and brew the coffee. And then, instead of showering and dressing for an art bullpen, I sit down at my desk, and start to work on whatever freelance project is of the moment, or marketing outreach. What's missing out of my morning routine? Here's a clue: I always lose track of time and only realize I'm still in my jammies when I get hungry at some lunch-approximate time.

It's not an issue that I work in my sweats at home. It's great. What bothers me is that I'm forgetting to shower and change into my big-girl clothes. The massive sinkhole that is the trope of the freelance artist, shut-in and hunched over a table and a screen is opening up before me, and I am peering into the abyss.

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WEEKEND THIRTY TWO

When there's nothing special to talk about, you get a regular old self-portrait of my husband and myself. Dullsville!

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WEEKEND THIRTY ONE

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You can now purchase some of my work on Society6

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Giclee Print of digital painting "Kalaloch" - beautiful for a beach themed room!

Enough people asked, so here it is! The beach from Weekend 30 as a print.

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WEEKEND THIRTY

Husband and I took those plane flights from last week's updates in order to spend time with one of my English aunts -- other great family too, but my husband hadn't met her yet. Due to some health complications, she isn't able to travel. She live out in the Olympic Peninsula area of Washington State, in a town made famous by sparklepires. The area is one of the most beautiful in the United Staes - one of the globe's three temperate rain forest, miles and miles of amazing beaches, eagles and elk that just kind of hang out in civilization.

One of my favorite moments of the visit was a trip we took to Kalaloch Beach (pronounced 'Clay-lock"). My aunt, like most of my English family, loves seafood and shellfish, and I've heard from many of the siblings on that side how much my beloved grandfather used to dig up all kinds of shellfish on English beaches and eat them directly from the shell. I didn't get enough time with my English grandfather, so I love whatever stories of the family I can enjoy. My Aunt showed me how to stomp for clams, which seems like such a small thing, but feels like it is very big. 

My husband is a champion stone-skipper, and skipped rocks. We all collected seashells and stones, a particularly favorite pastime of my Aunt. I have a little Starbucks envelope on my dresser right now, waiting to be sorted to find some place in our home for display. 

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WEEKEND TWENTY NINE

On Weekend Twenty Nine, we flew to the West coast. Husband has no problems with flying. I turn into a weird Smeagol-esque bundle of nerves. Fortunately, he sees the humor in the situation enough to have found this illustration very funny.

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Today concludes my six years at Archie Comics. While I am excited for what the future holds, I’m saddened to be leaving behind a some wonderful people. I’ve been lucky to work with some fabulously talented creators during my time in Riverdale, and luckier still to call many of them friends. It’s a...

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This happened right before Weekend Twenty Nine.