Gimmie all those hats!

Most definitely, I have the greatest friends in the world. I know, I know, EVERYONE has the greatest friends in the world, but... well.... So do I, is the point. Here's an example of why:

I was talking to my friend Ren about when we should get together and paint something because our schedules were kind of misaligned. When it turned out that she had Saturday available, I said "Yeah, I can do Saturday. I just have to meet this wedding planner and work some stuff out with her."

This was the point at which Ren lost her shit in the most glorious of ways.

"WEDDING PLANNER?!??! OH MY GOSH, DID BILLY PROPOSE?!?!? YESSSSSSSSSS!!!!! I'VE BEEN PLANNING YOUR BACHELORETTE PARTY FOREVER!!!!! IT'S GOING TO BE AT THE REN FAIRE!!!! COMPLETE WITH STRIPPER KNIGHTS!!!! I WANT TO KNOW IF IT'S EVEN POSSIBLE TO STRIP OUT OF SHINING ARMOR!!!!!! OH EM GEEEEEE" At which point I think she started foaming at the mouth, and I could not stop myself from laughing. I mean, really? Stripper knights? I must admit, once she brought up the physical complications of gettin' your groove on while in full plate armor I, too, became morbidly curious as to its doability.... But gettin' assaulted by somebody else's junk just ain't my style. Still, absolutely HILARIOUS.

Apparently, though, I had forgotten to mention that I'd started working with a wedding planner as her graphic designer/assistant. Whoopsies. Here's a sample of what I've been doing for Terri over at Wedding Fairytales:



Very suddenly, I have become the go-to gal for event invitations... Which I'm totally cool with, actually. ESPECIALLY wedding ones, because I jump at any chance to sneak hearts into my work.



In other news! I've decided to take on a lottttttt of different projects. On top of working on The Many Faces of Mister Bubb, I've started a cooking blog called Biscuits-n-Crazy, and begun work on a card game! (The concept of which I'll share once I've sorted out enough images. I've already got almost a hundred ready! Whoo!)

As always, dear reader, I hope you're having an amazing day. However! If you find yourself feeling a bit down, here's a clip of the Jim Henson puppet stage show (Called Stuffed and Unstrung) that... if it comes to your town, you should IMMEDIATELY buy tickets for. I promise you, you'll love it.

A sacrifice to the porcelain throne.

As I mentioned in my previous post, a number of the gifts I gave away this Giftmas were given new homes without being documented (I originally had a really weird section here where I went crazy comparing the prezzies to illegal aliens and it got suuuuuper out of hand. It was kind of funny, but kind of weird. Kind of... really weird. So it's gone, now. Poof!). Luckily! Brandi so graciously has provided us all with photographs of the portraits she and her husband received from me this year! Yay!!!!

About a year ago, when they moved into their house, Jimmy and Brandi started getting fun with decorating all their rooms with paint and pictures and curtains and all sorts of stuff that has made their place seriously gorgeous... But for the life of her, Brandi was unable to find any wall-art that would match the color scheme in their bathroom.


(This one's Brandi! She thinks I drew her low on the page because I often draw people looking terrifying, but actually it's because she's a munchkin and I originally was going to draw her and Jimmy on the same page together and have it so neither of them was fully captured on the page because I think extreme height differences are hilaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarious and deserve to be celebrated.)

Their bathroom has a super-rich red that's a couple of shades darker than what most people would look at and involuntarily shout "RED!!!!" as well as a very nice soft, light brown, and white. She'd pitched to me a good long while ago the idea of commissioning some portraits of her, and her husband, and their super fabulous dogs.


(This one's Aulbee, he's such a sweetheart! And a proper gentleman, to boot. Possibly one of the best groomsmen at their wedding, although that's a hard title to claim given the sheer awesomeness of that lot.)

Our plans got a little out of hand, and I decided that I wanted to make the pictures SO SUPER FABULOUSLY SPECIAL and was going to hand-make paper with her out of some of the leftover cotton from their southern belle/Irish as all hell wedding [which we should still do!!!!!!!] and use it for the portraits to make it sort of a secret specialness that was super cool.


(Here's Jimmy!!! He is both super Irish, and super tall. You may think that sash is a little too much, but I promise you... This is based on real-life. He was pretty much dubbed little Mr. Irish king of the universe in a pageant or something, as far as I have decided based on photographs and a wild imagination. I hope that he rules his subjects wisely.)

We kind of got carried away with the idea, but never got an actual chance to do it so the paper has, sadly, continued to go unmade. However, that doesn't mean the portraits should suffer for my laziness and short attention span!!!! Which is why I made them these anyway, despite it being somewhat divergent from the plan.


(Meet Bama! She's kind of a derpsauce pooch, and as sweet as she can be... well... I am cruel and imagine her looking like this in my head. This is, almost certainly, my favorite of the portraits for how ridiculous it is, and how seeing that tongue flopped out never fails to make me giggle.)

Now despite the fact that these are goofy pictures, and just ink on watercolor paper mounted on some random heavy-weight red paper I found and guestimated being a good match for the bathroom that I completely intended them to be displayed in... They immediately went and had them mounted, framed, and displayed in a place of honor in their hallway.




You walk into their house, and these are basically one of the first things you're going to see. I am kind of stunned, and incredibly flattered! ...The downside is, though, that there's still nothing hanging in their bathroom, and I'm not sure what to make to fix that problem for fear that it will be too fancy again and and be put in another place of honor. Oh, woe is me with my terrible, horrible problem of being appreciated. =>.<=

Seriously though, I'm super flattered and super glad they like them!

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!!!

'Allo blokes and blokettes! It's been a refreshing sort of holiday-time for me, given that I took a full and total week off from work and life and ran away to the strange and mystical country of "New Jersey" to learn the secrets of Christmas! Oh, what a glorious time was had by all.... except for the bit towards the end where I got the flu and then had to go back to work and life and reality and long for the days of freedom. Ah, freedom. Anywho! I finished the comic the week before Christmas and sent it off to the publisher, so I'll keep you lot updated on when that'll be available for public consumption. In the meantime, here's something I couldn't share with you before because it was a gift for someone!



Sadly, the other things I made either weren't photographed [the Cut the Rope-based ornament I made for Billy and the series of portraits I made for Brandi and Jimmy], or haven't been given to their owners AND haven't been photographed [the painting I made for my youngest sister, Nanners.] So hopefully, some day, I'll have photos of those and be able to share them with you lot.

In other news, I've been watching a lottttttttttttttt of Doctor Who lately and have officially decided that David Tennant is like, totally, like, the cooooooooolest doctor of them all. The companion he's currently got as far as my viewing goes is Donna, and to date I think that his best pairing was with Rose. Now, Rose was RUBBISH when Christopher Eccleston was The Doctor, but she hit her stride once Tennant came on the scene and their on-screen chemistry was amazing! The companions he's had since Rose [Martha Jones and Donna Knoble] have been great characters with great attributes and quite a lot of spunk, but they haven't really felt as genuine to me as the connection he and Rose ended up having. Then again, I'm only on the Agatha Cristie episode with Donna, and I'm fast beginning to like her... enthusiasm and cleverness. Also her no-nonsense attitude towards some of the things they come up against, and her confidence. I like to see daring and confidence in the companions.

Anywho! I've been playing around with the idea of doing some Doctor Who art, as well as some fairytale-based art and have sketches of the latter already prepared and ready to go... But I may decide to give that all up and go ahead writing about fire trucks. This story's been a long time coming, and I never really thought about telling it but now I've thought of it I can't really help but want to see if I can let it grow. There's a whole lot of future out there and I'm looking forward to seeing it!

Bubba's got it in the bag.

My cat, whom I affectionately refer to as Bubba quite often, is... well, he's a dumb butt. He is the sweetest, most lovable cat I think I've ever owned and I love him more than I know how to express but gosh can he be pretty derpy sometimes. As such, The Bubbs will often... Well... Play with his poop. He'll just scoop it right on up out of his litter box and swat it around the house like he's some sort of 3rd world kitty who doesn't have plenty of toys to play with and so has to improvise. This being one of his favorite activities, I've gotten accustomed to watching my step in the mornings in order to prevent the possibility of a very unpleasant squish... Which is why this morning, when I walked out of my room, I was a little bit irritated at the round lump near the bathroom door... Until I looked closer and saw this:



Now, I have been a vegetarian for forever. I feel completely awful whenever I see a dog getting abused or a crab getting boiled or any other number of things that involve pain and suffering being bestowed upon all animals but... seeing this poor mouse horrifyingly mutilated to the point that it was darn near unrecognizable aside from the single remaining leg, bizarrely pin-straight tail, and tiny red spot where I'm assuming the head and neck were... Well... I couldn't help but be proud. Mama's little dumb-head is all growed up and huntin' mice? D'awwww. It's good to see that even in this tough economy, my cat has managed to find work. :D

Annnnnyway! It's the holidays, guys! Are you pumped?! Because I am! I'd say the only downside of the holidays is that I have to wait for FOREVER before I can share with you some of the things I'm giving out this year since that would ruin the surprise. I love giving out presents, and I'm super psyched for Christmas! I never knew what the fuss was all about until I got to celebrate my first real one last year but man... Christmas is magical. The love that permeates the atmosphere is completely palpable, and so very, very wonderful. I hope you all have an amazing holiday and get to spend plenty of time with your loved ones. I know I sure will. :)

A helpful tutorial, I hope!

Well, I was checking the now completely addictive Comic Tools blog and saw that included this week was a method for colorizing lineart. Sort of. I thought it was super interesting the way that Elanor Davis chose to layer two copies of the same image, changed to different colors, in order to achieve a sort of duochrome look. Well, I decided that it may very well end up being helpful if I also shared a method for colorizing lineart in Photoshop that varies wildly from her approach. Hope it helps someone because it pretty much blew my mind when I learned it!

Click here for the video! I definitely recommend doing fullscreen, since the program I used to record the video recorded it in its native size. Whoopsies!