And here's the finished version of that one from yesterday.

One more day until Avatar. Can I make it?!

I'm giving another go at an old piece of fanart of Ty Lee from Avatar. I've learned things since....what was this, February? Wow.

I put her in her Season 3 gear, or at least the best I could make out of it from the blurry concept art that's been making the rounds.

Season 3 starts back Friday. I'm bursting with excitement. I'm thinking of doing another piece in time for the premiere to make into my new avatar for messageboards and whatnot. I'm thinking Sokka.

I think the hardest part of learning art isn't the learning of techniques, it's the unlearning of habits. Especially since a lot of them were taught to help in learning the craft.

Terry Pratchett presented the concept in Science of Discworld of "Lies to Children." That is to say, lies that aren't told to mislead, but to help someone who isn't ready for the full truth to understand part of it. Things like "Gravity is when weighty things pull other things to them" instead of that "truth" malarky about mass causing spacetime to warp. Lies to Children are good, because they help children to get closer to understanding something even though they're not really true.

Anyway, here I'm talking about Lies to Children as they apply to art. The biggest problem with these sorts of Lies to Children is that they seem harder to unlearn, at least for me. The one I'm currently trying to unlearn is about telling the truth with lines.

I'm more and more under the impression that the trick to making really memorable, really good looking illustrations is learning how to lie impressively with your pencil. And I don't mean getting it wrong, because that's clearly still a bad thing. I mean learning to take what you've got right, and intentionally change it for effect. The result being exagerrated bodies and faces that stand out in people's memories....but these lies go against all the stuff I've learned about capturing certain situations.

Of course I realize that I still need to get better at capturing the truth, too. That's what Life Drawing classes are for, though. In my illustrations (i.e. the stuff that shows up here) I think I'm going to try to lie more.

Today's picture is of Ty Lee from Avatar, who you've seen me draw before if you've been following my work. I like her, but the more I draw her the less I like her outfit. I hope Season 3 sees her in something different. I've heard a rumor that Season 3 might start in March....I'm not getting my hopes up yet because I'd expect to see commercials on Nick by now if that were true, but a boy can dream!

Nuclear War? Pfft. I'll take nuclear war any day over the terror that is....THE CATBEAR!

Anyway, I'm working on a BESM 3e campaign set in the Avatar universe, mostly the Spirit World, and while trying to come up with a suitable Spirit-World villain (along the lines of Koh the Face Stealer or that owl guy), had an inspiration: combine the two most evil creatures in existence. Thus, Catbear.

For this picture, I decided to show Aang encountering the Catbear, and the entirely natural reaction he would have to it. He's braver than me--I'd be wetting myself in his situation.

I was looking at some of Bleedman's work, and trying to figure out what it is about his work that makes it pop. His clean, sure hand is a big part of it, but I think the majority of it comes from the way he constructs the poses with lots of implied motion and long, uninterrupted lines. When I sketched this, I was trying to capture some of that....the finished version didn't show as much of that as I had hoped it would.

Today I bring you more fanart. Today's featured player is Toph, from Avatar.

So I've got this new method for inking in Illustrator which I found on the Tubes, and I think it works really well....the lineart comes out crisp and clean and neato. Unfortunately, it means that I produce about three or four files in the process of making a colored image, and use three different programs to make the image. It seems so wasteful! On the other hand, it hasn't really added that much time to the process.

Still, I wish Illustrator would add support for Painter-style view rotation.

Well the first of the crop of fanart I was talking about--Ty Lee from Avatar, staring off into space, looking for those floatin' critters, like Osaka might.

I'm apparently still pretty angry that Avatar's not going to be showing any new episodes until September. So here's part 2 of my "Avatar Character Studies with Silly Captions" series.

I did this as practice, actually. Though I rarely use DeviantArt anymore, there's a contest being held by a little group I belong to there (dedicated to Avatar fan art), and I decided I needed to do a couple of pieces to get practice with the characters first.

Today I decided to do Aang.

Toldja I liked Toph! Here's my first fanart of her, and no doubt among the first Toph fanart on the internet (it's only been 28 hours or so since her first appearance, so it's got to at least be among the first twenty).

This one had some stuff I had not at first realized might be an issue. For instance, her eyes. I kept trying to do some "meaningful looks" with her, but I remembered that since she can't see, she wouldn't really know exactly what she was looking at. At least I can't do meaningful glances with my blind eye. Anyway, it evolved into an attack pose, one taken from a screencap of the show.

It's been a while since I covered Avatar. I feel bad about that, because there have been some great episodes. I'm starting back because I've got some time again, and also because this most recent episode kicked serious butt.

TOPH!

I really like Aang's new Earthbending teacher. Toph, the little Blind Bandit, is one of the best earthbenders around, though she's only twelve years old. She uses earthbending to "see", and does so quite well. She's also the champion of a long running Earthbending tournament, beating several large, manly earthbenders.

She's got a mouth, too. If she keeps up the way she's going, she could rival Sokka for best lines, and has totally won this week's "One-Liner of the Week." She's got an immediate rivalry with Aang, and apparently a lot of people have already taken that to mean she's going to fall for him. Personally, I doubt it. I think if she develops a crush on anyone, it's going to be either Sokka or Zuko. I suspect that she's going to lead Sokka around by the ear, as she seems even more strong-willed than Katara.

At any rate, this episode was awesome. Great action, and a lovable and well-designed character. I can even forgive the cop-out "blind person who sees with other senses" thing, for two important reasons--one, it's a kid's show, and you've got to give them a bit of leeway where that sort of thing is concerned, and two, she's not all-seeing or anything, as the final scene will attest. It was a bit slapstick, but at least it indicates that she's not just some Mary Sue.

Sokka's One-Liner of the Week: (to Aang) "Don't answer to 'Twinkletoes!' It's not manly!"
Toph's One-Liner of the Week: (to Aang) "Do people really want to see TWO little girls fighting out here?"
Startling Development of the Week: Nothing really startling this week. As soon as I saw her character design, I knew Toph would be Aang's teacher. I suppose it's a pretty neat little twist that Aang's being accused of kidnapping now. Not exactly the first time I've seen that plot twist, but it should make things interesting.
This Week's MVP: Easily Toph. She's going to be a great character. And a good thing, too, since the others are going to need help to stand up to the little Triple Goddess that Azula, Mae and Ty-Lee have formed.

Next week looks like it's going to be pretty much all Zuko, including a major flashback to his childhood. I'm already excited.

Today's drawing is brought to you by Pocky, inasmuch as I told her I had no idea what to draw, and she suggested Avatar fanart. So I took her up on her suggestion.

It was a tough drawing, but I think I learned some stuff from it, so that's a total semi-victory.

I thought there wasn't going to be one this week, but apparently iTunes gives you the episodes whether or not they actually aired, if you got the Season Pass. So here's my second AtLA recap.

Warning! There are spoilers ahead. I'll give you a bit of space to look away!

I got a lot of great screenshots this time, so I had to put up three more than usual for this recap. Also, when you saw the scene I took the first one from, didn't you expect Sokka to say "I don't want to go down into the sewers. It smells like poo gas!"?

This week, Aang, Katara and Sokka have to sneak in to Omashu to try and find King Bumi. But the episode really centers more on Azula and her friends than the trio, as Azula assembles her team this week, and decides that she's going to have to take down the Avatar in addition to Zuko and Iroh.

So Azula calls on her friends from school, who are apparently all femme fatales. Tai Li is a circus performer with a sweet personality who Azula bullies into joining her hunt, and Mae is the angry closet goth. (I'm guessing about the spelling of both of those names. I went with "Mae" for two reasons: firstly, the names in the Avatar universe tend to be less anglicized though I don't think "Mae" is an asiatic spelling, and secondly, "Mae" is the name of Katara's voice actress, Mae Whitman, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear she voices both roles, and that they named the character after her. Tai Li is a straight out guess, but I have fewer doubts about it, oddly enough.) There was a hint that Mae has a history with Zuko as well, so that'll certainly give the Zuko fangirls more reason to hate her.

Tai-Li is almost certainly going to end up getting on the other two's nerves. And as nice as she is, I don't know if I believe she'll ever defect to Aang's side, though she might well help him out once or twice....I say this because I already get the impression in this one that her friends mean a lot to her, and that means she would be unlikely to betray them.

The action in this one was top notch. We got Aang vs. Azula and Katara and Sokka vs. Mae and Tai Li....though Sokka was out for most of it. Katara proves her worth as a fighter once again. Even though neither Mae nor Tai Li showed any bending skills in this episode, they both proved to be excellent fighters. Katara still held her ground for quite a while, though, until Tai Li hit her with what looked like the Five Point Exploding Palm trick.

Sokka's Mae's One-Liner of the Week: "Please tell me you've come here to kill me."
Azula's Development Tracker: Azula's got friends! And Tai-Li actually seems like she might be a good person at heart. Only time will tell.
Startling Development of the Week: T_T King Bumi's not going to teach Aang Earthbending~!
This Week's MVP: Tough call. I'm going to go with Mae, though. Her lightning-fast moves with various projectiles is pretty awesome to watch, but almost impossible to depict with a screenshot, so if you haven't seen this episode, you need to watch Mae.

All around a good episode, with plenty of action and a lot of humor. This season just keeps going strong. I mean the first season was great, but this season has just been top-notch all around. I'm definitely not regretting my decision to get the Season Pass.

In closing, I just want to say that "As barmy as Bumi" should be an accepted way of describing loonies.

Today I'll be starting a new feature which will tentatively run every Friday from now on, where I'll recap and discuss the latest episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I've been a fan of the series for a long time, but the second season is shaping up to be really awesome, and I can't help but actually comment on it....and I've got a blog, so may as well use it, right?

Today's drawing will go up later. I'm going to try to do something extra tonight since I missed yesterday. Anyway, here goes.

Avatar's season premiere was today....and it rocked out loud. Seriously, if the rest of this season is as good as today's episode, this show's going to go down in history.

I've put the Tam Lin thing on hold for the moment so I could do a bit of Avatar fanart, because that episode got me so pumped.