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'm going to take part in the EB Siege. I mean it may not have much of a chance of succeeding, but it's better than nothing, and who knows? Maybe it will make a difference.

So as a follow up to my Raven Variation before, I'm doing a variation on Squirrel Girl as she might appear if she were to join the cast of X-Men Evolution. In this hypothetical situation, she would be a member of the X-Men, I assume, since I don't recall the Great Lakes Whatever existing in that universe.

I tried to give her a suit with the "colors on shiny black" look of that show, while still paying homage to her old costume.

I'll probably do one of Squirrel Girl in her civvies next. Then I'll have to figure out my next redesign. I wonder if I can think of one that isn't a comic-to-cartoon situation?

I was thinking about, as a character design exercise, trying to do up some variations on character design seen in professional shows.

In today's case, I'm starting small--a minor variation on Raven from Teen Titans. I tried to recreate in Murakami's style Raven from the DCU Teen Titans comics. Mostly because I saw a picture of her on the web and thought her hair was freakin' adorable. So I figured I'd have a go at that, and that made me think that there were other, similar drawings I could do later in the same sort of mindset.

For example, next I'm thinking of trying to draw Squirrel Girl in the style of X-Men Evolution. We'll see if I get anywhere on that.

I never do this, but I'm participating in one fo those Intertube Memes that break out every now and again because it seemed fun. The meme in question is the Draw Supergirl meme started by Dean Trippe. I'm coming to it a bit late, but it still seems to be going strong so I figured "What the heck?"

Of course, the five people who follow my blog probably already know that I prefer Magical Girls to superheroes, so I tried to add a bit of mahoushoujo goodness to the mix. It didn't turn out very magical, instead looking more like a more conservative version of her regular (at least, regular for the DCAU, my preferred version of most DC characters) costume with a frillier skirt, knee socks, and mary janes. I still like my version, though.

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.

So lately I've been thinking that when I draw my own characters, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what's wrong with their hair or their faces or their clothing....when I still haven't even mastered some of the basics of drawing, like arranging poses, showing depth, or making dynamic images....or even working at a decent speed. So I'm thinking maybe I should make an effort to do some drawings of characters that already have defined models to keep these issues from the forefront of my mind.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I'm thinking of trying to do a lot more fanart in the future. But I'm not used to doing fanart really, so I'm having trouble thinking of the sorts of things to do. So if any of you have any suggestions, please either leave them in the comments here, or else contact me in your usual way.

Too much Lewis Carrol is apt to send a man looney.

So today I've updated my avatars across the wide spectrum of places I use them. Today's piece is the basis of that avatar, a picture of Suou Tamaki from Ouran High School Host Club, dressed as the Mad Hatter as he did in episode 13. For those who haven't seen it, Tamaki's so hip he can barely see over his pelvis.

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.

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.

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.

Okay, so I guess I'm not getting a good start on my "daily updates" idea. Anyway, here we go.

So I've done a server switch, and now have access to a MySQL database backbone for Shiningbeam! This is good news, as it means I can now update my page directly from my desktop, using a clever little webpanel.

I'm also planning on using the new site as an excuse to begin doing daily sketchbook thingies again, so I'm sure my whole 3 regular visitors will appreciate that. Thanks for coming, you loyal few.

Also, with the Server switch has come a Nameserver Switch, which means you can access files on Shiningbeam.net by just using Shiningbeam.net/file or whatever. For instance, http://shiningbeam.net/latest.php will take you to a PHP page that automatically loads the most recently posted image here.