Not a common cover

Wish I could have done this one better, because it's awesome (and also cheating - genderflipping Witchblade is like shooting paralyzed ducks with a homing rocket launcher) but it's got way too much detail and stuff so I just preserved some general moody darkness.

I can't actually remember ever seeing a graphic novel with this kind of cover. Yaoi can possibly have scantily clad guys in compromising positions on the cover, but not quite like this actually, even if that's how they end up in the pages. And for a woman to get this kind of position? No boob, hip or neck exposure and with a serious, dark expression... also notice her lips being closed, while the dude (you might not see this because it's so small) has his scandalously slightly open.

Looking closely also made me notice other things. Like that her blade-tentacle-censor thingy is drawn as if it's hands grabbing her boobs. And I have no idea what the snake has to do with anything. The dude (whose name is Darkness) actually doesn't have *that* crazy shoulders to be a comic book dude. Lately I've realized that to make men look even impossibly more buff, they draw their heads smaller relative to their bodies which, when you start thinking about it, makes them look more silly than cool actually - just like I think Witchblade and all her boob-job friends look silly. I'm not saying all artists draw either gender that way however, there are plenty doing a fine job of applying cool comic style without drinking too deep from the more-is-better-fountain and falling off the tower of exaggeration in their drunken stupor.

Special Flowers - A Superhero Gender Switch

I happened upon some "girl" versions of male superheroes, and was stuck by how extremely over the top sexual they were. To put Batman or Wolverine in that type of porn-poses would certainly raise a few eyebrows, but apparently females do not suffer the same respect. So I looked around and found that, yes, fanart is indeed extremely exaggerated most of the time, but the actual comics are more sensible (it seems even most comic book artists figure you can't fight Magneto in stilettos). This being of course sensible comics, I can't mention Witchblade or Fathom in this context and keep a straight face. (Just google it if you don't know.)

Well, so I decided to make my own gender-switch fanart, but with two conditions:
1) keep the original costume as true as possible.
2) keep the original pose as true as possible.

So here's my little transexual darlings, with the originals down below (since blogger still refuses to put images next to each other... -.-) The coloring is very lazy because, well, I'm lazy.

I'm not happy about Wonder Man, and I apologize to the world for Batwoman but that's his pose I can't by rules change it. On the other hand I'm in love with Spider Man (I loved that suit already on Boobs McBoobpants, so on a pretty boy... mmm), and Superwoman is clearly over-awesoming the original. And who knew that when you turned Invisible Woman male she turned into her brother? A clever eye will see that the only difference between Spider-Man and his female counterpart is boobs, but it's because of his pose ok! There's no curves to work with and no muscles to shrink. And it's "superwoman" not supergirl and "batwoman" not batgirl -.- I'd like to see "Batboy" and "Iron Boy" try to be taken seriously. Invisible Woman is, in many ways, the first lady of Marvel (or superhero comics) in her whole-body suits and "woman" not "girl" name. Which they of course quickly remedied in the movies.

I have failed my conditions on one single point, I'm sure you saw; I kept the Hulk shirtless and even ventured for nipples, but I couldn't put the male Supergirl in a skirt. The point was actually not to make fun of it or whine about sexism, but to see that many of them still make sense (like the gender-switched Superman and Mr. Fantastic) and that women not dressed in skimpy outfits and posing like porn stars are also cool and awesome - as well as the reverse! Special flowers like Elektro also deserve some space - look at that Hand assassin, isn't he some sexy shit? The male Storm turned into a manga character... but this is one of my least favorite Storm costumes.

Don't hold your breaths, but there will probably be more, I have some epic pictures of said Witchblade I'd love to switcharoo and even more agressively manly Batman (I know, how is it possible?!?).

PS. If you're dissatisfied with the average boob size in this post, I would let you know that I suck at drawing girls, and suck even more at drawing boobs, so you should be glad you have boobs to look at at all. I'm rather sure I got progressively better the more of them I drew though, mostly because for every n:th girl, I had to redraw them inifinity - n times.

Pew Pew

I drew something at last! The name is not a thanks for inspiration ;) it's a total coincidence!

selective memory

This is gravely embarrassing but I'm going to post 3 (horrible) images. They're all attempts at drawing a person, a real living one that I've seen quite frequently the last couple of years (although never in real life).
The first is entirely from memory. Been at least 24 hours since I saw a picture or video or whatever of him. It's also without "warming up" my drawing hand which might explain a shard of its suckiness.
The second image is an attempt at redraming that image while looking at reference pictures (Google). This was done rather quick and dirty, if I'd put my mind to it I could have adjusted it much more, and I'm not really satisfied, but it's there to provide a middle step.
The third is an "overlay", meaning I copypasted a photo beneath the drawing and redrew the lines that needed to change. It's not a "copy" exactly because it's still black-and-white linework, and since I started the drawing without a specific photo in mind I had to find a photo that had approximately the same angle and posture so a tiny bit of adjustment was required.

So why am I doing this? (Broadcasting my drawing failiures to the world, I mean :P) Because it's a fascinating. When I look at a familiar face I don't actually *look* at it. Neither do I really *see* it when I think of that person. When I was done with the first drawing I was rather sure it was at least decent. By the time the second drawing was done I was aware of that it lacked greatly but didn't quite know how to fix it. And then with the overlay, I can kinda see that it's him, but it looks terrible. (Although that's also because of my low drawing skills and the simplicity of the image.) The way he looks in my mind is probably somewhere between the second and third. How he really looks... I think I'm unable to see anymore. Maybe if someone knocked me on the head so I lost all memory of him. I remember clearly that I saw pictures of him long ago and paid him no attention, but over time he's grown to be the most handsome man on the planet. Clearly that doesn't have all that much to do with how the actually looks, because now when I studied him more as a visual composition - he didn't look at all like I know he does.
Is it me "filling in the blanks" with what I want to be there? I know I get the same feeling when I look at a friend or family member and really only look without seeing their face. I can think, Wow, she's really pretty or Was that how he looked?. Thinking of a person really only calls up some rough markers in my head. Hair, general body shape, general face shape, and for some people eyes. Then everyone have behavioral markers that aren't strictly looks but are effectively inseparable from their visual impact; their movement patterns, signature nervous habits, eye movements.

So beauty truly must lie in the eye of the beholder. Can a face be objectively, unemotionally beautiful? It can be structurally perfected I suppose. Symmetry and golden ratio and all that. But does that really make something we love? Beauty comes from the inside, to pull up another cliché - maybe it does in the sense that what you do creates behavioral markers that fill in the blank spaces with exactly what your watchers want to see?

If he really looked like how I see him in my head, would he even look human? Would I, if I saw him outside my head in the real world, even like what I saw? Actually, I think no. When I look closer at photos I always think it doesn't quite look like him. I think what makes him so beautiful, is all that he is that I know of, overlayed with the linework of my mind. We're all little artists like that :)

If you wanna know what he looks like on photo, just Google Jaejoong. Bother linking and shit.

Female monster

Monsters monsters...

An artist finds inspiration in all things. In this case, inspiration was sitting in a boring class, and my current teacher's sweater. And also that I thought I should draw female monsters as well.

Not happy with the head. Could have done much more fun and scary things with it. But it was done in pen, so once drawn could not be changed.

Totally sexy, right?

More monsters coming up later...

Woof

Hello. For any other Deadpool fans, there is an animated movie, that's really two animated movies, called Hulk vs. (and this totally fucked up my punctuation so I'm adding this to make it better). In the first part, Hulk vs. Wolverine, we get... well, guess. Not sure how and exactly when this fits in with the general Marvel timeline, or which version of it it is in... whatever. The idea is that Deadpool is in it.

"I shot him in the ass! With one of these! ...what? I did!"

The only thing wrong is that there's too little of him. When Deadpool's teammates try to wring his neck going "don't you ever fucking shut up", he should have blabbered on so much that we the audience, being non-homicidal normal people, want to go "yes God finally! Do it!"

I'm still drawing monsters. Here's the latest little random creation. It's very vanilla but I was just keeping my hands busy while I was talking on the phone.

I erased very little, actually. Kinda proud of that, even if it's just a sketchy thingamabob. I also hate his other arm. That's why it's outside the frame. "I totally ran out of paper... uh monitor! I did!"

And eh, his ears are under the bandana. I, uh, kinda forgot about them.

*EDIT* Please click it? His mouth looks really weird zoomed out like this -_-

Monsters and heroes

I've been trying my hand at drawing monsters. I'm terribly bad at it because a) my usual style is too "clean" for it, b) I'm too careful with shadowing and c) I have a hard time thinking in "fear", be it to draw monsters or write horror. But I'm getting there. Anyway, the internets quickly took me from monsters, to wondering why there are so few pictures of Marrow online. This is her: She is one of my absolute favorite superhero-women ever. Mostly because she gets to tap into that place where women seldome are allowed; in being feral without being sexy, possessing bloodthirst without grace, and most of all getting to be ugly! Her powers, although perhaps not the most scientifically valid among modern-made superheroes, take her where they never dared to take Rogue; where they ruin her appearance, make her outwardly the monster that other mutants hide within.

This subject quickly took me to my male most favorite "superhero" (more like... supermoron) of all time; Deadpool. The general Deadpool-fanbase seem to have accepted Ryan Reynolds.I'm inclined to agree. It's something about the way he moves, which is almost the most important since the proper Deadpool have no face to speak of. Now I want him to go where other superhero-movies have backed off: where we get to see a full transfer of character to the movie screen and not just the parts twelve-year-olds with minds ruined by mainstream hollywood movies would possibly manage to comprehend after two hours. The depth, the dirt, the gleefully grinning faces of the masses every time a mutant takes a blow. The right shadowing.

Ryan Reynolds have, oddly, also been cast as Green Arrow. While I can see why, I think it's a very stupid idea of him to agree to this because if he's going to put his face on one of these characters, he should do it on only one :P but money is money I suppose. Also I suppose and hope Deadpool won't have a face at all. So whatever.

This subject took me to casting of marvel characters, or comic characters in general. This page had lots I agreed with, and a few I didn't. I do not, for example, think Anne Hathaway should be the Scarlet Witch, in fact I don't think she belongs anywhere near a real superhero. She can be Lois Lane if she wants.

The most difficult to cast, ever, for me, is Gambit. I don't know why, it should be simple, there are those I care more about or have more specific characteristics. But there are so many and yet no one that fits as Gambit. The list I linked had Jonathan Rhys Meyers, which must be the most controversial suggestion I've heard so far. He'd have to put on some weight, but sure, he's a viable option. What do you guys think? This is Gambit:
There's many different artist versions of course, but this artist is the one I like best for both him and Wolverine. So who would play him?
Taylor Kitsch?
Josh Halloway?
or more controversially
Vincent Cassel?
Jonathan Rhys Meyers?
To be honest I hate all these alternatives. For some reason.

*melts away into the song* Gawd I forget between the times, but Nickelback is and will always be IT for me. I'm going to start rating singers by how much they sound like Chad Kroeger, because that's really what I do in my head anyway.

*longing for when I get moved in properly so I can bring all my comic books*

Hehehee ^^

This blog has been very serious for a very many posts now. It needed something to lighten the mood.

The good news are, I'm finding my creativity again.

The doubtfully good news are, I'm spending half of it on drawing pron kittehs ^^ There might be more later.

The other half is spent on writing something I can't tell you about. God how I love torturing people by telling them stuff like this. It will so backfire, but wow is it worth it. ^^

I cheated out of doing some of the background to be able to post it tonight. It might get proper background sometime... maybe... ;)

More Guessing

More fun with sketches. I call it "village people" :3

Only two days left and after that I won't be able to blog about anything else... but I can't think of anything to say anyway XD My life isn't very interesting right now, since all I do is take care of the house when everyone's off to school and work, do Math C and play Wow. Really, honestly, coupled with some Sims 2 and Skyping, that's it.

Oh, except sketching like this, ofc.

Fave food of the week: schnitzel + noodles + soy

Guess who

Drew this for a different purpose, but won't be using that... though I liked how this part turned out. The pose and background doesn't make much sense anymore since pretty much everything else about the drawing went wrong. Well, seeing as this part was ok and I won't try again, I thought I might as well post it.

I'm also sketching along the Cristmas Calendar drawings... I've already changed style about three times and scrapped about 9 sketches... So I've decided now that I'll use whatever style I feel like at the moment with the Calendar, so don't expect a coherent style or story as far as the drawings go. Black and white, colored, shaded, manga, portraits, chibi... I'll mix and match a bit. FFS = For Fun's Sake!! ^^

This blog is turning completely schitzophrenic... :D

Sexy in red

Ah, finally finished this. (Hm, it looks odd in this thumb, but I can't decide if it's for better or worse :P)

Remember that small on-site sketchchallenge we had because of boredom? Remember me not being satisfied with my pic?

Just so you know, I always think something or other could be better. This one is closer to what I wanted than that one (mainly because drawing on the computer is cheatingly easy compared to drawing by hand) but it's not perfect. Far from it, in fact.

Although I don't think it's humanly possible for me to make a drawing I'd consider perfect. Pics are only mimickings of reality, after all. So in this case, only reality could be perfect. For once.

Girl in Green

Hi!
I got a sudden urge to draw boobs. So here, enjoy!
(I know the background is kinda slobbish, but whateves, it didn't have boobs.)

Also... I accidentally discovered something awsome when channel-zapping: serious, cute, non-joking, non-provoking gayness in a Swedish-produces drama series directed at the large crowd. I'm impressed.

Mr. Cat

Made some half-assed attempt at new coloring which proved too time-consuming to actually be worth it. This didn't get at all like I imagined. In another world where I wasn't lazy as hell, I'd learn how to make it look like his knives were glowing. =P But I think it tured out better than the pencil original, which is cool. Coloring realistic skin and eyes are hard! So screw that, I'll stick to the more cartoonish style from now on.

And dudes, what happened to "yes, ms, of course we'll vote on your poems, we just forgot, let me tell my girlfriend and we'll get right on it"? Huh?

Sneakpeak!

The current SketchChallenge comes down today. The challenge went as follows: "Draw a man and a woman in identical uniforms, and make sure we can tell which is which." Once I'd done one nice picture, this other idea popped up and I had to draw that too. I dunno what the rules are about several pictures, but I guess it's just to choose one, or things would get out of hand. So I will post the first, serious one there, and here is the other version:

A Lion

This lion doesn't have anything to do with anything, and neither does its club. I used a new coloring technique; I cloned the colors from a picture of a real lion and then painted them on top of one another with 20-50% fill to get the shadows, and the same with the wood and metal of the club. Thanks to Anna for mentioning the cannibalism and the zebra, or his clothes would have been coniderably less fitting.

And the person to blame for me putting this up and not keeping to the "global sadness week" is Phaze. I'm still really shaken up.

Service for Friends

So, I was actually on MSN today *gasp* and Eva talked to me *gaspgasp* (why? more pics of Cloud-lookalike <3) and she showed me Jeff Thomas, and mentioned something that she said would do well as a comic, and when I did it as a comic as a present for her she made me put it up here because she didn't want to make her christmas calendar look unpretty, so darn it, she made me. Here it is. Happy together-day, Anton and Madde.

(This is, like, copyright breaking or something... =P)

Bad sense of time =P

Soooo, I said like four, five days ago that I would post the portrait of the person on my communist banner, but... uh... I have very bad sense of time. So. Here she is, anyway. Her name is, currently, as I said, Leah, but I am open to suggestions, because I'm not certain that it's the best, and I seem to suck at female names, I have noticed. I need equal practice with that as with drawing females, but where one is progressing, one is not. Guess which.

Since I have nothing more to say today after my lashing out yesterday, I will post a poem I just made. (Since blogger refuses my idea with two separate texts next to each other, I've made it into a picture -_-)



*munches Toblerone* Thanks Kristin! And for Pan's Labyrinth and everything too! *hugs*

The Little Red

Here's another scanner-sweep contribution... I have one in yellow too but this was more dramatic even if it looks like a communist banner. =P I love silhouettes!!!

I'll post the portarait of the person in question tomorrow.

Now I have to draw a front page for the christmas compendium, write a page about hydrogen gas fuel, and run around sneaking photos of everyone here with my cellphone-cam so you can see how they look. See you guys tomorrow.

I feel a straaaeeengee mooood comin' a-over me!

I'm in a strange mood today. Maybe because I was praised by a teacher. Maybe because mom woke me up at 8 this morning when I have no lessons and I was up until 3 last night. Maybe because I got my 1gb ram. Maybe because I discovered I can play God of War on "hard". Maybe because I got to watch the handsome mr. Jacob eat today (he makes eating estethically beautiful... O_O I know!) and he is so single again now. Maybe because I found the great hall empty and dark and could dance around and pretend mr. Jacob would come in and talk to me. Maybe because I won chocolate. Maybe, simply, because I am a cat and cats sometimes go crazy. To better illustrate the essence of my state of mind, I have made a comic:

Nuff said.

Reward

Since you've been nice and helped me with judging the poem just below here (do continue elaborating upon it), I'll give you another picture. Heh, some people have seen most of these drawings, but this will give you the chance to critisize them outside of the reach of my kittyclaws. Anyway, this one no one have seen. It's my first sketch of Shemhazai, really quickly made, but I like the feeling, and the necklaces. Some will notice his name is missing a "h", and I'm still not sure if I want to have it there. Semhazai/Shemhazai... it's a big difference, but I don't know which one's better.

BTW, what are the other animals in the Lynx-family except the lynx itself? Cuz other cats are called feli-something, right?