Snow White and Bigby Wolf

Hey guys,

Sorry about the long absence. Things have been insanely busy over here lately. Between drawing ten pages for a client one week(And then dropping dead while crashing the day after turning the pages in) and moving things out of my of apartment, I haven't had many chance to get online. But it's not bad being this busy, I just need to start taking better care of myself: Eating real food, drinking more water, etc. so I won't crash and burn after meeting a deadline like I usualy do.

Drawing a page a day doesn't take much effort anymore. Drawing two pages a day is a normal work day...but having to draw three pages a day is exhausting. Thankfully I'm getting close to the finish line with this one college graphic novella project, and then my project with company "x" will take my full attention once again.

No matter what, I'm going to make sure these things get done on time and , sadly, that means making a few sacrifices. So I may not be able post here as often, but I'll make an effort to at least post a little something every week. And, once I start working on sample pages for Heroes con, I'll be sure to post them here.

So for right now, I'll leave you with this commissioned piece I did of Snow White and Bigby Wolf from Fables. I hope you enjoy!

Please feel free to leave your comments. I get giddy with joy every time I get one.

Have a great Memorial Day!
Rachae

Robot Cowboy Studios: Part One

Ok, holding up to what I said on an earlier post and putting up some pics of the Studio. I have a little more than a dozen photos here, so I'm splitting this post up in two parts, to be continued on Friday. Today we have a look at the break room as well as the work areas of Syd, Will, Amber, And Kiki. Friday will be a look at my work space, the crazy antics of the studio action figures, and the view from the studios windows. So be sure to check back here Friday night!

First in the studio, is our break room. We meet with clients, hold Studio meetings, goof off, and eat in here. To the right is the door out into the hallway of office suites in the NTS building-- the Tallest one in Lubbock.

Our dry-erase/bulletin board. This is meant to keep track of inspiring quotes or messages to our fellow studio-mates but is more often used to just doodle silly ideas down on. Like Fanguins!(Vampire penguins...don't ask) The right side of the board holds newspaper articles about Sketch Club, the Friday Night Art Trail, and the Lubbock Comic Book Expo.

The coffee table holds a mixture of comic books and books on Sequential Story telling. The Neil Gaiman novel and Curious George coloring book are both mine......The other visible book on the table is a promotional mini-comic filling with sneak peak art and pages from Will Terrell's latest book "Super Zeroes". The artwork for this is absolutely gorgeous. Be sure to grab a copy of it when it comes out.

And on the other side of this first room across from the break area is...not much of anything really. A shelf with office supplies, tools, and my make-up bag and batman cap and then we have the garbage that needs to be taken out. We're planning on putting our computers and graphics design stuff over here, but right now we still need to get stuff for the office. I have a good scanner I can bring into the office, but without a computer it doesn't do us much good. And so, there on the right, is the doorway into the room where all the hard work happens...

At the far end of the room here is Sid's desk. Sid's currently working on submissions for companies and putting together a large stack of sketch cards. He has a Sentinel Action Figure there and, when we're bored, we'll pose it with the other action figures an take pictures. Sid usually works nights and comes in around midnight to one am, so I don't see him a lot since I'm on the opposite schedule.And here's Will's desk and all of his supplies- He has all of his air brushing and watercolor materials in the corner there and then he has all of his inking and penciling supplies are in the drawer on the right. Like I said earlier, Will is currently working on his creator-owned book Super Zeroes. I've had the lucky chance to see this project in different stages of development and I can't wait for it to be published! I learn a lot from Will. He's a great teacher and a good friend.And then we have Amber. Amber is a total doll! But, y'know, she doesn't draw a lot of comics so we make her work on the floor. j/k She makes Sock Monsters and other equally adorable little toys as well as make our displays for comic book conventions.


And this here is Kiki's desk. Kiki writes and draws two webcomics: Stupidity in the Right Ear: a comic about working in a call center and Snakes and Apples: The true(fictional) story about what happened in the garden of Eden. She writes and draws several mini comics and pencils "Zombie Cows", an online web comic. When I'm up in the studio until late at night/ early in the morning, me and Kiki hang out,goof off, and draw our asses off. I'm insanely jealous of her speed though. :P She's still awesome, though.

We've been in this office space for two months now. It's been fantastic so far. We don't keep a TV in the office and we don't have wireless, so it pretty much forces me to keep an information lite diet and cuts down on distractions. We started the studio with the goal of making this our fulltime job in 6 months and, for those of us who already do this full time, to keep up on our projects and keep getting more steady gigs.

Ok. That's all for right now. More of the studio on Friday, so be sure to check back. :)

Have a great night, guys.

Rachael

Sketch Card #3: Spider Woman

So I'm sitting here in my Mom's car and it's hot as hell outside. I have a stack of sketchbooks that I've been hired to do commissions in and a full work load on my to-do list, but it's way to warm in here to think.

The plan for today was to head to the Studio this morning and get some work done, but it appears the universe decided I would have an "off day" today( or morning, rather). I had a lot of things that went wrong earlier that all seemed to get fixed or resolved by lunch time and it makes me stop and realize how ridiculous it is sit and stress the small stuff. Forgot my work stuff at the house? A chance to catch up on commissions and update my blog. My IPod falls in a sink full of water and starts going schizophrenic on me? Let it dry out and everything is fine. In fact, in the mean time, catch up with whats going on in my family's life instead of tuning it all out. Cell phone stops working and I have to have it to get a ride home from the studio? Quick stop at the Sprint store to find out the charger is kaputz and just get a new one. Issues resolved and I'm left feeling like a 5 year old throwing a hissy fit.

It all comes down to mental attitude. Even though I was upset at the beginning of the day, I tried to stick with the thought that things in my life only go wrong when something really really great is about to happen. And yet, I notice when I think a day is just going to turn out horribly bad, guess what? It turns nearly catastrophic with it's suckage. We choose the outcome of our life and the days we live in it. We choose to either throw temper tantrums or just take a calm breath and go with the flow. The day, in actuality, is neither good or bad--it's just how we perceive it.

So yeah...my day might not have started out exactly how I wished it would of, but from here on out today is going to be beautifully happy and productive. Because I choose for it to be. And it all comes down to choice.

Alright, that's it for now. I'll leave you with the sketch card I did of Spider Woman a week back. New sketches coming along soon.

Rachael

Sketch card #1: Captain America

I haven't had access to a scanner AND a computer for such a long time now due to my old roommate moving out that it's a relief to have these available again. Add to this that I've been working long hours everyday all day, I wouldn't have had time to update anyways.

A LOT has gone on in the past month and a half. To much to mention here. I've been juggling to freelance gigs plus I'm now trying to get things put together for an upcoming convention. Finding a workable schedule and staying "motivated" was proving hard and I was struggling to stay focused there for awhile...

THANKFULLY, I found away through this dilema. A few local artist friends and I have started up "Cowboy Robot Studios" in an office building in downtown Lubbock and it's helped a lot to separate my work environment from my home environment. I'm dropped off at the studio at around 9 in the morning and leave anywhere from around 6pm to 1am, depending on who gives me a ride home. There's still no wireless in the studio and we decided to keep the studio TV free. So I'm pretty much held hostage by my work, only allowed to leave when everything has been marked off of my to do list for that day. This has been FANTASTICALLY helpful and it's taught me something about discipline and creativity.

Most artistic types tend to fend away from words like "discipline", "work", etc. But truth is, it's important in a creative career. Waiting until you "feel like" doing something is a creativity killer. Waiting around for inspiration to hit is a horrible idea and a good way to assure you won't be able to make a career at what you want to do. You have to sit with your art everyday and, when inspiration isn't coming, you have to hammer it out anyways despite how much you don't "feel like it".

I've had to learn this in the last year and a half. The only way to accomplish anything you want in life is to work hard at it and make compromises on other parts of your life, at least for a little while. Whats kept me from getting what I want for so long until lately is the fact that I didn't want to give anything up. I didn't want to admit that I'd have to make sacrifices. But the truth is, anything worth having in life takes persistence and hard work. It won't happen over night. It could take a year of hard work or ten years. But clocking in daily and doing what needs to be done is success at its heart.

So yeah, having a studio has been great. I love what I do and I thank God for this job every day but it's exactly that--a job. And having a place to go everyday has helped me get into that mentality. Comic books is my business, and business is good. :)

I'll go into more detail about the actual studio later( I may even put a few pics of it up), but for now I'll just post this Captain America sketch card I did recently. A lot of local artists have started doing sketch cards on a daily basis to warm up and so I thought I might give this a try as well. More to come. I'm going to try to put a little stock pile of sketch cards together for the upcoming Lubbock Comic Book Expo and will post here with the progress.

Back to work!
You'll be hearing more from me soon, though. ;)

Rachael