Sketchcard #2: The Tenth Doctor

David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor. Pencil, Ink, and watercolor.

Just relaxing at the coffe house and working on thumbnails for the next issue of the book I'm doing for Comic Book company x as well as doing some sketching on character sheets for a pitch me and a writer friend are doing for a textbook company. Issue one for comicbook company x is in the can and has been shiped out, so I'm working on the second issue for that and inking pages for my other client this week.

I really wish I could show some pages here, but I dont want to let the cat out of the bag before anything is officialy announced, which may take a while. But once all four issues for the book are done, I'll be more than happy to post as much is allowed here.

Until then, I'll keep posting sketchcards and I'll try to squeeze some time into the next few weeks to do some sample pages to post here. Those Young Justice pages at the bottom are becoming an eyesore for me and I know I can do better. I just got done reading Mike Weiringo and Mark Waids run on Fantastic Four and I think I would love love love to do a Doctor Who/Fantastic Four crossover sample of about 5 or so pages. If anyone wants to try writing it, I'd be much obliged. I might try my hand at writing though. Its not something that comes naturally, but I really want to draw this. I've always been a fan of the FF and I'll grab at any chance to draw the Doctor. So we'll see...

That's it for today.

Right now I'm going to sit here, relax, drink my coffee, and sketch out a few more thumbs.

Until another day....

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

Batgirl & Flexing the Productivity Muscles

Well, last week was a personal "8" as far as productivity goes. I pushed myself hard and, while there were a few times I slacked off(mainly because I was so tired that the page looked blurry and I needed a nap, for the most part I met last weeks main goal of five pages. That may mean a lot to a seasoned pro in the comic book industry, but for someone who still works part-time 3-4 hours a day 4 days a week and who hasn't drawn a whole lot until she quit her day job three weeks ago, it means a lot. It feels like I'm starting off towards the right direction.

This week, however, is almost the exact opposite. I would rate it as a "3". Things are moving at a sloths pace as far as productivity goes. Of course the fact that I've had to take my roommate/best friend to the emergency room Tuesday, I still have to file my w2 form, I have packing that needs to be finished since my lease is up in a week and a half and I'll have to move out, and that I've also have been taking care of the business side of things this week...all of these things take time. I'm working on updating this website and improving things and I have a few different projects that are moving towards fruition--some of them are completely out of the blue, others that have been planned for almost a year now. There's a lot of exciting things I'm working on right now that I really can't talk about.

Which is why it's so frustrating when life interferes with my drawing time. But it's like working out. You push yourself hard and then that muscle needs a short rest before you build it up again.  As long as I push myself even harder next week, I can move to a heavier "weight" and last weeks "personal best" will seem a lot easier to pull off.  Right now though, I need to take care of all the other things I've been putting off all month so I can draw without that nagging feeling in the back of my head. :p

Alright, well I'm signing off. I need to get to bed so I can get up at four tomorrow and try again. 

Good Night!

Rachael

Exausted, But Happy.

Hey there internet peoples. 

I feel really bad that I don't update this blog more often, but frankly theres not that much to report. Not to mention that I've been so busy lately that I barely have time to catch a full night's sleep let alone blog. 

I've been hard at work these past two weeks on the comic book project I'm doing for "company x", Teaching art classes partime in an afterschool program, and taking Taekwondo. Theres not much room in my schedule for relaxing.  Last night I only got three hours of sleep(and an hour nap) while trying to meet a self-imposed deadline/goal. I'm up to drawing five pages a week, which might not be to hard for a seasoned pro, but for a noob freelancer who also has another job, it's a huge improvement. :) I'm drawing on average 9 hours a day(With about 12 hours a day Friday and Saturday) , which is alot more than I'm used to back when I had my old job.  Now that this weeks goal is met, I get to do it allll again starting tomarrow. Don't get me wrong--I'm busy, stressed, exaughsted and I would kill for a "day off"...but I've never been happier. I have that kind of joyful/peaceful feeling when I finish a page a day like I get when i'm at the beach, sitting on the porch when its pouring down rain, or on a roadtrip. I just have the biggest smile on my face lately and I can't get rid of it, even if I wanted to.

Also, I'm really going to put more effort keep this blog rolling. Even if I just have to upload pictures some weeks, because I haven't had time to sketch. It will still be a step in the right direction.

Ok, I'll have to cut this short. I can barely keep my eyes open and I have to be up in five hours.

laters,

Rachael

A New Chapter

Time Agent Mack:


Well, I can now say that I'm a full-time comic book artist. I quit the Comcast/Convergys Call Center this last thursday and now I'm buckling down on focusing on my various art jobs that have been getting neglected while I tried to work two jobs.

Not only was I working at the call-center this past month, but I've also taken a part time job as a teacher in an After School Art program(which is run by the same people who run the Tae Kwon Do dojo in town, so I get a nice little discount there) and was pretty much running from one job to the next and then coming home and going straight to bed. I was doing very little drawing, unless it was for a demonstration for my students.

So when you double that up that everyone in the call center was already afraid of losing their job because they've firing people for the stupidest reasons lately, I decided to just cut through the bullshit and quit. I hated it there. I really did. Plus, I still have an agreement with Company x to do a miniseries with them. It's a small published, so its not enough to support myself on alone, but I still have my teaching job

--and you know what? I work twice as hard now to make less pay but I love every damn second of it. I wake up at 5 am, sit down at my art desk at 6am and draw till 3 pm(with a break and a lunch fit in there somewhere) the go to my job at the Art Academy(Monday through Thursday), go to Tae Kwon do, get home by 8:30 and then either finish up whatever work I have for that day, clean the apartment, or hang with my friends till about ten or eleven, then hit the hay. On Fridays or Saturdays, I just draw from 6am till 7pm till its time to go to Tae Kwon Do or sketch club. It's proving to be a real challenge to actually draw a page a day, but I'm getting there. It's just going to take a week or two to get back to that point.

Once I'm done with the current project I'm working on, it will be about time for Heroes or the San Diego Comic Con, so what I'm doing is saving my Tax refund(which is apparently going to be a VERY nice little pay check) to pay for room and air fare so I can get out and look for the next job.

Right now I'm at a bit of a crossroads and I have a lot of decisions that need to be made--what with my lease being up for the apartment and deciding if I want to move back in with mom till another friend of mine can split the cost of an apartment with me, head out to Hawaii and stay with my brother for awhile, Go to College in Savannah Georgia in the fall, stay here and take the preschool teacher job thats been offered to me to start in august, move out to Encinitas and go to Watts Atelier and work as a Caricature Artist, continue to try and make it as a freelance artist, etc.....lots of choices to be made. But right now I'm to focused on finishing pencils on the comic book page thats on my drafting table to dwell on anything else for to long. Eithewr way, this is the start of a new adventure for me.

Alright, well thats more than long enough.
I'll post more later.

Halloween and 24 hour Comics

I love this time of year. Halloween isn't my favorite holiday, but it is one that I absolutely love. This year, I'm continuing the tradition that me and my friends have of "whoring up" are regular halloween costumes at midnight and heading off to the Rocky Horror Picture Show with all of the necessary supplies in tow---and watching old horror movies up until that day.  However, I do miss the old Halloween traditions--innocent costumes, trick or treating, fun pranks, etc.

I look forward to creating another October tradition this year with the 24 hour comic event. Tomorrow morning, I meet up with my pals from sketch club and set out to do 24 pages in 24 hours. I might post some of the pages here once I'm done and I'll be updating Twitter via my phone every hour(or at least I'll try to. :P) from 9:00 am Saturday(It starts at ten) until 10:00am on Sunday. I'm totally stoked. I participated in the last 24 hour comic event that Schetch club did back in May and I had a blast(Even though I only managed to finish 10 pages). So this is going to be great. :)

Anywho, the sketch I drew here is the villian for the Young Justice three page comic book sample that I'm working on for Wizard World Texas. I was really going for an 90's Image era with the look of his costume--what with the excess of armor and the pointy fingers, and so on.  

Well, thats it for today, folks.

Rachael.

Internet deprived, but not dead.

Sorry about taking so long to update, once again. This time, it wasn't my fault though. :D 

I moved into my first apartment just a month ago and, since I had been using my moms computer in order to access the internet and to update this blog, once I moved out I was completely cut off. So I eventually got my computer's power cord fixed( After waiting almost six months for our computer manufacturer to send us one on our insurance plan) and it my laptop worked great!...For the first few hours before it complete crashed and became unsalvageable.  So I've been without any internet connection till my roommate got a used computer a week or two ago and then she wasn't able to get her old scanner/printer till just a few days ago.  So yeah...I want to get a computer. Maybe a Mac...I just don't have a credit history to get one at Best Buy, otherwise I would-and thats coming from me, someone who's afraid to get anything on credit.

I really love my new apartment, though. So that's a plus ^_^ I'm going to try and get a few pictures up of it on here...once, y'know, I tidy it up a bit...:-P 

And I got my first paying art gig! More on that later...I'm not going to be making quite enough to go part time, though I still might do so since I'm starting to get tired of my "Comcastic" call center job. I can probably make up for the lost revenue by offering to do commissions up at work to the people I know are interested. I love the project I'll be working on, though. It's a really fun and original story with a lot of imagination.

Nothing is finalized with the project yet,  so I'm still walking in a bit tentatively. In the meantime, while I wait for the business side of things to be decided and to get a contract signed, I'm working on a Young Justice sample that includes the characters above (Robin, Impulse, Superboy) in preparation for Wizard World Texas. I'm trying to get a portfolio put together while simultaneously working overtime at work to make sure I can afford the trip to Dallas/Arlington.  Things are stressful and a little bit overwhelming at times, but I couldn't be happier. I feel like things in my life are falling into place and like I'm finally in alignment with my goals and aspirations. Like I finally got my drivers license! Whoo-hoo!. It only took me until..I was...almost 20...X(

So that's it for now. Sorry about the long-ass blog entry, just felt like I had a lot happen this month that I should put out there. The next one should be shorter. Promise. 

Until next time,

Rachael