RATGIRL

I swear I won’t open another post going “OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE WHERE THE TIME WENT” but here I am. Once again lamenting on how I never blog or share anything and what am I doing. But really, it’s been busy with lots of camping, running, art making, and honestly, my day job. Oh and parenting. But that part is fun and easy.

I did a poll on my instagram a few weeks ago and it seemed like a lot of voters liked my brush and ink work and wanted to see more. So I have been working on playing with that more, and branching out. I also decided I needed to get a little more disciplined with my personal work. After all this time, I feel like I have lost some authenticity and interest in drawing. I feel like I make stuff that anyone could draw. So I decided to go back to the brush and ink illustrations that I love so much. I have embarked on a book journey, just for fun of course, in which I am hand inking a whole book on stories from Beach days and growing up in Encinitas. I am trying to decide if any of it will bleed into Kaleb’s story, but I kind of want to keep those separate. It feels weird to feel vulnerable in putting out these stories. Like there is a lot of weird pain and not like “hee-hee-haw-haw” stories all the time. So I am learning to add in what I think fits and go from there. Like I added some bullying and a reference to changing styles of surfing. I don’t know if the whole thing can be positive, just due to it being kind of a slimy existence already. But it has given plenty of time to reflect and be like “man I was such a shit head”.

Here’s my in progress sketching and inking. Now you can judge how rough my sketches are before going in and filling it all out. I definitely have a hand warble right now that I am fighting. But other than that I am pretty stoked on the progress.

This is page one! Still learning and playing with shading and general proportions. I have a secondary sketch book going next to these while I draw, where I do some pre planning and thumb nail sketching. This does help edit while I go / remember what page was before…

I think I want to do more illustrations in-between the comic pages, just more full drawings of rats doing stuff, or locals / places that used to be in the area. So it fills it out more and gives more context.
Always open to ideas and fun like that. Really trying to not over think but definitely do anyway.
Thanks for reading!