Singing, Sailing, and Swimming

I spent the weekend doing another five in the series, this bunch being a little different from the last. I've never worked with ink on a brush before, so I wanted to try it out and focus on line quality. These five are also slightly different from the last in that together they create a story. This mermaid is a siren ( are all mermaids supposed to be sirens?) and she lures a sailor into the sea and steals his hat. Hope you enjoy - Have a great week!

Return of the Mermaids

I've been very good and have not drawn mermaids in a very long time. We're talking months. I'm starting to work on a little project now, however, and it just could not be avoided any longer. So those of you who are angered by the sight of mermaids, I'm sorry. Actually, I think I have to let you know that you are just in the wrong place. Mermaids are (and will continue to be) a pretty regular occurrence 'round here.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy these watercolors. It was nice to pick up real paint again for a little bit. Shown are two of five paintings I was able to finish this weekend, and I plan to do more. If you like them a lot, there is a possibility that they will be available for purchase sometime in the not-too-distant future. I will post more details about that later. For now, have a lovely Monday!

Comic Con!

I'm back from my first ever trip to Comic Con, and it was awesome! It was a whirlwind of a trip, but totally worth it. Bill, Mayka, Dave, my friend Sean (who flew out from good 'ol PA), and I left for San Diego on Thursday morning and stayed through Sunday. We all saw and did so much that I feel like I am just starting to get back to normal now. Anyway, here are a few pics from the trip:Sean and I Hulkin' out. Doesn't he look like Eric Bana? I think so. Especially when he turns green and rips things apart.

Dave and I gaze whistfully(?!) at the Lego Batman. I don't know why we are whistful. We didn't plan this out very well.

I don't think he meant to stand in the exact same pose as Ironman, but I found it quite amusing.

Upon our arrival in San Diego on Thursday night, Mayka informed me that I had missed Hugh Jackman, who had shown up to promote "Wolverine" during Thursday's convention. HUGH(the Australian love of my life) JACKMAN!?! I was devastated. That is, until I found his Wolverine jacket on the convention floor the next day! Not quite the same, but as you can see, I was still excited. It was probably better this way anyway because if I had known Hugh Jackman was going to be there on Thursday, I would have made everybody leave at 1am to make sure we were there in time to see him. And nobody would have been very happy with me about that.

Oh, and here I am being abducted by a Storm Trooper. Good times.

Spidey savin' the day. I should work on my poses. I'm not nearly as exciting as the rest of the people in these pictures. I guess an elaborate costume would help, too. Maybe next year...

Chris Sanders! I am off to the right distracting Chris with my uber-geeky "I'm such a huge fan!" ramblings while Sean snapped this shot. In my super-excitement over meeting this guy, it never once occured to me to ask to take a picture with him. Someday I'll learn to calm myself down. But it was fantastic to meet him - definitely a highlight of my trip.

Dave's only purchase of the trip, and he couldn't have found a better souvenier. He has been looking for a full-body Kermit puppet for years and I can't accuratley describe how his face lit up when he saw this guy at a used toy booth. It was priceless.

And here is my haul. I just have to say that coming from a small town in PA that is so far removed from any type of industry, you never think that experiences like this are possible. To be surrounded by so many talented people who I have looked up to and been inspired by for years is just awesome. And who knows, maybe someday (when I'm all grown up) I will have a Comic Con booth of my very own. Anyway, I am so inspired from the trip that I hope to have a few more posts of new artwork in the near future, so stay tuned. But for now, thanks for stopping by! I will leave you with this moment of Zen (featuring Dave on lead vocals and myself as" the puppeteer"):

Quickie

Feeling swamped and overwhelmed, so I decided I needed to do something fast to just get it out there. This was adapted from a sketch I did at the airport a long, long time ago. Enjoy!

Hope to see everybody at Comic Con!

ENOUGH already!

So, a while back I had decided that I would be producing work and posting it on the blog more regularly. And then I didn't. And then I went to England and France for a week. And then I was exhausted. And THEN I decided I really wanted to do a quick painting of a nifty street in Oxford.

Just a quick one.

That was two weeks ago and I have been working on this almost every day. Needless to say it went beyond the "quick sketch" about 2 minutes in. It was a lot of fun, and if you look closely you might be able to spot me and my BFF Sean, who is studying at Oxford right now because he is a ridiculously brilliant Rhodes Scholar.

England and France were fantastic and I did do some sketching while I was there, so maybe I will post some of those in the near future. This next week will be hectic ( Comic Con, anyone?) but I might be able to put a few more things up before I'm off again.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend everybody!

IF: Hoard

And suddenly she's back from the dead!

Yes, I know I'm lame and haven't posted in 2 months, but I swear I have good reasons. I've been hard at work on several projects at once, none of which has been fit to post here. Yet. Hopefully I will be able to throw some of the work I've done up here in the near future, but I have other plans for the blog as well. So stay tuned and hopefully I will have more goodies to show shortly.

For my return to Illustration Friday, I decided to post about something that I am guilty of hoarding - fashion magazines and catalogs. This is a habit that I inherited from my mother, and one that I'm pretty sure I will never kick. I love looking at fashion, especially when it is photographed well. I very rarely have time to actually walk into any of the stores I receive catalogs from, and even when I do, I am usually either overwhelmed or intimidated within seconds and end up walking right back out the door. Having catalogs delivered right to my apartment allows me to enjoy all of the pretties from my favorite stores while sparing me the trip. Plus, they are full of so much drawing inspiration! Honestly, that's part of the reason I keep them....even though I hardly ever look through them more than once or twice. But today they are coming in handy! Today I am glad that I hoard them!

These two poses come courtesy of the"White House/Black Market" catalog. Um, I love this place so much. And that dress?! I would live in that dress if I had the money to buy it. And looked like the model. No, seriously, I would.

Daydreaming

Here is a very primitive self portrait sketch. I guess this is how I've been feeling lately - swamped with things to be working on but still finding time to daydream up new ideas. Now if I could only figure out how to finish something...

Have a great week everybody :)

Ladies and Gents, I present Whirled.com

This is what I have been working on for almost 2 years.

Whirled.com is a flash-based virtual whirled/social networking site that just went in to open beta about a week ago. You can chat, play games, make friends, decorate rooms, make stuff and all kinds of other things. I was one of the first artists on the game so it is really neat to see people actually playing in Whirled.I would have posted about it sooner, but one of the coolest features was not available. What is this cool feature? Why, the ability to embed Whirled right onto your blog, ofcourse! If you scroll down to the bottom of my blog (and have the latest flash player) you should see it. You will show up as a little ghost, but you can walk around the room and talk to people. You can even play bingo in the room I embedded below! just click on the tote with the "B" on it to play. If you like it, or if you want to learn more, please go to Whirled.com and sign up! And then come say hi - I'm on most of the time and my username is (big surprise) "Brittney". Hope to see you there!

*UPDATE* I now have a different room embedded below, but if you walk out the door on the left side of this new room, you will find yourself in the room with the bingo bag. You should explore and play! It is a lot of fun :)

Sketchcrawl 18

Some sketches from Saturday's Sketchcrawl:


My warmup: quick uniball sketches of everyone sketching. Most of the time I would look up and the person I was drawing would be drawing me! A fair trade, I suppose.

A sketch from the park at Fort Mason. Dave fell asleep on the grass while I worked on this. I think he had a nice nap.

This girl in Ghirardell Square knew she was being drawn. She was posing for us.
It was a bit chilly.
Inside Ghirardelli Cafe. I suspect she knew I was drawing her, hence the rather unpleasant look. Other than that, there really is no reason to look unpleasant inside the Ghirardelli Cafe. Ever.

Saturday was certainly a day full of drawing for me! Bill, Dave, and I met up with the San Francisco Sketchcrawlers at Ghirardelli Square at 11am, stayed there until sketchbook swapping was wrapping up at 6, and THEN Bill and I went directly to a single's mixer for the Berkeley Humane society where we volunteered as caricature artists. Neither one of us had ever really done caricatures for people before, so I hope we didn't disappoint. The event was a lot of fun because we were doing portraits of people AND their dogs! So thanks to Piper, Travis, Macgregor, Jack, Brutus, and Sassy Girl (and their owners ofcourse, because I can't possibly be expected to remember people's names) for making it such a fun evening. And thanks to Bill for inviting me to tag along.

"Pet" Peeves

A few weeks ago I found a collection of Chuck Jones animated shorts at Target. The collection included a short about Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a mongoose who is adopted into a family and risks his life to protect them from two cobras living in the garden. I've loved this short as a little girl and still find it inspiring today.
I originally began this illustration for the IF topic "garden" a few weeks back. Since I've been swamped with all kinds of work lately, I haven't had much time to finish it. I hope it works for the IF topic "Pet Peeves". The way I see it, the cobras (especially Nagina, who is pictured here) are Rikki-Tikki's pet peeves. And he is the family pet. The Pet's Pet Peeves...
Anyhow, enjoy!

And as I mentioned before, stay tuned for some exciting developments later in the week! Have a great Wednesday!