IF: fearless

I am a huge fan of Joss Whedon and all of his assorted works, but Buffy will always be #1 in my heart because it's the first thing I got into. When I was in high school one of my friends was like, "you have to watch this show, it's awesome" but the name turned me off. Buffy? Is she a pomeranian? Is she slaying the reanimated corpses of upper-crusty WASPs while vacationing on Martha's Vineyard? Pass. But thankfully he was persistent and forced me to sit down and watch the very first episode, "Welcome to the Hellmouth."

We watched the entire first season that day, and the next day I ran out and bought all the dvds that were available at the time. This was a pretty big deal since I made, like, $5.25 an hour working part-time at Party City, but it had to be done. I was officially obsessed. Fast forward to the present, almost 10 years later, and while Buffy has long since ended, my interest hasn't faded one bit. So! Long story not at all short, when this week's Illustration Friday topic, "fearless," arrived in my inbox, I knew what had to be done. For some strange reason I have never drawn Buffy, not really. Just like I am way into dinosaurs but have never drawn a dinosaur outside of a few off-hand sketches of sauropods in sports gear. But now, at least, that first oversight has been rectified.

Still really enjoying this new way of working. Previously I would get obsessed with the details - zooming in to 4000% (not four hundred, four THOUSAND) and making sure every piece of jewelry or decorative element was as fully developed as the main focal point of the image. It's maddening, unnecessary, and it just takes forever. By the time was halfway through an image, I'd be bored to death of looking at it. This way is far less detailed, but for some reason that doesn't bother me - I'm just as happy with the end result, and it takes about half as long, if not less, to get there. So that's been exciting.

Another fast-and-loose digital sketch. I'm doing more of my sketching directly in the Illustrator file these days, and for whatever reason it's working for me. They're much less precise, but I think they retain a bit of energy that my traditional sketches often lack due to my tendency to overwork things to death.