Not-Sketchblog 18: Good Things To Come

Prepare yourselves, my friends!

Starting tomorrow, April 1st,
I will be doing a Character-A-Day Challenge!

I have been working on a Universes Catalogue,
which, for my own reference, contains information on plots and characters from every story I've ever written.
It is an exercise to ensure I don't repeat the same themes and designs too much
(it's very difficult for me!),
and the Character-A-Day Challenge will be a good workout of improving speed and technique.

My goal is to complete 30 colored character illustrations,
compiling them all into one large desktop background image,
which will be available for download on my website in May,
my free present to you for sticking with the Sketchblog since its birth 2 whole years ago!

Get ready!
There are good things to come!
:)


In other news,
my personal goal to be more positive and happy is meeting with huge success!
There are a couple occasions where I came across some bumps in the road,
but I kept the mindset that "this is temporary, life is wonderful, and I am loved,"
and I got right through those hard times, no problem!

I'm starting to reach another goal I set for myself a while back as well.
It's a challenge I've been struggling with for as long as, if not longer than, this blog has been active.
And I'm ready to reveal it:

I want to be happy alone.

I don't want to depend on anyone, or be afraid of being lonely or abandoned anymore.
It was a huge challenge for me, since I love everyone around me so much and want to share my joys with every person I meet.
And I had a few hiccups where I got too attached or dependent on certain people for happiness.
However, as I've worked to be a more positive person with an optimistic attitude,
I've noticed that change that I wanted in my life so badly.
I'm becoming the person I've always wanted to be:
an independent, strong, powerful woman who is happy with and without others.

I know now that I can survive without someone constantly by my side,
and if there is someone there, sticking by me through thick and thin,
well then that's just an added bonus.
I have the comfort and satisfaction of knowing I can do whatever I put my mind to,
and I can achieve it by my own hands,
and that's a feeling I have never felt so strongly about before as I do now.

I only hope this message reaches certain others who misunderstood all my actions in life up until now,
and that now they will perhaps start to understand why I took certain steps and made certain decisions,
and will forgive me for them, since they were somewhat selfish decisions to better myself as a human being.
But by doing so it means I can be a better friend, significant other, wife, mother, mentor, artist, or whatever life leads me to be in the future.

So you'll have to forgive me while I learn to be happy on my own for a while.

Thank you for reading!

Love you all and goodnight!
<3,

Emily J Sampson

Sketchblog Edition 127: Let Your Past Drive You, Not Control You

AND NOW,
a treat!
In-progress TAoCKF pages! :D

Page 9 rough pencils

Page 9 tight pencils

Page 10 rough pencils

Page 10 final rough pencils

Page 10 tight pencils
(without borders and some of the backgrounds, of course)

Welp.

That's all for now!

I hope it was worth the wait!

Thank you so much for always being there for me!

Love you all,

and have a great day,

and a wonderful, happy, love-filled, joyous, adventuresome life!

<3,

Emily J Sampson

Sketchblog Edition 126: In Response to Bad, Do Good

It's FANART time!!!!
I've been watching a lot of movies,
mostly Disney and Bluth and Ghibli,
but there are some live action ones mixed in there too.
Enjoy.  :3

From Seven Samurai,
my favorite character, Kikuchiyo! <3

An adult Satsuki from Totoro.
Didn't turn out quite like I wanted, but meh.

Adult Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service! :D

The gang from Secret of NIMH.
JEREMY.  I loves him.

  

BABY SPOCK!  <3

Zoe from Firefly/Serenity.
;^;

One more batch after this!

Thanks for sticking with it!
 Love you all!

<3,
Emily J Sampson

Sketchblog Edition 125: Say What You Will

Part 2 of my massive update!

I've started really enjoying drawing portraits of my friends,
so here are the fruits of that!

This was a quick sketch of a friend, Matt,
for a weekly exercise, and I really enjoyed it,
so later I tried drawing myself for a new profile picture (see below).

Self-portrait!

Portrait for my friend and coworker, Rita!
She has such wonderful features to draw and caricaturize!

First attempt at Crash's portrait....

Second attempt.

My friend Jessica!

My friend Laura!

My friend Kris!

My friend Staley!

Now I'm starting to get into animal caricaturizing!
Me as a bear!

Then my friend Matt as a bear!

 End of update 2!
Stay tuned for update 3!

Thanks for reading!
Love you all!

<3,
Emily J Sampson

Sketchblog Edition 124: Make Peace, Not Dischord

Wow!  So, it's been a while.

I apologize sincerely for the distance between posts.

What has it been?  A month?

Man....

Well, I promise you I'll make up for it.

I have a lot to show from the past month, so here's the first of several blog updates for you to enjoy!

These are just some quick sketches and fun pieces I did in my spare time.

I'm noticing a wonderful shift in my style and my artistic abilities that I can only attribute to the new system of living and thinking that I've developed for myself.

Life is great. :)

I made this for my Facebook cover photo, but if anybody else wants it, feel free to download and share!

It's been in the 60s and 70s lately here, and even got up to 80 the other day! 
It's time for Spring/Summer clothes! :D

Ooooollllllld character.

Quick sketch, no reference.

Another quick sketch I did last night. 
I want to try painting in realism more,
so this was supposed to be the start of an exercise,
but I got lazy toward the end there with the arms and legs....
I'll fix it soon after I finish some other things first.

 

A test I gave myself to see if I had the chops for a freelance position,
which I ended up declining due to several circumstances.
It was fun to do though, even if I didn't take the job. :)

Quick dragon sketch!

Quick dragon man sketch, with colors! :O

Mermaid sketch... maybe I'll finish this for fun sometime.

It's a Loxodocto Serpentarius! 
You may remember this from my chimera sketch request batch however long ago!

Another Loxodocto Serpentarius!

At work, we have demos every once in a while. 
My coworker Ilene did a demo on pastels, so I made a Totoro.

Another piece from our Utrecht demo, this time the Fluid Acrylics demo by Rita.
It's a Derpshark, or couldn't you tell?

March 4th was my Dad's birthday.
I couldn't be there to give him a present, so I made him this.
Done in watercolors and pencil.
He loved it. :3

A new comic strip I'll be doing weekly,
on my lunch breaks over at Utrecht Savannah:
Breaktime Adventures with Emily!

That's it for the first batch!

Second batch, coming right up!

Thanks for reading!

Love you all!

<3,

Emily J Sampson

Sketchblog Edition 123: life is WONDERFUL, you are LOVED.

Well, I certainly have kept you waiting for a while, haven't I?

But I have some wonderful things to show you!

Life has been busy and amazingly awesome,
and I'm loving every minute of it!
I've learned a lot over the past month and a half and have grown stronger than I thought I could ever be,
and it was all through sheer force of will.
I changed my own life through the power of positive thinking,
and things are certainly looking brighter than they have before.

A couple of good bits of news to share:
First of all, I am now a keyholder at work!
There's not much of a difference between what I was doing before and what I'm doing now,
except I have more hours and more responsibilities.
...Okay I guess that's a big difference.

But!
Because of that, I realized I only had so much time left to work on my thesis.
The quarter ends on March 13th and I want to finish before then.
So I hunkered down last weekend and wrote 19 pages of my paper and sent the draft off to my committee,
then penciled two pages (minus tones and word balloons) this week, along with some thumbnails!
Here's a sneak peek:

TAoCKF Chapter 1: An Unexpected Engagement,
page 7 base pencils

TAoCKF Chapter 1: An Unexpected Engagement,
page 8 base pencils

 

 

TAoCKF Chapter 1: An Unexpected Engagement,
thumbnails for pages 11-12

Well I hope that at least whets your appetite for TAoCKF!

Other projects I've taken on recently include my very first screenprinting experience:
handmade Valentines!
I made almost 200 of them and handed them out in the park today,
and I still have some left over!
I also screenprinted three t-shirts and a hoodie for myself, and will be wearing them tomorrow and Valentine's Day.
I am so excite.
Here are some photos of the Valentines as they were being printed on some fabulous Utrecht watercolor paper, which is currently on sale (*cough*you should get some because it's seriously awesome*cough*):

And here's the wallpaper version of the Valentine,
which will soon be made available for download on my website soon (so keep an eye out!):

800x600

I also decided that my Cintiq pen needed a better home than its old crummy decaying plastic container that it came in,
so I made one!
It was such a success, I think I'll start selling them on commission for anyone who is tired of trying to figure out how to carry their Cintiq/tablet pen like me!
Starting price is $5, but if you provide me with your own fabric or old piece of clothing to make it out of, it'll only be $3 (or $5 for two)!

Oh hey, there's an in-progress TAoCKF page 8! :D

I recently started revisiting a very old piece of art of mine that was done way back when I was in college.
Some of you may remember my story Tsubasa No Negai
(which roughly translates to Wish for Wings, or Wish for Tsubasa,
depending on how you want to view it,
since the main character's name was Tsubasa).
It wasn't a horrible story, and the piece I made for it wasn't bad,
but I've since improved many of my skills and honed my own style,
and decided that it was time to scrap the story and start from scratch,
rewriting it as well as redesigning all the characters.
So I wanted to do a redux of the piece to get myself motivated again.
Here are some progress shots:

sketch version

foreground figure linework- made adjustments to the pose and design

foreground figure linework without sketch

working out the sword design

refining the design with some references

laying the sword sketch into the composition

foreground figure and final sword design with colored linework

flat colors on the foreground figure/sword

designing the middleground figure

costume design for middleground figure

"weapon" (Shofar) design for middleground figure

altered costume design for middleground figure

I'm really enjoying reworking this project and can't wait to get back into it. :)


I honestly haven't been doing a whole lot of sketching in my sketchbook lately, but here's what I do have:

Some button/sticker designs for my good friends Jordan Hess and Jennifer Cram, who are both currently working on their films, Puppy Love and Falls, respectively.

Redesign sketches for "Tsubasa," whose name is most likely going to change to Tsipporah, or "Zip."

Drawin' coworkers at our "holiday" party at Moon River!
Going from left to right, top to bottom: Neva, Justin, Kyah, Chris, Caleb, Ilene

And here we have Rita and Ash

Finally, as a special thank you to my number one commissioner, and supporter for donating to my blog(s):

Although... he got a haircut apparently, so this sketch is no longer valid. 8[
Thanks anyway, Brady!

That is all I have to show you for now!
Thanks so much for continuing to read and enjoy my sketches!

Love you all,
and have a goodnight!

<3,
Emily J Sampson


p.s. If you are in the Savannah area, you should totally hit up Utrecht on Valentine's Day.
Just sayin'.