RedFedHead

New Blog

2011-02-25T15:00:00.001-08:00

over here y'all

Smell ya later blogger

2010-11-14T15:38:00.000-08:00

(apologies to the misrepresented friends)

Diary Comic from the week of halloween. I'm having a lot of fun doing my required weekly diary comics in this sort of format. Kind of apeing what I saw Laura Park do when she came here and gave a lecture. I've been feeling very blase (pretend the e is accented) about the blogger format, I'm trying to put together a livejournal right now. And once I get that up and running I plan on doing a weekly update with a watercolor project I'm about to undergo starting next month. Thanks to anyone still reading this!

diary comic

2010-10-06T19:24:00.001-07:00

sho' nuff.

so this post is kind of about that, but mostly about THIS:

are you familiar with MOUK?

It's magical in every way that i've ever wanted my work to be. So, i'm part jealous and part elated about it. And now there is a SHOW in production.

ohgeez,ohgeez,ohgeez

Toes In

2010-09-25T00:18:00.000-07:00

Imma little over a month into CCS as of now and it's been crazy good.

It necessitates that I actually follow through and finish works, which has always been a problem for me. I'm struggling to translate sketches into solid work, but i'll make it up this mountain. YARG!

Plus so far we've had some great visiting artists including Kate Beaton (droll, spittle), Scott Dikkers of The Onion and Jim's Journal, and this week it's going to be Vanessa Davis!

Right now I'm in the midst of a screen printing project, which was something i'd never previously done. Here is my first (un-used) attempt at creating a self portrait

Couldn't use it because I failed to grasp the concept of a 2 color maximum, so instead opted to use the new image I created for my banner, but oriented vertically which i think works out a little better as a portrait.

This is my bio to be paired with it in a book of all the CCS students:

I'm happy with how it all turned out. Screen printing was a non stop 7 hour adventure, and the results are speckled with mistakes, but I can live with it.

I also joined a group of ladies at CCS for a pin up girl calendar which will be purchase-able quite soon. It's very cute and inexpensive and features drawings by and of 12 super chicks from CCS! If your interested, holla at me and for 8 bucks one of 'em is yours.

May I present my contribution, Beth in February:

(The quality is diminished and the picture cut short because every other variation I tried to show blogger sent it crying into the corner of the room, refusing to re-open, but you get the idea.)

Several people have gotten back to me about these calenders- they should be out later this month. The wonderful girls putting it together are 2nd years under a crushing deadline at the moment, so it's had to sit on the back burner. But they will be out before the holidays fo' sho.

It was also my 20th birthday recently, and when you have a birthday at CCS that hallmark crap wont fly, so instead you get this:

Yes. I think I will like this place.

2010-09-04T20:05:00.000-07:00

Oh man, such a ton of innumerable things have happened to me since my last post at the beginning of this year. As I wrote that I think I was still at my parents house, hurriedly packing my things. As I write this i'm sitting in the basement of my new school, taking a break from a lazy and drawn out unpacking in my new HOUSE. In VERMONT. What a journey!

I've experienced a job I actually took pride in, moved into Atlanta, moved out, couch surfed, had loads of good times, and said many sad good byes!

I loved my year off! It was fantastic and shout outs to everyone who made it possible, you know who you are. I'm sad to leave so many good people round the ATL, but I'll be back sometime.

All that meant though that I went way off the drawn path, but I'm making my way back.

School starts in a couple days which means I'll be laboring over things and have much to put on this blog. I hope it kicks my ass and it shows. Being in the town so far has been totally inspiring awe in me, and making me realize I need to get summa dat artz, real quick.

Update soon.

14. The Move

2009-12-24T20:23:00.000-08:00

Alright, so my crater sized absence from this blog has been pointed out to me by several folks, and i'm hear to say: my bad.

But hear me out! I had good reasons.

The last few weeks have been (mostly) dedicated to my super happy move into an apartment with my wonderful boyfriend! Presently, I'm about halfway physically moved in and about 9/10 of the way emotionally moved in. It's been a crazy last month or so and I plan on having some sort of visual account of this.

So I've quit my job at office depot and served my two weeks. Luckily I was able to really quickly find a dream job of mine at Mellow Mushroom, working as a pizza waitress! For real, I have always had crushes on pizza waitresses, they always seemed way too cool. I guess being one now will sort of dilute the fantasy but I am extremely grateful that I got the job.

I also got the kick-ass news that I was accepted to the Center for Cartoon Studies for Fall 2010 last month. Now that it's a sure thing that I'm going I feel pretty indestructable. It's real real nice.

So this is all I have for yous guys, all these words. But I'll get stuff up here soon, I've still got some settlin' in and holiday celebratin' to go before I can process anything else.

Have good days until then friendlies.

13. Art Classes Are Scary

2009-11-18T14:16:00.000-08:00

A lot of people have asked me about what I'm doing as far as art in college. Well I have one class, Life Drawing, with a really excellent teacher. Art classes have always scared me. I took two in highschool, one at the beginning and one at the end and I didn't like either of them. Teachers never seemed to get where I was coming from, cartoon-wise. Even my last teacher, with whom I really got along well with, didn't take me seriously. When we were talking once he even threw in the stinger "Well, I mean, your not going into Art, are you?" like it was an obvious question. And I said I wasn't out of shear shame.

Thats what really turned me off to the idea of going to an art school like the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) which is here in Georgia. Art classes really seem to pressure me and push me in the wrong direction. I never intended to take any art classes at State, I wasn't even signed up for one when I started the semester. But when I found myself in a really boring communications class and saw there was an opening in an art 1010 class at the same time I figured why not.

I'm so glad I did, it's been a very positive experience and has really helped my confidence. The teacher gets where I'm coming from and respects my style and it feels really great to get that from a teacher. I've always had such positive experiences with my teachers in other acedmic fields but I never felt validited by an art "professional" before, which may be shallow but I think I really needed that. All around it's been a good experience so far and I was pleased to find that even my attempts at realism had gotten better since I've been cartooning.

Heres some examples from class (all are on 18 by 24 inch paper):

Onto other junk:

A picture I did for my mother's friend's newborn who just turned 1. I thought it came out pretty cute, I'm happy with it.

This is a preview picture for something I'm doing for ampersand, an art collective project that a friend of mine is launching soon. I'll certainly have links and information to and about that once the operation is in full swing.

Later friendlys!

12. Deep Sea Diver

2009-11-06T11:22:00.000-08:00

Re-submitted my stuff for CCS which included two unfinished comics. But even in their unfinished state they are rather long so I'm still hmming and hawing on how exactly to post them. I think I might have to move away from blogger to another similar platform but thats gonna take more thinkin' time.

BUT here is a cute little boy I worked on during work today

I figured out a little mini i'd wanna do with him. I use kid characters disproportionally but I can't help it! Kids are just whats in my natural arsenal.

speaking of kids, I finally saw Where the Wild Things Are. I cried consistently from the beginning to the end. It was really great. I understand some of the backlash against it because it had lots of non kid friendly elements but I think it was a great and very Jonzeian way to approach it. I mean, everything from the choice of director, the Karen O soundtrack, the marketing was totally aimed towards an older audience, the people who read the book as kids. Made sense to me.

And thankfully I got to take a trip down to Savannah and see it with my lovely boymonster.

S'more later.
\

11. Jonny

2009-10-09T18:47:00.000-07:00

Real life punk hitch hiking girls? Yes please.

Anyway,crunch time is coming for me and I'm gonna be working a lot the next two-weeks-ish. Lucky for me, after many small girl feats of strength, I finally got my new drafting table up and assembled in my room. And also to my luck, it's just so darn friendly.

D'aw.

So anyway, here are the first few parts of my new mini, Jonny the ~~Amazing~~ Invisible Boy. I apologies ahead of time for the weird sizes and shadows. These aren't totally done but I figured I'd put them up for some feedback (pwease :3 ?).

(I'm trying to convey that amazing has been crossed out. Should I just have done a horizontal line through the center? I'm re-doing it anyway, so it's not a big deal. The book is going to be about this height-width-ratio and super tiny. I'm gonna self publish it, if you ever want one i'd be delighted to give 'em when its done, i'll post it all here finished)

Aw man, sorry that text is so microscopic. Did this page at a much larger scale then the others, I thought I'd made the text big enough but alas, I guess not. But this is part one! It's going to be rather long, but the drawings are so simple that it (hopefully) will be ready soon.

Later friendlys!

10. Lots of words

2009-10-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

Here are two exciting things for people who get excited about exciting webcomics!

Anders Loves Maria has started to update again after a short hiatus and it's creator Renee Engstrom has promised to try and make it to the end of the comic uninterrupted. I've been trying to turn people onto this comic for a while now. It's so beaaaautful. The plot can be a little soap-opera-ey but I think that once you get into it those moments don't seem unbelievable. I think now would be a great time to start reading it. You can comb through the archives and make it probably just in time to get the last few weeks of updates.

There's something about reading a comic that's still updating that makes the reading more pleasurable to me. I think it's because it feels like this alternate reality is happening in the present as opposed to the past. It becomes less story, more experience, in my opinion. Like my reading is an active part of the story that somehow shapes it, as kooky as that might sound. Not to say that finished comics are by any means un-interesting, in fact, here is me, highly recommending one:

Liz Greenfield has started posting to her livejournal again and now has a Google hosted site (?). She's a (super cute) cartoonist whose style totally blew me away when I first saw it. Her comic Stuff Sucks ended a while back and the archives were taken offline but now she's going to put them back up. So I'd encourage anyone to look at her site and if they like it read Stuff Sucks when it makes it's way back.

9. My favorite number

2009-09-28T19:07:00.001-07:00

I have a weird fixation with numbers. When I see numbers on clocks or addresses or at the end of telephone numbers I will add them up. Based on whatever they produce it gives me a certain feeling. I used to associate personality with certain numbers and I guess to some extent I still do but now it's less specific. 9 is without a doubt the best number. I always thought of it as a nice guy. It's the square of 3, it's the month of my birth, part of the year of my birth, part of my graduation year, part of my current age and now it's this post number!

and speaking of age, I just had my birthday the other day. It was a fantastic compilation of mud wrestlin' soccer games in the rain, laid back hanging out, and dads garaging. Thanks to anyone reading who made my day super birthday special!

A slightly gayer mr. Tumnus.

Another good thing about my birthday being in September is it is at the beginning of fall! I LOVE fall. I feel like it's befitting that i'm born right at it's start. I am gonna park my ass outside the next few months and try and sketch some pretty trees. I love how sidewalks and roads look like they're paved with leaves after they fall. I wish pavement was multi-colored. (Although I've been reading about the push to get us to pave areas white so that they don't absorb as much heat which is more sensible then my rainbow pavement movement, I guess)

This is the next wrestler character I made for my cousin. I'll post a link to the article when it's up next week.

I was doodlin' while listening to music today and decided to ink this. This is Jon Spencer, One of the many musical Gods I pay tribute to. He's been part of Boss Hog, Pussy Galore, and Blues Explosion and I dig all of them (esp. blues explosion- fucking fantastic!)

Later friendlys!

8. Influx of Comics

2009-09-23T18:20:00.000-07:00

S'alright, so yesterday I got a large box full of a dozen kick ass comics! And you can too! Right now Top Shelf is having a big 3 dollar sale on most of their stock. I feel like an ass for not posting this sooner, it ends this Friday. Heres my stash:

I really love the Liz Prince stuff. I got two books of hers: Will You Still Love Me if I Wet the Bed? and Delayed Replays.

This is from Will You Still. It's full of cute moments like this. It's even more endearing to me right now because my boyfriend just left to go to college a few weeks ago and I've been missin' them little moments. Plus the boy character looks just like him!

Other noteworthy loot? A really beautiful book called the Barefoot Serpent which sends my heart a-flutter whenever I look at the crazy adorable characters. Also have the Conversations comic between James Kochalka and Jeffrey Brown, and the other with James and Craig Thompson which are very yummy for my brain.

My highest reccomendation would probably be this beauty, Ghostshrimp Press's The Octopi and The Ocean. It's crazy good looking!

In other news stuff heres some doodles.

this is something I made when I was bored today. It's for my joint birthday party I'm having this weekend with a friend of mine. I'm super excited because I'm getting a drawing table! Hoorah! I've been doing all my drawing in my living room for months because the desk I have is a piece of non-functional poop. And next month means glasses! Kick ass!

I like drawing like this. It's admittedly a little creepy but it's fun and loose.

I guess thats about it. Working on a new character for my cousin's wrestling column. Have that up on my next post I'm sure.

Sh'goodbye!

7. scritch scratch

2009-09-14T19:14:00.000-07:00

So here are some doodles for the two main characters of the comic I want to start doing for my school.

It's about a monster and his friend who both attend my school.

I've messed around a good bit with her; I want her to be kind of scruffy cute.

This is my original sketch of the two of them....

...and this is a little bit closer to how i draw them now.

I'm excited about them, I have a lot of ideas for it. I've never done any kind of strip-style comic. Truly I've always found it really hard. But once I got the idea for these two and their dynamics stuff kind of just kept popping in my head. No telling if State will want me to do it but it'll definitely be exciting for me if they do.

If they don't? Can always fall back on silly old woman portraits.

6. Back again

2009-09-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

*edit- i missed a page of out of water, just inserted it in here, my b*

Is this a less creepy title illustration? Methinks so.

So I took a nice little break there from posting but I'm back and ready to My goal is to start updating at least twice a week (most likely on mondays and fridays).

I finished my first lucha for my cousin (a re-modeled version of the one in my last post). I'm sort of happy with it. I had to super amp up the colors in photoshop so that my watercolors were even visible. I love watercolor but the drawbacks scanning wise are too huge to ignore unfortunately : ( so I think I'm going to color the next wrestlers in photoshop.

These are the two main characters and the title of my potential web comic. It may be put off though if I start to make a comic for my school's newspaper. Don't know yet if thats happening or not but the material i'd be making for Pretentious Little Shit is a tad dirty so I couldn't use that idea. I'll have some sketches for my potential school comic up next week feeerrr sure.

And with that here are the last three pages to Out of Water!

Was a super fun comic to make. The only thing I've made on totally in photoshop (with the exception of this last page- which is the back cover the book) with the aid of my lovely lovely wacom tablet.

Next update Monday.

Later gators.

5. Luchas

2009-08-24T14:50:00.001-07:00

I'm trying to get into a drawing-as-work mode now that I have a definite school schedule and work has cut back a ton ( Last week I had 24 hours, this week: 4). My idea for an online comic is still in top secret infancy but from the murky depths has arisen a reason for regularity!

My cousin who writes for a wrestling company has asked me to illustrate some fanicful luchas which sounds like some seriously fun shit. The above is my first draft to him for a tumbleweed character thus it's filled with little mistakes (such as the strangly veiny tights) so bear with me, they will get better.

It's a very exciting oppurtunity and hopefully will help me with time management which is up to this point has been a giant fail.

and only two more pages of Out of Water to go after this:

(Out of Water is a 10 page mini I completed in my week at the center for cartoon studies. the previous pages are in my preceding posts)

4. Inspiration

2009-08-22T19:37:00.000-07:00

As self indulgent as I'd like to be, i'm also going to use this blog to post some of my abso fabulously lutly favorite art stuff by other people.

I found this book lying around the house sometime in the last few years (a gift to my parents from a friend methinks?) and it is FANTASTIC.

It is an arts and crafts book with lots of cool little kitschy things to make but it is the illustrations that totally steal my heart.

I have the worst time with buildings. I love simplistic skylines like this, I've tried in vain to develop this style for a while now.

Too sweet.

3. (and four)

2009-08-20T19:47:00.000-07:00

two more pages from Out of Water.

I might go fix this up at some future time? I haven't decided if it is worth it yet. There are tons of little mistakes in it.

2. Looking Backward and Forward

2009-08-19T12:18:00.000-07:00

Started college yesterday. Very good times. I'm commuting so I'm not really getting the full experience but all of my classes are super interesting and all the professors (to my great relief) are themselves very interesting people. Already feeling the time crunch trying to balance work, school, social things and arty stuff but I am not yet overwhelmed!

So I saw these really beautiful Nintendo themed drawings by ghostpatrol on Offworld. Really, they say it all best, so I highly recommend you give it a looksee.

Tucked in were a few very lovable Link renderings and as an avid Zelda fan I decided to do my own.

This lead me to do a few more little pictures of stuff I loved as a kid.

To my dismay though, it was only after I started watercoloring that I remembered my ink was water soluble. Didn't do too much damage though, in my opinion.

Man, all I've been using since I got back from CCS's summer workshop are brush and ink. It's super duper fun but i'm still trying to get the hang of it. I have tiny shaky hands.

I just got a new pretty scanner! It works better than my previous one but it still hurts my heart to see the difference between my scanned in work and my physical copies. But such is life! I'm hoping soon to start working on the idea I have for a moderately long comic which I would be posting online.

Oh, and here are the first two pages of Out of Water, the previously mentioned comic I completed during my week at the Center for Cartoon studies:

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? I GUESS YOU HAVE TO VIEW MY BLOG WITH SOME KIND OF REGULARITY TO FIND OUT! AHA!

One.

2009-08-14T22:08:00.000-07:00

Content! My promise is fulfilled.

My name is Bailey. I'm a simple girl who just graduated highschool and realized that she wants to make comics for the rest of her life. Right now I'm in limbo, just kind of floating around as I go to a local college and live at home, saving up money from my really poopy job as a cashierista.

For the next year (hopefully before I go to an art school) I will be balancing work and school with my passion for comics. I'm hoping to have a noticeably large tip on the latter end of that scale. I plan by this time next year to have a few self published mini things floating around and a regular online comic and this blog will be the launching pad for all of that!

So I would request that you PLEASE JOIN ME! On this harrowing journey. ~~It should be okay~~. It will be AWESOME.

This would be a copy of "Out of Water" the silent 10 page mini I made while I spent a week at The Center For Cartoon Studies recently. I'll be posting all that on here soon with much more to come.

Exciting Times!

Hang On Dear World

2009-08-10T08:42:00.000-07:00

Hooray! Hurrah! Break open a bottle of your finest; I have finally started a blog.

This will be a blog dedicated to art (both mine and that which I admire) and I'm terribly excited to begin. However if you are reading this now and it is pre August 14th then you are probably bummed to have been led to a blog with no content. I promise though by aforementioned date I will have my first real entry stuffed with art on here.

So please check back!

Love,
Bailey