Caesura stuff.

Playing around with colour etc., because there's really only so long I can pull off black + white + accents before it'll all catch up to me.

Birthday stuff.

I'm a bit of a cheapskate, so people who know me well enough tend to get drawings for their birthdays in lieu of actual physical objects. Unfortunately for them, I am also an incorrigible procrastinator. Context: this was for a birthday in December 2012. And the 'zine is still unfinished.

Again: sorry, Mouse. Happy terribly belated birthday.

Cultural Convention work.

Every now and then this wonderful thing called Cultural Convention happens, which is pretty much a whiz-bang meetup of artistically, theatrically, musically, rhetorically, and dancetastically talented kids from the region's six main international schools. This year my school hosted the Debate/Forensics chunk of proceedings and through some trick of fate I ended up solely responsible for the event logo.

Stipulations were pretty clear: "Involve elements of local culture," they told me, "and don't insult the other schools too much." (I may be misremembering that last part.)

Mr Long Nose here is an artistic mangling of wayang kulit, one of my country's proudest, most beautiful forms of performance art. I'd say everything turned out fine.

Pretty fine, in fact.

Pret-ty fine indeed.

Unfinished character work.

Ah, the really exciting stuff. I'll get around to finishing these. Eventually.

This one's cute because it's based on a friend's alt-universe where our merry band of misfits is essentially recast as bad guys. So here we have an assassin, a scientist (me), and a getaway driver (the model for the February cover, oddly enough), with the supervillain we kowtow to (AKA the guy who made this up in the first place) being my snarky magazine columnist friend. There are supposed to be more people involved but I haven't got around to doing them yet. Etc.

The girls from Caesura, one of my own stories. It's meant to be a hardboiled/noir pastiche of life at the school I go to. Despite appearances, the main character is Max; Zelah, the namesake of my blog's old URL, just happened to be easier to pin a colour scheme onto.

This was ambitious. I had a list of seventy-five or so characters from all my different stories and I was planning on drawing each and every one of them. You can see for yourself how far I got.

Auf wiedersehen, pet.

Blue Umbrella Studios work.

I've run out of magazine issues, so now we're moving on to some work I've done for the school's design club.

My favourite. I wish I could remember how to draw like that.

The "Sauce For Hope" part is hand-lettered. Offsetting white type with a black shadow to add body is the absolute best thing ever, honestly.

Our girls' cross-country team wanted t-shirts with a running dragon on the front. Putting him in shorts made sense at the time.

Have you ever really stopped and thought about how many different types of umbrellas there are in the world? I mean—really stopped and thought about it? Because there are awful lot, just sayin'.

Scales.

March issue.

Fewer pieces than usual because the issue itself was shortened. Then again, Spring Break (which our school's seniors traditionally spend in Bali, hence the cover) is coming up soon, so that may have been another factor in the productivity dip.

From an editorial about post-test gossip. This issue's homage goes out to the gorgeously expressive lowlighter, whose inky digital sketches will forever put mine to shame.

From my friend's column. He's really got a thing for ragging on the international student community, hasn't he?

Main art for Bali-themed In Depth. Working in colour is not my strong suit, but I promise the page spread looks pretty cute when it's all laid out properly.

Clipart for In Depth, this time about things to do when trapped in JKT over Spring Break. Squaring off those banners brought joy to my soul, though I can't quite decide if that's Monas or just a really wonky candle.

BONUS

First draft of the editorial illo. (Clavicles are fun.)

First draft of the main In Depth art. I think I tried to use Rule Of Thirds here but composition ranks about as high as colour theory and square dancing on my list of marketable skills.

March issue over and out.

February issue.

Funny thing is, the models for the cover were single when the photo was taken, but they got together sometime during the editing process. Cue the complimentary silhouette-out.

From my friend's column (something about our aggressively laissez-faire attitude towards the environment). Obligatory homage #1: thick-lined comic goodness via the magnificently quirky Dan Piraro, of Bizarro Comics fame.

From our In Depth article on different types of relationships. I think this one was just a filler piece, but its quiet simplicity pleases me.

Another one from the In Depth—this one (about cross-grade relationships) actually ran as the main art, if I recall correctly. Obligatory homage #2: the delightfully languid stylings of the delightful Taryn Gee, who was responsible for one of my most favourite illustrations ever.

Yet another one from the In Depth, this time about couples who were friends before dating.

On-off relationships. I love those two arms; they turned out a lot better than I'd hoped.

Final one from the In Depth, I promise. the writers requested a generic scientist filler piece and I made him a Cupid-esque psychopath because it's dangerous to give vague instructions to artists.

Super twee sports flowchart. The swim captain cutout in particular is a thing of sheer beauty. They had to rearrange the colour section for this one, though, because running it in black-and-white resulted in a more labyrinthine effect than I think anyone was entirely comfortable with.

BONUS

First shot at my friend's column; the blue ball was meant to be Earth, and the dragon is a callback to our school mascot. I like how you can see precisely where I gave up on drawing scales.

First shot at the on-off relationships illo. If IB Biology taught me anything, it's that real hearts > stylised hearts every time.

Second shot at the on-off relationships illo (sketch + semi-finished product). Reusing bits and pieces of discarded ideas is a bit of a specialty of mine.

(Side note: I covered fewer articles this issue because the new semester brought two actual, legitimate artists to the magazine art team. One of them is fantastic and wonderful and has a DeviantART page; the other is fantastic and wonderful and doesn't, sadly.)

Catch you on the flip side, ladies and gents.

September issue.

As the title would suggest, here are some pieces I did for the September 2012 issue of my high school's magazine.

(Click on individual images to embiggen them—Blogger's resizing function tends to play merry hell with image quality.)

For a friend's column about the school's "mission, vision, and values" guidelines. More painterly than I'm used to. (Everything I do is digital unless specified, by the way.)

For an editorial about how nobody ever goes the National Honour Society tutors. As an NHS tutor myself, I can testify to that.

For a Features article (not a typo, the section in the magazine is actually called "Features") about this one investment club that drew a lot of interest at the beginning of the year. I'm not sure if it's still kicking around anymore.

For the main ("In Depth") article about school spirit—our mascot is a dragon. These guys here are pretty zesty, if I do say so myself.

(Also, the reason why everything is in black and white bar this piece is because the magazine runs mostly in B&W with a smattering of colour pages in the middle. Usually this allotment is eaten up by In Depth and a couple other articles that tend towards photography, so my dismal colour theory skillz are thankfully in low demand.)

For a Time Out article about how things will pile up and stress you out. We tend to get really negative around this time of year. Also, I like to think that the dino skull is more of an homage to the absolutely amazing Sam Bosma rather than outright theft.

For an editorial sidebar about the prospect of introducing school uniforms, because we are a non-uniform school with an aggressively laissez-faire attitude towards the dress code.

From another Time Out article about stress. Remember what I said about negativity?

From a sports article about how making the junior varsity team is seen as more of a joke than an honour. I misjudged the precision of the magazine printers and the background came out entirely black, but thankfully the whites survived intact so it just looked a bit starker than intended.

Artwork from later issues will be going up soon, kittens.