Becky Penn's Art Blog

Steampunk WIP

2011-10-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

So on goSupermodel I was working on a magazine where I can show off all of my wardrobe "looks" and I wanted to do a page entirely for steampunk looks. (I would really love a SP collection soon.)
I needed a background for the looks to be amazing so I started in painterX and got totally angry because it wasn't doing what I wanted which was photoshop. Painter is great I just need to spend more time with it and be less about expectations.
Going back to my tried and true markers, I felt much more at home and ready to tackle my plan. I'm rustier than the titanic but this is a start.

I really need to draw more lol. On the plus side, I just had a bunch of designs released for "fall fashion week" people were able to buy and also win exclusive designs by moi, as well as some of the other JDs.

2011-10-11T14:39:00.000-07:00

Sketch dump

2011-08-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

Some kpop inspired stuff. Some gosupermodel inspired stuff. Other than this, all I've been working on are designs for GSM. and moving! new location should hopefully mean more art??
it's whatever.

Youtube: Gosupermodel design videos

2010-10-12T14:32:00.000-07:00

I have some videos I've been making and putting up on http://youtube.com/born4catz for Gosupermodel.com designs. People from all over like to watch them and gain some insight into what makes a good design, or how to go about it. I don't claim to be an expert- junior designer or not- I just know that people are curious as to "how" I do it. So this is where they can see first hand. I try to cover many different topics according to requests, or just whatever I'm working on at the time. I'm embedding some of them here on my blog. Facebookers probably won't see them.
Over time as the site has changed, and as my videos have become more popular, I have worked on how the videos are presented. Hopefully with taste and class. :)
I also plan on doing this with many of my current artworks once I finish them. I take more care with regular art since it's paper and I don't have an UNDO button haha. So it takes much longer to produce those things.

This one with the pink background was my first video. it's gotten 29,014 views so far.

Kiseop/U-KISS progression.

2010-05-06T10:52:00.000-07:00

It started out as just me sitting outside one day sketching on the lawn, I drew a typical manga guy, and then added some cool military fashioned clothes, and it sort of morphed into a U-KISS type guy.
Using the hair- I was going for Kibum but with his longer nose and eyeliner, My sisters agreed he looked more like Kiseop. And since Kiseop is my favorite, I had no qualms about that hehe.
I was going to work on the sketch some more and try to improve it over the weekend. I went up to the cabin for some R&R and sat down with my sketch book. I decided to see if I could work on a more interesting pose rather than a token head shot of my typical manga-ness.
After some struggles and ridiculousness, I decided on a pose, but I needed Abby to help me. So she posed and I took a photo. Working off of that I made a reasonable sketch. I used my phone to browse google for photos of Kiseop and I worked more on the sketch.

Corrected some identifying features for him, and kept working on making it more Kiseopy.

Looking back he still has a large nose, but It's a good first try. Kiseop doesn't seemto be popular where artists are concerned, but hopefully this will get the ball rolling.

When I got home, I scanned the drawing and printed it out in a larger size. After that I traced it with my light box and kept tweaking it. I photocopied my sketches in order to test things before I committed ink to page, and from there Tweaked some more, ditched the sleeves according to personality, finished the line art, and started to make color test pages.

I had two choices, do a dark suit or a white suit.

Testing both, we (Emily and I) decided on dark for a richer look. Plus when I envisioned my drawing, I wanted a dark room type vibe.

I tried out watercolor pencils and some marker tests. Then I began the serious coloring, and kept at it. Fixing my mistakes here and there, and adding more and more to it.

I'm always nervous about doing things, so I have to force myself to push it further. I'm really glad I went back for one more layer on the black/gray suit. Now it pops :)

I wanted a dark background too, so after I finished coloring him I had to figure out a way to do a background without losing him, messing up the paper, and not having photoshop. So in the end I used up the last of my lighter cool gray markers trying to make a decent background. It looks kind of photo studio esque and that's not all bad.

I think it was a good compromise for having very little ink left, not wanting to risk watercolors on weak paper, and not doing a streaky marker fill.

I'm really happy with it. I even rosied up his nose, knuckles, knees, and elbows for a cute little glossy look. The thumbnail looks spot on, but seeing it up close it doesn't look AS much like Kiseop as I'd like. I'll do better next time. :) Right now I'll just enjoy. xD

Escaflowne & Random

2010-04-26T20:00:00.001-07:00

Started trying out eyes, ended up with Varie. I love this series.

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Here's some more random marker doodles I've done.

Processes

2010-04-26T19:50:00.000-07:00

The Cousins

2010-04-26T19:26:00.000-07:00

Sorry I don't have anything in between.

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Corrected Line Art.

Photocopied and cut up, taped to my light box.

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Before it was fixed. Back when it SUCKED.

ICE

2010-04-26T18:00:00.000-07:00

Since I took some pictures of the process, I think I'll try to sum it up with the poor quality phone shots. (Oh also, I was the USA winner of the gosupermodel wedding dress design competition. The final product was released today. So if you join, you can pick one up.:)

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When I started this, I was at our cabin just enjoying a nice weekend. I wanted to make something ornate, and I wanted something that was framed by it's self, so I could fit it on a t-shirt someday. I also like to stick with the art nouveau look, and detailed headpieces. The wings on the shoulders were partly inspired by world of warcraft, and I tried to incorporate as many details as I could. I had a lot of fun drawing the eyes, relying on my eraser to get a white lash effect.

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I was working on regular children's extra wide craft paper xD We had lots of it around so I started sketching on it. It's served me well over the years. I started the skin with skin white and milky white Copic sketch probably. I don't really remember.

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Shaded the skin using probably fruit pink, and started marking the hair with cool gray 0 and 01 or 02.

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Filled in the background and used pale lavender on the hair as well.

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Filled in most everything else. Added blue to her hair, used cool grays and purples on her clothing, filled eyes using frost blue(personal favorite) and purple.

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Filled in more of the background, frame, more of her outfit, headdress, etc. After this point I didn't document it, but I mostly used ink pots and used white and purple ink to finish up the frame.

The End!

Gosupermodel Wedding Dress Competition

2010-03-17T21:53:00.000-07:00

So this particular day I found out that the winner could have their design put into the shop :D

So I'm all over that. I took inspiration from Andre Kim's amazing dresses that he modeled using SuLi from F(x)

Here are some screen shots.

I tried to keep it tight so the least amount of effort would be involved in converting it for supernova. I still don't know how they'll manage that, but I can still dream.

That was the initial mapping out of the skirt. Which I changed later on.

Here I thought I was finished, but it still needed some work. Especially since I know that JR Designers aren't supposed to use 50% opacity at all. So I changed it again, and used some different hair so that the shoulders were more visible.

I think this is the final design. It's currently uploading, and I'm hoping I can get it in time before the deadline. I know it's a little off-center but that's the space available. I didn't want to sacrifice the fullness of the skirt for the sake balance. And I think it looks great anyway. :)

Somebody stop me!

2009-06-28T06:34:00.000-07:00

I need a challenge. I should do something like.. 3 sketches a day for a month or something. This is summer! I'm supposed to have all this free time, but I admit, I'm really caught up in making plans, and then anticipating them going into action. I'm trying to get a job, I'm a mod on GSM, I signed up to counsel at a camp for a week in July, and the anticipation makes it hard to start something that would claim any of my time. I end up doing something easy like play *coughPokemonDiamondcough* where I can just veg for a couple hours. Also having my sisters around all the time is very distracting. I'm not lacking ways to use my time, no. My problem is purely priorities.
Today is the day. One sketch before I relax. And maybe one sketch before Bed. *Determined Nod*
Makenai!

New website

2009-06-09T10:56:00.000-07:00

I just finished making the first draft of a website for myself. I used wix.com which is a free hosting website that provides you with an editing tool just for flash websites. They give you templates to customize, and they let you start from scratch too. Anyway, here's the link to my little corner of the internet.
Http://wix.com/Beckypenn/Art
Enjoy, such as it is, and comment with any suggestions.

Silly stuff

2009-05-30T11:50:00.000-07:00

The use of my time =) Lol, at least I drew something! :P
And I used my webcam for something.

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Update: Ok yay, now I'm currently working on this:

2009-05-20T13:37:00.000-07:00

http://us.gosupermodel.com/profiles/?id=443657

The Dragon. such as it is...

2009-04-08T13:41:00.000-07:00

This is the finished product, I suppose. Haha, I'm really not sure what else to do with it. I changed all the colors around from the original... because I could. No sooner had I hit submit than 3 people had already added it to their favorites on D.A. I hope it looks half decent to you all. I spent a few months beating around doing this, and I even got really sick in the process. this was definitely a labor of love.

*curtsy* Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Love, Born4catz

2009-03-23T17:34:00.000-07:00

Ok, so here's an update with what I'm up to. I finally stopped whining about the stupid dragon and reading and practicing and EVERYTHING. I finally just did it. Here's some photos of my sister's bed (hehe, I liked the lighting in her room better.) where I was working on this. Hopefully I will have this finished by the end of the night, if that's not too ambitious.

Markers are lovely

2009-02-03T14:07:00.000-08:00

Well blog fans, (and those reading the RSS on Facebook) remember I promised you some sketches? I'll fit a few into this post, goodness knows I never say much.

First, I'll start with my silly little marker chart, I took an inventory of all the markers at my disposal. Copics and Prismacolors as well as some Neopikos. That was right around Christmas, before my new order arrived. I was given a gift by my loving parents of one 72 marker set, or the equivalent if I wanted to pick them out individually.

Seeing as it was Christmas and my favorite seller Oozak.com was selling out, there wasn't much left to choose from. So I opted for picking my own batch. I ended up spending way less that way too because I didn't order anything in excess.

I decided to try out the WIDE Copic markers this time, I had been interested in them for a while and wanted to see if they would help me out with my larger sizes of rather absorbent paper and all.
I also purchased two refills for some of my current markers. one color had run out a while ago because it was so useful that I depleted it just a couple months after purchasing them the first time. (2005?)
and the second was a color I anticipated using for almost everything as well, so that was a preventive measure.

I also purchased TWO bottles of the colorless blender because its always useful no matter what drawing you are working on.

SPEAKING of "working on" if you recall my "dragon" design from goSupermodel (a couple entries ago) I have actually started working on the real thing.
It's coming along, but Dragons are NOT easy! Especially since my brother's iguana ran away and I don't have a model. I always try to draw from my imagination but I suppose the best artists use some helpful things. I always tried to be independent of any tools other than pen and paper, I felt raw talent should be my guide since I could never cheat that way, I suppose that's why all my drawing perception is a little OFF, and why I can move quickly most times. I try to take it seriously and perfect it but I can be a little sloppy.
So I'm still waiting for my dragon inspiration, be it from some photo or from my head. I can't wait to finish it though, I will feel so much better.

I've done it again...

2008-12-30T17:28:00.000-08:00

I really loved the sketch for this one, but I was just messing around so I did it on ratty paper, haha you'd think I'd have learned by now. :P

Emily helped me with a lot of my color choices and stuff, I'm pretty happy with it :)

My parents ordered me $120 worth of Copic Marker supplies from Oozak.com; A good idea since the prices are going up soon, but in all my searching.. that is the BEST site to order from in the U.S. They should arrive tomorrow, I'm excited about that; that also means I should be getting a lot of drawings finished really soon. (I have a few ideas sketched already) ;)

see you soon!

Check it out...

2008-12-12T09:54:00.000-08:00

Just finished this "design" on goSupermodel hehe, that was really fun to do! It's so easy to use the site instead of making my own drawings, I feel quite guilty that i only have to come up with hair, clothes, and background, I get to skip the brain frying caused by anatomy and dynamic poses, and avoiding mediocre repetition.
Fear not, I have still been sketching, it just hasn't been scanned.
Actually, this site has come in handy! I can quite easily take my clothing and background designs and make a full picture out of it, spending less time coming up with the ideas and more time executing them!
Bit of a lifesaver in the long run. So there you go, hopefully you can expect a "FULL version" of the above picture coming to a website near you soon!
Happy Holidays! (and an early Merry Christmas! <><)

Getting a little sidetracked...

2008-10-26T21:08:00.000-07:00

Okay, to prove that I haven't spent all of my time playing World of Warcraft.. I'll show you what my little sister got me into: (don't laugh too much >_<) It's a site called GoSupermodel.com they basically give you a digital paper doll that you can dress up with clothes you buy using "GoMoney" which they give you when you play games. (if that sounds time consuming ... it is.) By far the best part of the site is they give you the undressed paper doll to DRAW clothes onto using their "designer" game :) and you can make them look like anything you want! (my first design was an empire waist dress ala pride & prejudice - pictured here) then you submit them for approval (and pay a fee of 10 gomoney) and a few hours or a day later its automatically listed under your model's name. It's all mostly 8 year olds playing around, but also i've run into some older ladies and even 16-17ish girls who are future graphic designers; using the site for practice!
Good clean fun is what it is, and how often do you get that anymore? Plus it's something my little sis and I can enjoy together :-3 and it's not like I haven't been drawing at all XP I'm just saved the trouble of drawing anything but clothes and sometimes hair bwa ha ha ha ha XD
my designs have gotten better too, here's my version of galadriel (some downsides are #1 no male models and #2 when you design they give you the box surrounding the model to work with, and then surround it with a HUGE frame of empty space : / it takes some imagination and illusionary work to make it all seamless)
two more I'll share with you are my Alphonse Mucha tribute, and my Marie Antoinette
ciao! :)

Wow computers are not smart after all...

2008-10-06T22:22:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the flagged page at the beginning, somehow the computer thinks my blog is for spam.
I'm currently waiting for a real human to review and vouch for it...
<_<

NYAF

2008-10-04T16:13:00.000-07:00

On to the festival!
I gave the second weekend pass to my sister Emily (that was a no-brainer) she's 14 months older than me and we are into all the same stuff. We spent the whole week shopping for something cool to wear, I almost wore cat ears but couldn't find any decent ones.

My brother Matt came to take photos for me, and he brought his friend Mark with him who is a video game concept artist, so there was something for everyone!

We got into the city by bus on Saturday and ended up at a Mcdonalds where apparently everyone was on lunch break from the convention! (hehe) the place was packed with cosplayers! Pretty impressive stuff!

We headed over to the Javits center and Matt and Mark got their tickets and we went inside and saw even more cosplayers. One girl was dressed as the main character from digi-charat (FLAWLESS COSTUME!) and I saw a bunch of Bleach's Ichigos running around...
and I was really happy to see some Sailor Moon cosplayers too; nice to know people still appreciate the old skool hehe!

I stopped by the Del Rey Manga booth to say hi and chat about the contest and thank them another million times hehe!
They gave me a slap bracelet, a suvudu.com sticker and a Phoenix Wright foam gavel haha! My brother had fun hitting me with that one. *bonk*

I saw a bunch of stuff I wanted to buy but I didn't have any money! haha ^_^'
Too bad, that Mokona backpack would have been perfect...
I saw SO MANY talented artists selling their artwork too! I wrote down the name of a fellow DeviantArt member named Pallid.
VERY cool stuff! By the time we got done seeing everything there my feet were killing me and it was time to go get dinner and head home.
I really wanted to go back on Sunday afternoon for the art workshops but I caught a bad cold!! What a cool Festival though, I would definitely like to go next year! And seeing all the amazing artists there made me really want to work on my own talents and be as good as they are! Maybe someday that will be me selling drawings!

Http://Born4catz.Deviantart.com

Prizes and Tickets

2008-09-29T15:50:00.000-07:00

Ok so you know that I was one of the four grand prize winners of the SUVUDU.com Anime self portrait contest right? Well let me tell you all about it!
They sent me the package with my tickets and they sent me 3 manga one of them is xxxHOLiC which I have been interested in checking out for a while (it's CLAMP! who wouldn't??) so I was especially giddy when I saw the BONUS prize was a xxxHOLiC DVD!
I watched the entire thing in one sitting, and I'm addicted to the theme song now.

Http://Born4catz.Deviantart.com

So there's this contest...

2008-09-22T15:45:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I was browsing facebook and on the side of the page there was a banner for the NY Anime Festival, it said something about drawing and something else about a contest! so I clicked the link.
As I read the details I found out that it was for people to send an Anime-Esque self portrait, plus a regular photo of yourself to suvudu.com's email address.
and what do you win? 2 weekend passes for the festival!
wow! I thought, that's totally me! (I had just doodled a picture of myself earlier that evening) and I have always wanted to go to an anime convention/festival!

so the following day I got to work on a picture. I wanted to make it NON-scribbly and not too comical either. I didn't want it to look like simple paper.
what i aimed for was something along the lines of my pirate copeland drawing
since that is my most animated looking drawing.
I had a few ideas, and normally my personality would turn out determined and funny.... but I wanted it to be pretty because I like pretty things
and because of my alias Born4catz I incorporated a cat into it.
I spent all day and into the evening on it, adding bit after bit. then I worked on the background and when I looked at the clock in triumph feeling great that I was finished it said 1:00am. I thought OH NO! WHAT WAS THE DEADLINE AGAIN??
according to the rules the deadline was "midnight the 18th" I'm like... what does that mean?!?!!
so I sent it in with a sense of failure having come out of it with a drawing that doesn't entirely look like the true me.

a few days went by and I tried to forget about it. This morning I even changed my default picture on facebook back to a photo rather than the drawing.
then, while watching sailor moon with my sisters I saw the little gmail box on firefox said 1.
here i am thinking "hmm probably spam like e.l.f. cosmetics or south beach diet. but just maybe... we'll see."
so I clicked the button and the screen loaded. the title said Congratulations from SUVUDU!
we all kinda cocked our heads to the side thinking spam?
and then I was like huh?
and then I realized I had won SOMETHING I just wasn't sure what, I thought it was like a manga or something. I thought oh yay I didn't miss the deadline after all!
Then we saw the words GRAND PRIZE and we had to read the email 5 times before it sunk in.
YES it is true, I am one of the four grand prize winners who actually get to GO to the New York Anime Festival!!!!!
I can't believe it! I'm so excited and looking forward to going! Me and my sister, hopefully my brother will buy a ticket! And I will tell you all about it!!! I feel so lucky It's hard to imagine how I got here, that drawing isn't even amazing *dies*

Http://Born4catz.Deviantart.com