museum drawing

For the first time in God knows how many months, I actually took a whole day off work! What a wonderful Sunday! I did this drawing from a statue at The Art Institute of Chicago. (Well, it's from a photo of a statue. We were with a few friends so I didn't do any drawings in the museum.) I REALLY needed the day off and am so glad I did! (will try to do this more often!)

Super Kiss!

It looks like I unintentionally have a Valentines theme going on here!
Well, Happy Valentine's Day I guess. ;)

Heart

I drew this for a friend's birthday gift ^.^ 

Facebook Page!

Catherine and I created The Art of Catherine and Sarah Satrun page for ourselves on Facebook! It's just one more step of things we're doing to gear up for our table at C2E2 in April. Please "like" us if you do! We're planning on getting a website up eventually, but our workload has prevented us from barely looking into it at the moment. In the meantime, for new artwork, news on projects, news on a future online store, and more fun, please "Like" us on Facebook! Remember to click "Add to Interests Lists" otherwise it won't show up on your news feed. Thanks for all the followers! ^.^

seal

I've been drawing a lot for a few jobs, but until I can post anything, please enjoy this little seal ;)

Stop Working For Free!

Here is a great rant by the ever so talented Stephen Silver that I just have to share here (in addition to all my other social media sites). Please watch this short six minute rant:

Stephen Silver: “Stop Working For Free!”


Catherine and I occasionally get asked to do free work. In some situations, like artist collaboration or charity/good causes, it's totally acceptable, but in most cases it's big corporations who are profiting off of starving artists. This is WRONG! Do not do this! It drives down prices and shows little to no respect for artists. My favorite quote from this rant is, "For me, in order to do that drawing that you need, even if it takes me ten minutes to do, you know, the reality is, it's taken me FORTY YEARS and ten minutes to do because of all my experience...." This is so true! I have given my entire life from as long as I can possibly remember towards improving as an artist. That means taking classes even still to this day, and really sacrificing having much of any social life or down time. Besides, why would I do something for free for someone else when I have a million things of my own I am dying to find time to work on?! My time is worth a lot and I will only work with clients who respect me as an artist. Don't waste time on people who don't show you respect!


Update: Stephen Silver is now starting a series of videos on business matters such as this. Here's the next one: Protect You Art Career 2

Guardian Angel

Poison Ivy

Here's a more finalized drawing from the sketch I did last month. I think I might make it in to a final illustration later for C2E2. Or just keep it sketchy? hmmm.... thoughts?

It was REALLY nice taking a bit of time for my own drawing, especially fan art! I need to make more time like this more often. ;)

Artist Alley Table

Good news! Catherine and I will have a table in artist alley at C2E2 April 26-28! C2E2 is Chicago's Comic Con. For several years, people having been urging us to have a table, so we're finally going to go for it! We will be selling art prints and hopefully necklaces with our artwork printed in it. This is the first time we are ever publicly selling our artwork (besides a few art shows) We also want to set up a website and an online store. (Work keeps us super busy, so we may not get everything done in time. That's fine because this is our first year and we are feeling it out.) If we enjoy this whole artist alley experience, next year we will print an artist book. This will be fun and nerve-wrecking at the same time!! If you're in the Chicagoland area, please come by and say hi! Thanks!

Here's a photo from last year's convention. We look very disheveled at the end of that day. haha. If you haven't been to it, I highly recommend it. ;)

Poison Ivy Sketch

Happy New Year! 

I have been absolutely jammed packed busy for the past few months with almost zero time to sketch for myself. Here's one quick sketch I did at my parents' house a few days before Christmas. (The other sketches I did were for a job, so no more posts!) Hopefully I will have more time for my personal work in the very near future. Catherine and I are wrapping up a handful of jobs right now, but also and in negotiations with a handful of other interesting and possibly exciting job possibilities down the road. 2013 will be an interesting year! Fingers crossed! I wish anyone reading this great happiness in 2013! May it be a great year for everyone! :)

Character Rigging

I've been meaning for the absolute longest time, to post screen grabs of what the network looks like in Toon Boom Harmony. This is a character rig I built for a personal project. 

For non animators, I don't even know how to quite describe this to you. This is not for hand drawn animation, obviously. This is a character "puppet" rig. For each part of the character, there is a module for that piece and then they all have to hook up to pegs. Then I added a lot more technical things to this to make it work just right. For example, if the arm goes over the body, an outline appears so that the arm doesn't get lost over the body color. I did the same with the flower in her hair and got really crazy with the modules. It's a lot, but it works very nicely! Yes, it's far more technical than Flash, but once you know it, it's far superior! During Christmas break I am hoping to find a few days to animate. Several jobs and potential jobs have been keeping me really swamped.