Merri's New Ref // Plans....

Plans first, since the new ref is highly NSFW.

I'm going to give this thing a revamp if it kills me.  Just read a very nice guide on how to make a not-ugly-blog and it's kind of pointing a big finger at me saying "just redo it already!"

Problem is, I can't really decide what theme to go with next.  I'd like to keep it a little dark, but, I don't know.  I also would like to keep the purple in place, but I want it to be tasteful, not *too* searing, and readable.  Is this readable?

The header HAS to go, thinking I may take some of the photo paper I use sometimes and make a header out of that.  

In other news I finally wrote up the specs for the zine I want to do, it's still open participation, still encouraging queer contributors/content, still haunted-themed.  I just need to make sure the other person helping put it together agrees with the guidelines, and I'll post it.  I'm still looking for a cover.  May do the whole photo paper thing again, paint a ghost on...I'm not sure.  I'll think on that for a while.  May also ask a friend who paints cool ghosts who was planning to contribute if she'd like to make or otherwise provide a piece for a cover.

We shall see!

I still want to do all the things I've been doing or well...trying to do.  that is, the inspirational sunday, feature friday.  I want to start doing some fashion posts too.  I realized recently that just because my high school scared me away from my body and made me think I was awkward and therefore unsuitable for being a photography model for *anything* or doing any hobby acting...doesn't mean it's at all true.  I'd like to start getting into photographing outfits I coordinate again, as I did this for a little while to cheer myself up last fall on a fairly regular basis.  I put a lot into myself and my appearance and shouldn't cut myself short.  May also post the occasional thing about living with an autistic spectrum disorder/condition as I've had to make some choices about my diet lately in order to cope better with my symptoms.  Not enough people, I've seen, come out of the woodwork casually and speak about having autism like it's not some sort of awful curse unless it's an autistic-specific blog, website, etc. and that's kind of sad.  I could provide my own insight as people like me are probably out there wishing more artists and cool people were opening up about coping and day-to-day life.

Now onto Merri's new ref.

Warning: Nudity and adult content under the cut!

9/16/12: Cover Work & Ref for a Friend

Cover for a short story.  A lot of WIP stuff, basically....

So here's the original paper, exposed photo paper with ink over it.  

Original colors on the left, B/W on the right.

And with art added.  Filtered the B/W differently here, different values, cooler grey.

And linework.  Forgot his side strands of his bangs, trying to decide if that bothers me....

And here we go, a reference for a friend of mine who used to be online; her fursona (slightly redesigned/finalized) :)

The design is all her, I provided a bit of input but she made all the calls and the base is completely hers, without my input.

In person the ref will be over two pieces of paper, one for the standard base colors (the cream/red) the other for her alternative color scheme.  Previously the stripes on the blue design had been yellow too but we decided to tone it down and stick with a three-color-scheme for each design.  

I hope she likes it, she hasn't seen it finished yet.

7/23/12: Badges...and a LOT of Darkmoon!

 

 Left: My half of an art part of an art-and-items trade for angryprncess <3 Right: One of two badges for Punkrock-shefox, fancy badge!

Badge for Antique of Yum*Pop, for part of a commission payment.  This badge is done, except for puffy stickers.  I want to scan it when the stickers are on it, but those will only be added after I laminate it since to do so before hand would be certain death for the badge.  It's really cute...y'all will see it soon. :)
It's not scanned yet because I need to wait until I have enough to laminate so I'm not wasting the sheet with only two things on it and a ton of empty space.

 Darkmoon, supplementary for her ref to show her body hair (armpits, crotch, inner thighs, navel) which is very thick and very dark.  Also a vent piece about societal pressures to shave that due to my texture issues (mostly mild except when concerning this) are just impossible for me to give into.  The texture of my own shaved skin is repulsive and appalling to me and shaving is emotionally draining and takes forever due to exactly how thick the hair is.  Most of the time it doesn't deter me from wearing shorts without tights or leggings and mostly others don't critique me anymore, but I've been told I couldn't go on school trips, been teased, singled out etc. by both teachers and peers in school so it's hard for me to shake off paranoia about it.  Also I'm the only one of my friends who doesn't shave and it's galling for me to have to listen to others talk about shaving during the summer.  So, yeah, there's my rant.  Felt good to draw Darkmoon again.
I temporarily had a desk position at work that was really tedious and repetitive so I did some sketching...this, the badges above, and the work below...the whole post....basically was done at a desk during my lunch breaks and other times when I needed to get away from the task without actually doing anything too engrossing.

So you may remember my Feature Friday about theeverydaygoth, talking about her inspiring me to do a wardrobe cleansing.  I also got back into wearing gothy stuff-I had given up since I felt it didn't look good on me--but then I realized I was being ridiculous and had the right to feel pretty, so I went through my wardrobe and cleaned out a lot of things and resolved to wear my other clothes again.  When I went to see Rasputina in April I got all dressed up for the first time in ages and felt really good and looked really good--that reassured me that I look pretty good in elegant black stuff too.
Supplemental to Dark's ref, these are all outfits I own.
First sketch was the bottom left, by far my favorite.  Put this together for AC.  Hand-dyed pettipants!  Little cute goaty horns are from DMB.
The top left one shows a shirt that my mom and I are pretty sure she made years ago, gave to a thrift store, and I bought it. No joke. XD  Hair clips from the awesome Miss Monster.
Top right shows me in the only short-sleeve blouse I still own, haha.  Put that together for work in the office since I realized I didn't have to wear jeans and tees every day and looked grungy compared to others around me. :I
Bottom right one was the last and I ran out of room and it's my least favorite.  But the caplet is cute.  The bustle skirt is poorly made and the material is cheap and I'm trying to replace it with something better-made.
So a few notes: I layer a lot, wear mostly black, grey, and white, also ivory, also burgundy/wine sometimes, and some purple.  My use of blue is usually muted and rather limited but I have a few blue tops.  I layer a lot, hence the camis and transparent tops.
The crow skull necklace is from Skullery, it's another optional necklace for Darkmoon, but I also have an ankh and a circular chain mail necklace, so in addition to the two on her reference sheet, these are also all daily optionals.  I/she typically wear(s) two at once but one can be worn too.
I'll be making other cute goth sketches in the future as I update my wardrobe and will hopefully be doing fairy kei, lolita, and punk ones.

Warning: Nudity under the cut

This is ALSO supplemental to a ref, but Felix's ref only.  He can have Baphomet features--horns, bat wings, halo, visible chakras, etc.  The wings and horns are transparent/ghostly.  The sigil of Baphomet and inverted crosses aren't part of the form exclusively, rather, some of his many optional tattoos.  Also wax fetish.
Also super inspired by tons of Black Tape For A Blue Girl.

Two badge commissions

First is Moongara's art nouveau standard badge, won via auction on Furbuy :)

Bottled silver ink moon and lettering, shaded with markers to add a flatter look akin to poster work.  I can't find the piece online but I have a large book of art nouveau and arts and crafts work and there's a Mucha poster with this color scheme and stars of David which I used as inspiration for this badge.  Really happy with the results!   

Fancy badge for Magnus!  

I loved the design since lynxes are <3 for me.....and this is so glittery and sparkly IRL!  There's a glitter pen border around the letters and Magnus himself as well as a glow of bluish and regular iridescent media over an ink wash over the original paper since I felt the tag was a little too light.  So happy with the results!

---

Also, sorry I skipped the new blog segments--I've had a lot going on and was out of town over the weekend.  I'm going to try to sit down and do some entries ahead of time to prevent this from happening too often. :P as it is, Feature Friday and Inspirational Sunday may not be weekly.  

5/23/12: Badges, Zines, Etc.

 Have been talking to my friend likelaurels about zine stuff, since I've had little luck finding places suitable to take my art, but moreso having difficulty finding places willing to accept my writing.  Usually it's a question of length.  However if I did my own project length wouldn't matter as much.  We  haven't decided if anything will come of this yet but I hope so and will keep you all posted, writing is as important to me as my illustrative work if not more important.  Also her art is fabulous.  Really, really fabulous.
And now badges. :)

Brightfire's badge!  I'm rooming with her, so excited!  We're doing a trade.  My half got a little scanner-bleached where the neon was (the lettering) and I kind of forgot to make her look like a girl since I was looking at a feral ref...

Anyway, I still like it.  I think it's cute.

This is a standard badge, they're $15 each.  If you go to the commissions page and look down, you can see the themes I offer along with general/unspecific, like this.  Paypal is adkstudioss@gmail.com, if you'd like one email me there :)

Badges for Burgerbaby and her boyfriend!  ALSO roomies!  They're guinea pigs for my Halloween Party themed derp badges (which can also be cosplay, etc. theme).  They're $12 each or two for $20.  This is a couple badge set so they'd be $20.  they hold hands <3 

And some other zine-related news below, as well as an additional piece.

Warning: Adult content involving S/M under the cut!

Resolution--finished, with WIPs!

This was printed out and re-inked/partially re-sketched to add some more vibrant purple. It printed very dully.  Background is stickers and colored pencil and some gel pen....I love black paper, how did I forget this?

So, this shows the nature of their relationships.  Merriweather and Carlos (shown here in her human/main form) have been together for six years, since he got kicked out, but they broke off their engagement/relationship for a while to work on their individual problems and planned to get back together once they felt they could handle a relationship again.  They did so but almost didn’t since they both saw other people too.  So this is recently after they got back together recently and at this point in time of the image…and they’re doing better.

Lindsay is Carlos’ best friend and roommate and offers sound advice and good support on everything she does.  She also has helped Merriweather with his own issues many times and they’re good friends, although not as close as him and Carlos.  He currently lives with some other friends since he’s still working out some things he’d like to get over with before moving in with them again, but normally Merri would live with Lindsay too.

Hence why Lindsay’s face is covered up in favor of them holding hands, I guess.  Glue or something, IDK.  Stars and OTT sweet and puffy stickers, I’m happy <3 Very happy with the outcome, this is my favorite thing so far this year maybe <3

Sketch.

Ink minus Carlos' messed up head.  

MLP ACEOs

I had a pile on my scanner so tonight I'm just going to upload things by theme, starting with MLP!
Those dolls are coming soon I swear!  I need to find a good time to sit down and scan them.  Since I'm running out of scanning/posting steam and not feeling well I'd rather not bother with a lot of tiny cut-out pieces tonight.....
Each is fairly self-explanatory!

Had so much fun working on the Mane Six.  I tried something with each of them too so I was still challenging myself.  I like doing my own take on MLP styles too.  Overall, pleased with this series!

Badge, sketch, and adult ACEO

<3 My BFF and co-owner of nearly all the characters has a birthday coming up and got to be a guinea pig for my 20s photography badges.  This was so fun to make, all my favorite things at once pretty much!  I hope others commission me for them JUST so I can draw more of them, they're so fun.  $15 each, they're standard badges.

A sketch I've had kicking around for a while.  Trying to make more dynamic images, draw more humans, and human/anthro interaction.  Also I wanted to show their relationships through movement and positioning. I think I did a good job.  Transferred and began inking, it'll get purple sketch lines added since I really love how they look.

Kept forgetting to scan/post, it's in my portfolio pile.  A few animals I sketched at the museum.  I love taxidermy specimens...they stay still for you.  the fawn is my favorite.  His/her spots were SO vivid, but the shading I did made it hard to add them.  I originally was going to paint them on later.

Made two months ago (close to when the above was made).  A lot I'm not thrilled with but overallI like it.  I may finish it.  And yes, I do see Baphomet as my preferred way to visualize the universe/nature in a single form of chaos and balance.  Philosophically I'm similar to a LaVeyan Satanist but not exact.  And while I haven't done much yet I have a lot of interest in sigil work and other kinds of magick.  I never thought I'd find faith but hey, look.

This is not meant to be "satanic" or "offensive" imagery. 

Warning: adult content under the cut!

Two more trades!

I finished these a few days ago and never got around to posting them here.
Both for my IRL friend.  I'm really pleased with them.

Fancy badge of Jamilla, her dragon girl, who is rather vain.  She's supposed to be showing off here.  I had fun with the scales...Although I don't want a dragon character myself, I love drawing them for people!

Finished version of her Ayami roller skating.  I tried something with the fish--they were meant to be perfect but then I realized doing them all the same would be a pain and made the print a mistake/print over itself on purpose.  Why not?  It's big in scrap book paper now.  I'm overall happy with how it came out, but next time I decide to try sizing scrap book paper and poster board for something I'll need to play with the end result a little more.  Her foot is centered but the rest of the image isn't (the scan got cropped too) but she was happy and someone said people sometimes mess with things being off on purpose to help it be more visually interesting. In any case, it's at least partially centered.  I'm still very happy with the pose (thanks Posemaniacs) and the outfit and coloring.  :)

Now off to finish my remaining owed items and brainstorm for the MLP project.  I'm currently opening for commissions for badges like Jamilla's for only $10 (9 slots available currently), and for digital sketches of any size/kind for $3 since I need practice (only three slots of those).  Email me at adkstudioss@gmail.com if you're interested. Thanks!

3/17/12: Applejack and Two Trades// TABLET art

I finally cleaned my scanner bed and of course missed a spot :(  Ignore the spot there, it's in two of these scans.

First: Applejack!

First in a series of MLP ACEOs.  They're accompanying the paper dolls (which are close to finished) and so far only will include the Mane Six. In time there'll be Luna, Vinyl Scratch, and possibly some other mares (AND stallions!) added to the series, which means they'll have ACEOs too.  Very pleased with this, I love shading eyes like this too <3

Trade with Plasticrabbits!  

Aaaand trade with vore!

Currently open for any kind of commission including ACEOs, headshots, and badges :O 

Um.  yeah....and I'll be posting lame digital doodles while I adjust to a tablet soon too!  Excited!!

May scan some more WIPs later today, too.  

3/6/12: Badge Trades // Sketchbook Page // Gift

For Kaili!  Used photo paper, totally killed a pen, will have to experiment with tip types to find what works best....

Inked half of a badge trade with Vore.  Mm, zombies. 

Warning: Nudity under the cut!

Fluffpie Badge

Wow, I feel like this has been more empty of late, in terms of WIPs and stuff....

So here, have a cute bunny!

For Conjurecakes, who I just found out is part of my roomiegroup for AC 2012~~ Very excited!  

I'm open for pre-orders and can even mail them if people would prefer, to have before the con. In a way I'd prefer that since I don't have a table.....:/

ANYWAY, it was fun and her badge for me was super cute too!

Fluffpie is the cutest/sexiest rabbit ever I swear.  And utilizes my favorite cutecolors too!

Hoping to do some actual *work* today that I can post besides MLP dolls and sketchbook doodles....hmm, I should probably start scanning my sketchbook pages, but it's mostly anatomical practice that, more often than not, becomes Merriweather masochism.

I still owe two trades that I need to get on, though :) so that should keep me busy.....
Gonna be watching a bunch of Studio Ghibli movies with a friend so hopefully that'll inspire me to do a lot of work.

Badge Experiment no. 2 // help out!// ETSY!

Second one.  Not as pleased as with the first, but I did learn stuff.

I learned never to touch canvas paper again unless I won't be mixing medias.  I also think the linework got a little funky from the texture....but I saved the blending problem and that's what matters, and Sequinox was happy with it.  <3

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Also forgot to mention when I posted this, I have a few people I'm trying to help out.  You may be able to help (w/o cash, omg) too.  Read this journal and this journal, and be sure to spread them around your own blogspot, tumblr, FA, facebook, dA, whatever.
Also I'm going to be actively using my Furbuy account now and I already have one custom adult art auction up. I didn't mention in the description but I'm looking to put at least half of the winnings towards helping out the two people mentioned in the journals above, Cally and Beanz.

I'd really appreciate if you could keep your eyes peeled and tell your friends about all the different things myself and Rae are doing to try to help our friends.

Also I now have an *active* Etsy storefront, check it out!  There's buttons, prints, and--soon--originals.

2/25/11: Badge Experiment no. 1 // Fog Machine

Silence was brave enough to be a guinea pig for a new badge idea I had. I thought that it may be a way to have more fun with my ink and acrylic and pen stuff I've been doing lately.

Avi has mutliple ears...I like drawing characters like that a lot. I've also been way into symbols and sigils a lot lately since that's been my reading in my spare time, so...naturally my brain went, PENTAGRAM AVI :O plus the ears....positioning them was fun!

This started with purple--a small amount. Then I drew the face in with white gel pen and added all the features, the lettering, and the circle outside the figure. Then I added acrylic paint--halo blue gold, dries greenish-blue, looks gold if you tilt it. Then I added india ink, more gel pen over all the areas that got smudged from the paint, and then a different gel pen that adds gloss, over certain areas. Over all the empty areas left in the circle, I added some iridescent medium and then dusted it over the eyes. It's got a really gorgeous blue tinge that looks very nice over the purple.

It didn't take very long--a little over an hour--but I'm thinking with these there may be more of a material cost than time cost for the badge itself. Plus if I screwed up I'd have to start over since there's LITERALLY no sketch in this process. It doesn't show up at all and erasing makes the ink or whatever look funny.

All the materials I use on these come in small quantities and cost quite a bit. The ink is expensive, the iridescent medium is expensive, and the paint--at least, the metallics and other fancy paints--cost a bit too.

I run through india ink very quickly and once I start using others more frequently, I'll run through those too.

This leaves me with no idea of how to price these for a commission.

But at least now I know they WORK!  They curl a little and will need time to flatten so they laminate properly.  I didn't add a lot of paint of course...I know I can't add too much ink or else the paper buckles and gets wavy...but I don't know about a layer of acrylic. This was applied with a small brush. If I did something like this: 

I don't yet know how it would react.

I'm going to try two other badges on a different textured ACEO than what I usually do which may be more resilient for paint. I have one guinea pig/trade spot left if anyone would like it!

I want to try doing four different ones so I can try out different amounts of the medias.

---

Part of a trade with an IRL friend of her character Kim, who is a horror film set designer.  :) I had a lot of fun with this...I ADORE cervines and really loved coming up with an outfit for her that would be fashionable and casual but still horror-themed.  Sweater says "VAMP."

I really like how the fog came out <3

2/22/12: Dog's Blood

Raffle prize for Beanzel of her hellhound character Rage!

I got into the snarly mood by playing some Alexisonfire and Blood Brothers, then whipped this out.  It didn't take long and I think it looks pretty good.  I also tried something new this time.  This is an acrylic base with iridescent medium over it.  After that, I added the ink of the character herself, then decided to add some red gel pen for blood.  That wasn't strong enough so I added several kinds of markers and pens to see what showed up best.  I even tried adding a skintone marker over the character's body to see if it would lend a tan hue (it didn't--added a light layer of colored pencil instead).

Off to do more owed work!

2/21/12: Tear Your Little World Apart // ACEOs

ACEOs first since they aren't partial nude pin-ups.....

Going along with my other ACEO pin-ups, all risque but not adult.  I love Tess, she's so squishy and curvy and cute.  Although her lip may be a little big, but who cares, it's cute.

Only problem I have with this is the darkness of her ears and hands.  Otherwise I think it came out well.

Done to Supervixen by Garbage. :)

A portrait of my cat Harley as a goddess kitty.  I drew this because she likes to sit on my lap while I play Okami--it's her favorite time to cuddle with me, that is, when she's not under the blanket while I'm reading comics.  Anyway, she looks a lot like the cat god and the statues of her(?) throughout the game.  Also, she has very striking markings--opposite half moons.  Some people have told us they look like curling demon horns, but one of my friends pointed out the similarity to the triple goddess symbol.  So thanks to all of that, I drew this.  I don't often attempt backgrounds that actually look like anything and I think the water is way too green-blue for that sunset...but I still like it for what it is.  I added iridescent medium (on the card above too) to make a slightly bluish matte effect on the background, separating Harley from it.  It also made the colors mix a little better.  Also the eyes are kind of too dark.  Blech.  May fix that.

And finally, the piece I'm most proud of right now:

WARNING: Nudity and (slightly) adult content under the cut!

2/15/11: Three ACEOs; One's for V-Day! // Ref & Pin-up WIPs

DON'T FORGET THE RAFFLES: furaffinity.net/journal/3167400/

First, a trade with Brett!

I had a lot of fun drawing this character for him.  Except for the Not-Dog and a few miscellaneous sketches I don't get to draw monstery critters!  I REALLY love how it came out, I had been saving that ACEO for something special since I had colored it a while ago.

It's iridescent IRL so it's super shiny.

TESS!

Meant to go along with the ACEOs I've been doing of my girl characters being sexy.  This one is a little more clean than the others, I guess, since she's the most covered and the material's opaque :P  Gonna do an orange-yellow background.  Make her look all fiery and hot (punny).

WARNING: Nudity and adult content under the cut!

2/4/12: Mr. Hummingbird

ACEO of my dead hummingbird, aptly named Mr. Hummingbird.
I did this with colored pencils, gold and white gel pen for details and additional shading, and water (background).  I REALLY am very proud of how he came out.

1/26/12: MLP Trade final // Ref WIP

Trade with Opossumsrubnoses of their character Gin in her MLP form picking some flowers.  Still not sure how I feel about shading on these guys....

Warning: nudity under the cut.

1/22/11: Trade//Ref//Adult Trade//ACEO

As it says.  Trades, ref, ACEO.

I'm not going to shade my MLPs anymore.  I only did it once.  Here.  I don't like how it looks.  Still, pleased with how it came out in terms of pose...gonna cut it out and rescan.  Trade half with Opossumsrubnoses. 

Lindsay finished.  I used graphite instead of iridescent stuff on the background...Pretty happy with how it looks.  A lot of people draw her with brown patches instead of grey, but the actual breed can have either.  I prefer her with the grey, but it's shown here to be a sort of grey-brown.  Her new ref will come soon, I hope. 

Other trade and ref under the cut. Nudity AND adult content.