Busy, Busy

I apologize for not having updated here in quite a while! I have been rather busy this Fall with self promotion, working still at the Cleaners, and attending school. I just want to take a moment and tell you that I really appreciate your support and interest in what I am doing and how I am growing, it means more than you know and I am very excited and eager to bring you all new work to see! 

     This Fall I tabled at two conventions and attended Creative Talent Networks Animation Expo down in Burbank, CA all within three months of each other.

     I printed my first comic and sold it at both Alternative Press Expo and at East Bay Alternative Zine Fest. In between those conventions was the CTN Animation Expo which I learned quite a bit from and am eternally grateful for the wonderful people I met there and the advice I received. This has been the first time I have really put myself out there and you all made me feel like I was welcomed into a family with open arms. Thank you, truly. 

So here is some art to look at for the time being as I need to get back to work on finals. 

Those who attended EBABZ Fair probably remember this ugly thing just as well as my classmates in my Illustration 2 class. I created a print of this guy and was selling him for $10. I still have four left if anyone wants one, so just let me know in a comment or an email. I'll be posting this up in my online store this weekend. 

If you have been following me on Twitter or Instagram you have probably seen these really stupid characters I've been doing under the hashtag #MuniPeople.

"Muni People" is a series that I started a few months ago when I forgot to bring a book with me to read on the train and noticed a large fellow with lots of freckles and bushy red hair standing over me. I went home and sketched him as a warm up for another project and I loved drawing him so much that now I have about 40 of these little buggers and I have plans of making a book and hopefully showing them at a gallery in the city someplace. The ultimate goal for me was to practice character design and what I hope you find is that when you see these characters either up on my website or at a gallery someplace you can find yourself in one of my many drawings!

So anyway, to spawn from that series I had a friend message me that he would like to commission me to illustrate a portrait of him in the same manner as my Muni People. So here it is! 

Thank you so much for viewing and thank you for your continued support! Once I am able to rest and get back to normal.. (clean the house, do some laundry, pay bills, take out recycling, eat properly, etc) I'll post more here and update you on my new comic and post a few assignments I'm pretty darn proud of. 

Everything is coming together. 

Cheers!

"Days of Summer" Challenge

Recently, not too recently, I joined my buddy Adam's Pin-Up Challenge. There are a couple of really great artists on there and the challenges are monthly(?).

This was my submission. Granted this is not a pin-up, but it got the point across of my distaste for San Francisco's "Summer". 

There is a lot happening in this, a lot of exploring and many things that worked and many that didn't. All in all I spent a lot of time fiddling with this for the outcome to be sub-par to what I had wanted, but I learned quite a bit from finishing it and not just tossing it aside. 

Good times, c'est la vie. 

ADVENTURE TIME!

Our Comic Book Club at AAU has been doing these weekly drawing challenges and I recently decided to take part. This weeks challenge was ADVENTURE TIME!!!

I almost didn't enter into this challenge because I rarely can come up with anything clever for this. Seeing as how I've been a little home sick in this cold weather, that San Francisco names its Summer, I noticed a lot of my work has been resembling warm weather like back home. 

This drawing is special to me because of that reason and I created this Adventure Time piece with my yearning in mind. This piece resembles a certain suntan lotion I grew up using and the illustration on the front is rather iconic. Let me know if you can guess it! 

Cheers!

Our Family

Final

In July Nima and I moved in together and took over my sister and brother-in-laws apartment as they are now in New Zealand for a year or so. We also have been taking care of their bunny named Herman. Together we have become a close family and his mom, my sister, visits once a month from work so he always has a chance to see her. 

This is a quick little illustration I did showing how we all fell asleep together this evening. I am trying a lot of new things here including a new program. It was a fun and useful exercise even if I didn't achieve exactly what I had hoped with this. 

 Here is some of my process if you care to see it. :)

Cheers! 

Instagram Stuff

I feel so weird addressing all you anonymous but more than likely non-existent I guess "fans" of my drawings and bits but here it goes.

Working on #Herman

I HAVE INSTAGRAM! I have had it for a while thanks to my sister who informed me of it's existence and now I can't stop playing around with it.

#MuniPeople

For me it's a fun little unlimited creative exercise where you gain immediate feedback. I really enjoy that you simply have a square format to work with and a few filters to choose from, or not, to emphasize your image. It's a great way to get your work out there and it's linked to twitter, tumblr, facebook, etc.

#MuniPeople

Also you get exclusive previews of my series #MuniPeople

Panels from #Herman!

Star of the comic Herman himself!

So if you aren't already instagram-ing and you're an artist of sorts or even if you are a visual person you should join us in instagrm! Mind you there are those annoying pictures of some girl in her bathroom with over a thousand likes for no reason and random photos of upcoming child celebrities but aside from that there are some really incredible visual artists who utilize this the same way I do.

Cheers!

The Budos is Upon You!

Here is a mini comic (2pgs) that I did for NoisePop SF 2012.

I was looking through my comics folder to see what I have done over the past year and I have grown astronomically in my skill set and story telling. Crazy! I'll show you what I'm talking about soon. 

Cheers!

Alternative Press Expo 2012 TABLE 854A!!

Come find me at APE and say hello! I'll be debuting my first new comic HERMAN as well as some prints and other things! 

Cover Image?

I ended up spending some time creating this compilation of sketches I had in my sketchbook and started to play around with them.. Turned out to be a lot of fun, learned that making a multiply layer makes my life easier and faster! 

Thoughts on making this my banner image for my blog? Anyone?

Toned Paper

Please ignore the large donut shaped person!!

The well dressed gentleman in this drawing was a kid I sat next to/near whilst bleeding empathy for how cool he was and deeming myself utterly unworthy of being his *pew mate.  I sadly hav forgotten his name but I shall not forget his sense of style or how my jaw dropped when he told me of his success. Three degrees I believe it was, civil engineering, something else, and now architecture. He new everything there was to know about every car ever created, he knew everything about films from director, to photography managers, to actors/actresses, to the drama that happened on set. I'm pretty sure he was just a walking encyclopedia of suaveness. Another thing- other artists will love this- his profile.. DID NOT MATCH HIS FRONTAL VIEW! It was like a whole other person. (which is kinda why and how we met)

NOTE: *our class was in a church, we sat in pews

This is just a sketch done on toned paper while at work. Was pleased with how the copic marker created a shadow. I'm trying to play with various styles. 

Foam Mustache

Here is a self portrait I did while waiting for a friend to discuss a webcomic we will be producing this fall. Inks by hand, color in photoshop. Will post more tomorrow as I near the end of my comic production on Herman and send it to print. If you'd like a book but wont be attending Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco let me know and I will make arrangements with you! :) I will be posting some work from the comic up here soon. For the time being, I am very active on instagrm- follow me @briespiel

Cheers!

Here's a Banana to Tide You Over..

A big apology is in order to my two followers and my mother. I have been absent from this blog for quite some time and I am working to change that right now. I have a lot to show you and I promise you wont be disappointed. Over the course of the past.. jesus, six months or so, I have been working really hard and have beaten myself senseless with color theory, line technique, and story. I'll go into that more as I post evidence of aforementioned. 

Until then, here is a banana as my morning warm-up. 

I must say, after taking four weeks to find a good download agent (that's what it's called, yeah?) I finally have acquired the Adobe Creative Suite 6 and it is suh-wee'heet! I am loving the brushes and the user interface in Photoshop. Haven't tried to mess with the other stuff yet, but I promise you I will make my very first gif EVAR! (ya'know, because I'm totally tech savvy and have made gifs that have been featured all over reddit and what have you)

ANYWAY ENJOY YOUR BANANA, YEAH?!

Got into doing some head studies with a big thanks to my buddy Freddie for making the stand for me! This has been rather helpful as well as therapeutic when I feel the walls caving in. I'm using two references that are not the same girl but the head shape in this Ethiopian tribe seems to be rather similar.

DMV Sketch

So here is a sketch of my friend Daniel, or DMV. (Which are both his initials and precisely fitting for how you feel after dealing with him.)

Didn't want to leave you empty handed as I sort out my enormous work load I am catching up on. I need to take *actualgoodpictures* of some work before I post it up here and I will have possible three or four comics up by Tuesday that will most likely be teaser pages and a link to MY NEW WEBSITE! (finally)