Mission Comics

During my mission, I would draw little comics about funny things that happened or could happen. Most of them have only been seen by me because they're just in my sketchbook, and frankly aren't all that great drawing-wise--most of them were just quick one-off things that I didn't spend alot of time on. But a couple weeks ago when I was going through my sketchbooks I thought, why not post these? They're kinda fun, and if they're not drawn all that well, whatever.

So. Here they are. I just took pictures of them using my computers camera and fixed them in photoshop by playing with the levels and brightness and contrast, and when that didn't work I just traced over them, so all the bad drawing and sketchiness is mostly preserved. So.

Me:Why don't we tract somewhere really far away so we have an excuse to sit in a trike for a long time?
WALK, WALK, WALK, THAT IS THE SECRET.

This one doesn't need much background. Missionaries walk alot. In the Philippines there are tricycles that will take you places much faster than you can walk there :-).

Our mission song was to the tune of "In Our Lovely Deseret," with the chorus that goes, "Hark! Hark! Hark! 'tis childrens music" but in the mission version we sang, "Work, work, work, that is the secret!" Except walking is actually the secret.

 "You know, hand washing laundry really makes you think about whether you actually got something dirty." 

That looks like its supposed to be Sister Tumaliuan. She could hand-wash laundry much faster than me. Actually, all my companions could.

So no washers for clothes is a problem. But in a hot place like the Philippines, no dryers should be no problem, right? Well, the Philippines has a rainy season, where it seriously rains for days on end. And your clothes NEVER. GET. DRY. And yes, we actually did this.

 "So, whats our goal this week for lessons punted?"

From converstaions with other RMs, it seems that different missons have different terms for things. We said "punted" when an investigator (or whoever) we had an appointment with wasn't there. Or was hiding.

 I drew this one when Sister Marzan was my companion. She had a bunch of EFY music that she would play when we were at home. Most of it I liked. But there was this one song... it was SO ANNOYING. It was pretty much the cheeziest song ever. The chorus went "I'll pray for you and you'll pray for me..." I'm afraid I usually groaned really loudly when it came on. I also might have skipped it a few times.

Computer: Dear Sister Bowthorpe, You will be giving a 2 hour workship in Zone Con next week. Good Luck.

 So one week when President Peterson was still pretty new in the mission, he really liked one of the weekly letters I wrote. I can't even remember exactly what I said, or what he said. I hadn't even ever met him in person at this point. But he replied to my letter, and said (hopefully sarcastically) that I might as well be the one to teach the workshops in the upcoming zone con. Not quite sure of president's class of humor, I didn't know how seriously to take this. All that ended up happening was he made me and Sister Tumaliuan practice teach in front of everybody. But it didn't last two hours, fortunately.

 Sister Tumaliuan: Ayos Ka Lang? (Are you ok?)
Me: Mamatay ako sa init. (I will die of the heat.)

It gets really hot in the Philippines. And humid.

Little Spider: Rawr.
Me: You're not worth the energy.

 Sister Solamillo was was kind of amused by my obvious fear of the seriously huge spiders there were in our apartment. After seeing those, "normal" sized spiders just aren't that scary.

 Sis. Sola: So, what do you want to eat?
Me: ANYTHING but rice.
Sis. Sola: So, who do you want to fast for?
Me: Gnnnnnn

So, Filipinos eat alot of rice. And funnily enough, my trainer Sis. Sola ate more rice than any of my later companions. Rice for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and dessert. Well, maybe not always snacks. But basically, if you aren't eating rice, you aren't eating.

This is me, trying to figure out how to eat uncut meat with a spoon and a fork--the Filipino way. You mean I don't get a steak knife? How am I supposed to eat this?



There may be more of these to come, since there were some in other sketchbooks that I don't have here right now.

This week--red rocks!

This week I combined two things I'm not very good at--landscape/environments, and photoshop. So its no wonder that I'm not yet satisfied with it. It still looks really... photoshoppy. Ugh.

The reason I'm stopping know is that my hand hurts, and I really need to give it a break. So. I think maybe my art for next week will be edits on pieces I've done in the past few weeks (including this one) rather than an entirely new piece... but we'll see.

This is based on a photo from a trip my family took to Southern Utah. I didn't go on the trip, but I still liked the picture.

More art.

So I've just been posting all kinds of things here in the past week or so. Probably because it's finals season, and I've been finishing off some projects. But alot of the stuff I've been posting have been personal things.... so I dunno. I've just had a really productive streak I guess.


I'm being done with this one because my hand hurts. I have a tendency to squeeze a tablet pen, but not a regular pen or pencil or paintbrush. This makes painting things in photoshop problematic. This was started as an oil painting, then brought into photoshop to finish the details. I still want to finish the oil painting, but for now, here is the finished-in-photoshop version:

Grumpy Mark Twain progress photos

Today, I had my Illustration 5 final--only 1 more final to go, hooray! For the final, we had a "rush job", to kind of simulate a job that would have only about a 2 day turnaround, which happens sometimes in illustration. Yesterday we were emailed our "prompt" photos, one of which was this:

Hello, Mark Twain!
So for the assignment, we were supposed to use the prompt image but incorporate another object as well to show something about the person. So I looked at the photo and started brainstorming.
He looks kinda grumpy, I thought. Why is he grumpy?
Well, what makes me grumpy? When I'm trying to read and someone comes and TALKS to me, is what.
So I put together my reference photo.

It makes me laugh.

Then, painting. I took photos periodically throughout the process, just to see how it looked. Because sometimes when I'm almost done with a painting, I forget what it looked like before.

Many people seem to try to get a very accurate drawing before diving into paint. However, drawing is my weakness, while painting is my strength. So I tend to skim over my weak point to get to what I can actually do well.

Once I got the mustache in it started to actually kinda look like Mark Twain.

Finished! Then, I brought it into photoshop...

And there he is--grumpy Mark Twain!

And the actual painting part of it took about 3 hours--not bad!

Mistborn cover, and arguments with photoshop

I've painted a few things in photoshop. Honestly, I still don't really love photoshop. When I'm painting, I want to, like, PAINT. You know, with brushes and turpentine and canvas and that kind of stuff. As much as you can play around with the brushes and layers and filters in photoshop, I still miss my paint.

I'm trying to develop a better relationship with photoshop. This is what we were able to do together. Not that great... I am very not satisfied with it, but... its coming maybe? Meh. Maybe I'll just be the illustrator who does huge oil paintings instead of jumping on the digital bandwagon.

Chracters, etc. belong to Brandon Sanderson, the art is mine. Thanks to Brooke for being my awesome model. 

A Sensational Team

Elizabeth Wein is one of my favorite authors. I couldn't wait for her newest book to come out in the US, so I ordered a copy from the Book Depository. And then, as I tend to do, produced a piece of fanart. I haven't worked a whole lot in photoshop lately, so this was just me kind of trying to figure it out all over again. Characters of course (c) Elizabeth Wein, art (c) me.

Ghost Girl

Another assignment in my Digital Painting class. We could do anything halloween themed, and I wanted to try painting something transparent, so... here it is.