SPX figure drawing (NSFW), and Luke's bday (very SFW)! (Patreon)

Hey, Art Nerds! We couldn't find a model for drawing last night, so in lieu of that, I have this weird combination of images to share with you: figure drawings from our workshop at SPX a couple weeks ago, and two things I made for Luke for his birthday: a terrible "cake" and a ridiculous "card!"

First, the figure drawings. I only drew a little bit during our workshop this year, because I was busy truncating the pose schedule mid-session (we had less time than we thought we did!).

If you remember the last time I guided a session like this, the workshop involves letting the participants free-draw the model for some short poses, followed by the transformation of the model into a character via a turnaround, which they use then as a guide for the remaining poses.

I let them free-draw for the first poses - 30 seconds, 1 minute, 3 minutes - to warm up, but when we got the 5-minute poses, I asked them to alter the story of the model in some way. Enlarge one body part. Shrink one. Draw the pose with a different MOOD. Change the story.

Then I asked them to maintain the last "story" in the following poses, and then carry that story into the turnarounds.

I chose to make our model Babs look insecure and worried, which was difficult to maintain when they struck the turnaround pose, which was this confident, strong classic pose with one hand on their hip and their head raised high!

But I managed to keep it going!

After that we had some 5-minute poses to draw based on the turnarounds we drew. The insecure "story" I wanted to portray mostly showed in Babs's face, but also pulled their shoulders up closer to their face to support the emotion.

It was a fun challenge, but I think next time I'm going to follow my own guidance and change the body SHAPE instead of just the emotion

Here's a photo of me and Babs with two of my Comics Accountability Club pals (Maddie & Shannon) on the left, and an artist Babs knew on the right, showing off their art from the session!

Okay, next up... cake. I wasn't going to show anyone this, because it turns out SO MEDIOCRE, but maybe you'll be inspired to try cake art if I show you my worst, right?

Luke and I have been watching Alien Earth as its episodes come out, so I was itching to do an Alien themed cake for him this year. I decided it'd be easier to make cupcakes that look like xenomorph eggs than to try to make a big iced illustration on a sheet cake (I'm always delusional about my icing abilities, which are objectively bad).

Instead of just doing cupcakes and leaving them cupcake-shaped, I...

... carved them up and reordered them to be more egg-shaped. The big bummer about this is that it's glutenous Funfetti cake, which means that all the little pieces I sacrificed to make ten egg shapes couldn't go directly into my gluten-free mouth.

While I'm bad at applying icing, I pride myself on coloring icing. I wanted the color to be a subdued blue, but still more fun than blue-grey. I was pretty happy with the fleshy pink color I mixed up, too! I iced each egg blue on the bottom, and most of them red/pink on the top...

Now, what you CAN'T see is that I mixed up a separate, moldable buttercream icing "clay" to create the folded-over flaps of the egg openings... and I mixed the "clay" to the exact same blue color as the blue icing. Look. You can't even tell they're separate icings. (I'm blowing on my fingertips right now.)

Voila!

Pretty mediocre! The hatching face-huggers looked like they died before they had a chance to bolt out from their eggs. But Luke liked it a lot, and that's all that mattered.

For his card, I wanted to incorporate Quetza (duh). During his first couple weeks here, Quetza wasn't super into using his own legs, so Luke was frequently walking around with this hairless puppy tucked under his arm. So I wanted to draw him as one of those purse-dog-carrying fashion girls.

I had big plans for this recently-acquired feather boa someone was getting rid of. I laid down pink marker where I wanted the fluff to go, cut some pieces off, and...

... miraculously did not ruin the whole thing when I Gorilla Glued it down. Nor did I ruin my fingers!

And to round out this Luke/Quetza appreciation section of the post, here's a photo of the two of them looking quite handsome:

There's a happy 44-year-old and his 4-month-old puppy. Thanks for reading; we'll have a model for figure drawing next week!