Rock n Roller Derby

Bah I can't get these to go in the right order.. Anyway, Em Balmer from roller derby asked me to draw something to go on her website featuring herself and Thumper. She was pretty particular about what she wanted and I didn't have to redo it at all as she was so happy with it first time! Which was ace! I also got paid for it, so it's all-round win win for me :)

SpangleButt McDynamite

Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin.

DRG Booklet

I also made this over the past couple of days, it's for our home roller derby bout booklet. Every booklet has a spread where the rules of roller derby are explained for people who have never watched the sport before, so this is that! Hopefully it's easy enough to understand, and please ignore the shittiness of the screengrab I took from InDesign...

But yeah, it'll be cool to have something *I* drew and designed in a booklet that gets handed out to everyone at the bout! I may frame mine.

Pirates & Rollerskates

Randoms. One drawn just because I needed to draw, the other drawn just before going to roller derby. I made the team! Yesssss.

Roller Derby, Drawing and Me

Holy crap, well apparently I've just missed out the whole of September and most of October... In my defence I did move house and didn't have the Internet until halfway through September, so I have a few bits and bobs to post here.

First to be eternally depressing - this was the first thing I drew after not drawing anything for weeks:

I'm just so chipper.

Then I realised I have no idea how the human body is shaped so I practiced drawing from a photo of a model (I need to do this more often):

That dress was awesome, FYI.

And then we come back to the roller derby stuff, this next one was something I did REALLY quickly for my friend who disturbed me while I was doing my Top Secret DRG logo project one night. She loves Arnie.

And finally, the big finish. I spent forever doing this.. My roller derby team doesn't really have a logo to speak of at the moment, and I felt like we should, so being someone that could draw I decided to take this matter into my own hands without telling anyone and just hope that everyone liked the surprise! It went down really well, and the response has been awesome so far, I'm still not sure if they're going to use it for anything, but it was nice to know that everyone was as happy with it as I was. I'm planning to do a full colour version one day, which shading and stuff, but for now I made a 3 colour one which is easier for printing (if we do decided to print it on stuff). Also, DRAGONS WITH ROLLERSKATES ON.

Tada!

We have our FIRST EVER bout tomorrow in Plymouth and it's going to be rad. I'm not playing but I sure have made some kickass supporting posters!

Hulk Smash

I drew this for a roller derby t-shirt competition. The theme was "roller girls are superheroes", I think I'm probably pushing the boundaries with using the Hulk, but he's KIND OF a superhero. I guess? The prize is 25 t-shirts for your team plus this design being on sale at their shop which would be RAD.

We were only allowed to use up to 3 colours, and I wasn't sure if the background white counted as a colour otherwise her hair would definitely be purple.

Still not really happy with the text, I may redo it (I haven't sent it in to the comp yet), also not sure how well this will translate to a t-shirt printed design, as they use silk screen printers and I think my colouring-in isn't solid enough, or my lines aren't nice enough or blahhhhh.

But it would be so cool to have something I drew on a t-shirt! Fingers crossed.

(OMG also, Hulk Smash. I am Smash. Oh I just kill myself)

Ygritte knows everything.

Ygritte from Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire. She says that a lot. Daily drawings have turned into everyotherday drawings...

Also my new skates came today but I think they might be too small :( I know skates are supposed to be snug but these are super super small, and my toes are all scrunched.. I emailed the website and he said to give it a few days so we'll see. Ho hum. But they're SO PRETTY.

Can't draw arms/hands! STILL!

I've been trying to break away from drawing all neat and "one-line"y lately, and adopting this kind of fast, sketchy style like above - and I really like it. This is more the way I draw with pencil&paper, and somehow it never occurred to me that I could draw with my tablet like it too, but now I can and it feels pretty awesome!

Obviously roller derby. I debated making her a zombie, but then held back. She's just got zombie eyes. Oh, and no arms because I can't draw arms/hands properly and I had no idea what position they should be in, so I just left it. Maybe I'll come back to it later and finish her off. I'm actually really proud of this one, no-one else'll think so, but I like it. I need to look into poses and anatomy more, so maybe I can actually end up drawing a whole person one day.

Speaking of roller derby, I bought new skates last week! Expensive Vanilla Brass Knuckle skates, which need to come from America, but oh god they are so pretty. I just hope they fit, because skate sizing is strange I ordered a size down from my usual size, so fingers crossed I can fit in a 5. If not the site I bought them from has free refunds/exchanges so it's no big deal, but it would be nice for them to be awesome right out of the box! Which means I need to sell my old starter skates, hopefully I can get about £45-50 for them as I bought them for £75 but have properly scuffed them (because I fall over a lot), but they're still good for a rookie.

..And then I drew Sailor Moon! From memory! See what I mean about arms? Eesh.

Roller Derby. Again. I know.

Yes yes, I know, more roller derby. But this was a request! One of THREE requests I have had lately for illustrations for people. I've never had to draw something for anyone before and it's kind of daunting, but exciting. This one will (hopefully) be printed(!) in Lead Jammer Magazine #3 as one of my rookies is writing an article about Fresh Meat for it.

But now my back is killing me. My posture while drawing at the computer is awful, but I can't seem to draw any other way. I need to have my left hand on Ctrl + Z and the tablet has to be in front of me as there isn't any room on the desk for it to be anywhere else. Basically a bigger desk might solve this problem, but alas I have no room. I just need to SIT BETTER.

Super Late Valentine's Day

Oh man I totally forgot to post this one here. It's a tad late but hey at least it exists! FYI this one wasn't about me, I actually wasn't that ragey this V Day (I know, right?), it was mostly about all the other single girls who were filling up my Facebook timeline with anger.

Roller derby is going greeeeeat, I can go pretty fast and I love falling over, but after reading all the things we need to do to pass our minimum skills test I am kind of scared. Leaping over things?! I bought some proper derby skates too! But they haven't arrived yet, which sucks, so I'm still on my lame disco skates for one more week. I also need to buy new laces, new toe guards, new toe stops and new wheels (I'm going for a pink and black theme) but they can wait until the new skates get here I guess! Super excited.

I also went to an InMe gig last night, I haven't seen them live for about 6-7 years and man I just fell in love with them all over again. I was pretty brave and went al by myself but apart from looking like a loser in between support bands it was actually okay. I managed to get a spot right at the front for InMe, so Dave was practically sweating on me, and my back is probably bruised from all the shoving I took, but yeah it was amaaaazing.

X5-452 reporting for duty

Only 6 days to gooooo. This obsession is taking over my life and I haven't even been to a session yet. But behold my derby name and number! Pretty sure I'm going to stick with these, especially the number. And yes I took it from the amazing (but short-lived) sci-fi series Dark Angel. X5s were a breed of genetically-enhanced supersoldiers, who kicked ass and were generally pretty badass. One of them was Jensen Ackles! If I could I'd probably have Max's number, but X5-452 is probably a bit long to have on the back of a t-shirt.

Plus Smashtronaut is just plain awesome. Space AND smashing stuff! MINE.

Roller Derby

Listening to Sleigh Bells, drawing about roller derby. As you do.

So flippin' EXCITED.

One Sock and a Lot of Junk

The lovely and awesome Julia posted a drawing of the contents of her bag on Tumblr the other day, and I liked the idea so much that I had to steal it. Mostly because my bag is filled with a lot of stuff and it'd be fun to draw. I couldn't decide if I liked it better in colour or not though.. Thoughts?

(The sock is usually for keeping my iPod in, but it had fallen out when I drew this. Yes I keep my iPod in a sock. Yes it's an old old Nano.)

In other non-drawing related news, I fucking love Roller Derby!  I have a full kit now and am well excited for my first session with the Dorset Roller Girls at the beginning of February. I am going to properly DO THIS and FOLLOW IT THROUGH for once in my life, and probably get really hurt in the process.

ROLLERSKATING YEAH!