About me

New "About Me" image for Tumblr. Me, Ysera the cat and Momo the corgi. Aren't we adorable?

Galadriel

I finally went and saw The Hobbit. I was only like 2 weeks late but it was only because I wanted to wait and see it in all it's HFR, 3D, Dolby Atmos, glory! Which I did. I don't know how I felt about it in 3D (since I'm not usually into 3D anyhow) but the HFR definitely made the 3D better.

It should come as no surprise that Galadriel is my favorite middle earthling. I just felt I needed a little doodle of her.

Miss Universe

I was just looking at all the Miss Universe national dresses and loved Trinidad and Tobago's! So I did this!

They're all so fabulous. I feel so inspired by all of them! 

Ysera

Before I started with the real colors I had this. I thought it looked especially snazzy so I'm letting the world see too!

I actually haven't played WoW in awhile. I was just thinking about Ysera and wanted to draw her. I ended up with this.

I think about Ysera a lot though. I have a cat that I named Ysera. She's adorable. I don't mean to brag but I'm pretty sure she's the best cat anyone could ask for. Just look at her! Her favorite past time is cuddling in bed with me.

She's even a fan of Halloween. She was a ballerina this year.

Doodles

Doodles of some real photos of me and a few friends. This is what I do when I'm bored.

Serenity

Queen and Princess Serenity.

I've been in a Sailor Moon kind of mood.

Sun and Moon

The sun and moon! I saw an article today talking about how "in" the color yellow is. I then felt really inspired by Claire Danes dress. 

I imagined a sun goddess-like figure. I started sketching things and eventually ended up here with this! Which looks nothing like Claire Danes dress. But I just want to start noting where my inspiration comes from sometimes and how seemingly unrelated things lead me to the things I create.

I've been so inspired by astrology and astronomy recently too. It might be in part to this, The Planetary Society. I signed a petition awhile back to help space exploration funding. I've always loved space. If I were any good at math and terrible at drawing I think I could have been an astrophysicist in another life. A couple of weeks ago I received a letter talking about space exploration and the petition I signed from Bill Nye! I was like man, Bill Nye is head of an awesome space foundation? Sign me up! So obviously I joined.

I just thought I'd give a shout out to them and get the word out there! Yay space!

The Taste of Winter

Winter is coming! It's been chilly here all week due to a cold front. It's been great. It's starting to warm up again though which is a bit disappointing. I'd love to have a cold Thanksgiving!

One of my favorite things to illustrate is snow scenes. I love them! I hope to do a few more before spring at least. Here's the first one of the season!

Edit:
I thought I might use this for some Christmas cards this year. I thought maybe someone else might be interested in it too! If so I've uploaded it onto Zazzle for anyone to buy.

I'll admit I've never used Zazzle before so if their service is terrible for some reason I'm sorry! Please send me some other recommendations for next time! If anyone is interested at all maybe I'll sell a few more card designs!

Another Edit:
I ordered some from Zazzle and they turned out great! So I fully endorse these cards. :)

Cassiopeia

I love space! Cassiopeia is one of my favorite constellations so I just started daydreaming and did this! It was fun.

Magical Super Girls

I've been feeling particularly uninspired lately. I was thinking about doing some fabulous illustration but then realized I had no idea what I wanted to draw (I'm still not sure really). So I kind of went back to basics.

I started thinking back to some of my first characters. Mika is certainly one of my most significant creations. To anyone but me I'm sure this might be hard to imagine. Look at the outfit, that hair! What was I thinking!? I can only assume I was still recovering from 90s fashion when I decided she needed to be in pigtails and a red latex ensemble, with purple hair no less.

I came up with her around 2000 and I was 11. She and her cousin Kiku and best friend Sandy were a trio of crime fighting super teens! Because what more can an 11 year old girl ask for in a story? Kiku was supposed to be they typical "badass" type, Sandy was the ditzier pretty girl, and Mika was the loyal and fearless leader! I realize now that this was far from original.

Their back story makes next to no sense when I start trying to remember it. Mika and Kiku are an alien race (I think I called them Catixian) who were born on Earth (Hawaii specifically) to their immortal alien parents. Oh and of course they never grow old either (I was completely against drawing "old people" at this time). Somehow Mika's seemingly normal friend Sandy is discovered as a witch! So they all team up to stop evil! Mika later discovers she's a clone or something (I really don't understand where I was going with this) and has extra special super powers (obviously).

Even though Mika is kind of ridiculous I was so passionate about her. I drew those three (especially Mika) several times a day everyday until High School. I don't know where all that passion has gone! I'm not saying I'm not still passionate about illustration but I just don't feel nearly as excited about it as I did then. I just wanted to try and figure where I lost some of my enthusiasm.

I'd also like to present you with this inspiration map: 

Mayuka from Tenchi the Movie 2 was definitely the start of it all. I guess I just loved her design (for whatever reason) and modeled Mika after her. 

The Sailor Starlights must be where I came up with the costume design. I always loved how leggy they were.

Sabrina is the most awesome teen witch I know! I was so excited to watch Sabrina the Teenage Witch whenever I could. I'm thinking it came on WB which was a channel I didn't get so I was deprived of it for the most part. But when I did watch it I fell in love with the idea of witches. Halloweentown always got me excited about witches too!

Britney Spears was one of my idols around this time. Oops...I Did it Again was THE song around 2000 so I can only assume this is why I thought red latex was an appropriate fashion choice.

Sasami from Tenchi Muyo! was one of my most favorite characters. I was especially into Magical Girl Pretty Samy. Crime fighting super girls were kind of my thing (they still kind of are). I liked Sasami and Ayeka's little green symbol on their foreheads. I decided in Mika and Kiku's case that it was a sign from their alien heritage. Thinking back on it I wonder how I imagined it looking in real life. Like a tattoo? Like paint? Like a birthmark? I'm really not sure.

Saiyans inspired me to make them a super alien race. I don't think they were a dying race though. They had this whole family tree of still living family members living on their home planet. Why their parents moved to Earth I don't know. Maybe I never thought that far ahead.

Sailor Moon. All roads lead back to Sailor Moon. If I look back to any of my old drawings there is a little bit of Sailor Moon in all of them.


I hope I didn't bore anyone too much with my overuse of (parentheses) and telling of characters from days of yore. I really enjoyed going back to these characters and thinking about where they'd be now and what I'd do differently. I recommend it to all artists!

The Guild

I love The Guild and I just adore Felicia Day. I'm so happy a new season has started! Can't believe it's already on Season 6. If they ever need a children's book (for some bizarre reason) for The Guild, I'm there!

In fact I love The Guild so much I want this costume for Halloween. If I didn't already have a fabulous Princess Peach outfit for this year I would have already bought it. There's always next year though!

Style

My art style has been very inconsistent lately (or always really, lbr) --which may or may not bother some people.  I'm a little all over the place with everything in my life to be honest. I just like trying new things! I'm inspired by so many different artists and like to pull a little inspiration from all of them all the time. I treat almost everything I do as more of a study than a real project.

I'm also almost too consistent with my style at work. I'm doing children's illustrations all day, every day which I love but it can be very repetitive so I kind of mix it up when I'm just doing my own personal doodles.

The reason I'm even bothering to make a whole post about this at all is because I've realized when I'm looking at other artists and they have this hodgepodge of work I get kind of irrationally annoyed with it. I just think to myself, "Oh I love this so much, why couldn't all your stuff look like this??" I have no idea if I'm the only weird one here who feels like this or if other people feel the same way. I'm soooo guilty of having such drastically different things all the time though!

So if you're bothered by other artists inconsistencies (including mine) I just wanted to let you know I am too! But I doubt I'll be changing anytime soon. I need variety in my life!! But if you're already enjoying my consistently inconsistent style then carry on and keep enjoying!

Feeling nostalgic

Feeling nostalgic and like trying something a little different at the same time! This is the result.

Texture happy

Just doing a texture study mostly so I went a little texture happy! I need to do more texture studies honestly. So many other artists are using textures far superior to me so I need to fix that!

Break time

I'm ashamed of myself for taking a whole month to make an update! BUT I have a good reason! I got a new, awesome job since my last update. I work for an education software company drawing children's illustrations all day! Which is AMAZING! But it sure keeps me busy.

Now as much I love drawing children's art it's been a draining past few weeks (for so many reasons) so since it's Friday and I have a headache I needed a break from the kid's stuff to do something I haven't done in awhile. A portrait! It's supposed to be Christina Hendricks. While I do think it resembles her I'm afraid it mostly looks like some random girl. Maybe it's just me though since I've been staring at it for a while now.

Hopefully I can pull myself together enough to not take another month to update (but no promises)!

Brave

I just loved Brave! I thought it was absolutely adorable!

And for my birthday I got this awesome art book, which I'm super excited about, and felt the need to do some fan art.

Ilayda

I've been working on some character designs lately. Yesterday it was all about facial expressions. Here's some for someone I'm calling Ilayda.

Mrs. Mia Wallace

I was incredibly bored at work today and was thinking of things to doodle when I thought of Mia Wallace. This was was one of my more successful sketches of the day.

Bowls

I am definitely no ceramicist but I had to take a ceramics class this semester and I made the best of it by making Game of Thrones bowls! Because who wouldn't want a set of these? They're really wonky looking but I'm enjoying having them all the same.

You know nothing!

I really like who they cast for Ygritte on Game of Thrones. She's so sassy. I loved their scenes in the last episode. So since I had them on my mind I did this little sketch.

Camel

A random doodle of a camel because I love camels. And really, who doesn't love camels?

Castle

Castle has taken over my life! My friend let me borrow her DVDs and I'm officially addicted. I'm already on the current season but not caught up quite yet.

I've been a total bum these past few days. All I've done is watch tons of Castle and caught up on some of my other shows. So I finally decided to draw something awesome and then this happened...

Castle fan art. I started getting frustrated with what I was drawing so I doodled this instead. Not what I had in mind but it kept me entertained for a little while. I don't think it looks a whole lot like Castle or Beckett, but it was fun to do.

Now I'm gonna get back to watching even more Castle...

I'm done!

I'm FINALLY done with school, FOREVER (I hope)! I now have a real website up and running. It's mostly just my design work but I intend to add a seperate illustration tab in the near future. But for now I finally have some free time again and can do some fun stuff on here.

Here's a little something I had to do for class. It's the animation that goes with my Nancy Drew illustrations. It was a group project and no one in my group was especially capable with video editing so we made the best of it. It's not too bad considering!

I'm alive

Life has been beyond busy lately. I have a million projects to work on and there just aren't enough hours in the day! But here's something I've been working on for a Nancy Drew animation for school.

This one was my first go but it was just way too complicated.

So I ended up here with these. I may do more but I don't know yet.

Summer Fling

My latest soap illustration for "Summer Fling." I think I might only be doing one more of these or maybe no more which is too bad. They're fun to do but I also have a ton of other stuff I need to be doing and only a few weeks to get it all done!

Here's a little art school update. We had to do self portraits in chalk pastels today which is not my specialty but I thought this came out pretty good considering! My face definitely looks a little...off but it's cool.

Daenerys

It's FINALLY April 1! This day couldn't get here fast enough! Too bad I have work tonight but luckily I own a DVR!

Tumblr

I have finally decided to embrace Tumblr! You can follow me now @ http://katherinesketches.tumblr.com/ so please do!

Robb Stark

I think I might try to turn this into a series. We'll see! So excited for Sunday!

Busy Busy

I have been doing all sorts of fun drawings lately! This one is a revised version of a poster I did way back when of one of my favorite bands Bat For Lashes.

These are for a group project I'm working on.

Another girl for my soap project. Bad Bad Betty.

And finally some free time for some Game of Thrones art. I was inspired to do this from my favorite Sansa scene in A Storm Of Swords.

Projects, projects, projects!

Here's a poster from a larger campaign I did for a Save Texas Schools assignment. I was focusing on oversized classrooms effecting education.

Here's some character designs from a project that didn't end up working out. I was going for a Kate Beaton inspired look here.

Now my latest project is for soap packaging. I'm super excited about it so far. Can't wait to see the end result but here's what I have so far. This is the Mistress of Citrus. I started out with the first one but wasn't especially happy with it. Then I was introduced to Kevin Dart's art and felt inspired to do the second one. Which I love! I feel like you'll be seeing more illustrations in this style soon.

Brave

I have been so busy with so many different projects lately! I feel like I have hardly any free time these days. Today I made some free time for myself to draw something fun. So I drew Merida from Brave! I'm super excited about it. Can't wait to see it! She seems like she'll be one of my new favorite Disney characters.