Wes L. Mania, Dee Troit Diesel & Annevel Knievel

Our last home bout of the 2012 season was in November, the month synonymous with pilgrims, turkeys and overeating.  Unsurprisingly, it's common to see November bouts take on similar themes.  However, our league decided to take things in a different direction.  Instead, we chose to use our Season Closer to honor our veterans.

I have to say that our season closer went even better than any of us could have hoped--We really went out with a bang!  And I don't even mean because both of our A and B teams emerged victorious (though double victories are always fantastic).  A local VFW came out to perform the national anthem, veterans were treated to discounted tickets, and The Chicago Riots Junior Roller Derby team play mini bouts during our half-times to a completely packed house.  But enough about the bout, let's get to the art.  That is why you're here after all.  Well that, and because I'm just that cool.

Nah, it's for the art.  Let's be honest here.  

Because this was our season closer, I really wanted to do something extra special for this poster.  So, instead of drawing just one poster girl, I drew 3!  Er, sorta.  More like 2 skaters and 1 referee (who just happens to be a dude):  Dee Troit Diesel, Annevel Knievel and Wes L. Mania!

The original sketch of Dee, complete with a myriad of notes

Dee in color!

Annevel's original sketch.  Pay no attention to the tiny ninja thumbnail in the corner.
I said stop looking at it!

In color and rocking her trademark flag legs!
By now she has a new Evel Knievel style helmet that's just as patriotic.
God Bless 'Merica!

Wes' sketch

Wes in color!

So why the decision to feature a ref instead of 3 skaters?  Well, refs and NSOs are just as vital to a roller derby league as its skaters--bouts and scrimmages just don't work without them!  However, they tend to get a lot more crap (and from both teams) if skaters don't agree with calls they've made, or failed to make as the case sometimes is.  Roller derby is an incredibly complicated and intense sport, so this happens a LOT.  That alone is enough to deserve a feature, don't you think?  And if you disagree, well, our refs are effin' awesome, too.  So there. 

With having pushed myself to draw not 1, but 3 different people on this poster, I was once again left without enough time to shade them.  I hate leaving drawings in flat colors unless that was what I had intended from the beginning... :/  Even so, the rest of the poster still turned out okay.

Thanks to this poster, Wes, Dee and Annevel get requests to recreate these saluting poses for photos.  Even now, several months later.  In fact... 

Wes, Dee & Annevel throwing their salutes at a bowling outing a couple of months ago.
And yes, they're wearing matching Hawaiian shirts...
This wasn't even an official roller derby related event.  We were all just hanging out, haha.

Hope you liked!  Now, time for my shameless plug!

This Saturday I'll be skating in the American Cancer Society's Walk & Roll in Chicago!  I skated in this last year as well, and not only is it a lot of fun, but it's for a good cause!  I mean, c'mon, who doesn't want to kick cancer squarely in its junk?!

My goal this year is to raise $100, but as of this moment I'm still not even halfway there.  And I only have 2 days left!  So if you happen to be able to spare even just $5 for a donation, I'd really, truly appreciate it!  And not just me!  Everyone who has ever fought with or been touched by cancer. 

If you'd like to make a donation to the American Cancer Society, just click here! 

To anyone who has already donated, and to those who will, THANK YOU :)

Crissy Crossbones & Knocktoberfest

Whhhat?  Another new post already?  Why yes.  Yes there is.

I'm itching to get this art blog up to date with this season's artwork, but I don't want to skip over any of the drawings I've done in order to do so.  So, I'll be plowing through the last few from last season within the next couple of days.  It's not exactly a consistent posting schedule but...eh, whatever.

Anyway, our bout committee decided on "Knocktoberfest" as the theme for our September 2012 home bout (contrary to the cognate, Oktoberfest actually takes place in September).  Besides the fact that the timing was right, this bout also happened to kick off the beginning of beer sales.  That's right, we serve beer at our bouts!

Selected to be our poster girl this time around was Crissy Crossbones.  While most of the other skater drawings I had done consisted of more dynamic "action" poses, I decided that I wanted to take a different approach with Bones.  The plan was to draw her reclining back in a giant beer stein :P

 
As you can see here, I drew the original sketch in a humble notebook. Haha.  For whatever reason I'm almost disappointed that the notebook lines didn't really show up in this scan though.  I have no idea why.

Bones' drawing was actually the first time I had to incorporate a tattoo (butterflies on her right shoulder).  Well, I didn't have to.  But if I was going to put as much effort into these drawings as I had been, it seemed wrong to leave out something that was permanently inked onto her skin.  But I digress...

Anyway, because I try to create a believable likeness in these drawings, a bit of a predicament arises whenever the poster girl has a tattoo or some other distinguishing physical trait.  That is, I have to scour their photos in the hopes that I can find some where it is prominently featured.

Of course the easier option would be for me to just take a photo if them myself, only it takes away some of the mystery and surprise of the poster girl's identity.  It's supposed to be a secret until the poster is revealed, so going around snapping photos of someone's body parts seems a bit telling...

I run into the same problem time after time with eye color as well.  As much as I love my teammates, I don't stare into each and every one of their eyes meaningfully enough to memorize what color they all are.  So sorry, Ladies, if I've ever used the incorrect eye color for your drawings.  But at least now you know why.  

Time was (as it always does) working against me, and I had to leave Bones at flat colors in order to meet the deadline.  But like I did with Speeds Kate's drawing, I plan on going back in at some point to give her a full-shading treatment.  I just hope it doesn't take me 6 months to do it...

Bones "modeling" our new jersey style

Even though I did save a bit of time by leaving the drawing in flat colors, that time was probably eaten up again by some of the detail work.  Besides custom-made leg-warmers with her skater name and number, she also had these decals on her helmet that spelled out her name in some sort of skeleton/bone font.  I still don't actually know that I found the correct one, but if anything it's awfully close.  The number on her helmet was doodled in, however, because the font's numbers looked a little too different.   At least, I think that's why.  Maybe the font didn't even include the numbers?  It was so long ago by now I really can't remember.

Here's a close-up detail of the helmet decal.
Huh, never noticed until now that I had it running into
the holes in her helmet... -_-*

Now, aside from drawing a giant beer stein, I really wasn't too sure of how to incorporate Oktoberfest into the design.  My knowledge base of Oktoberfest in general was (and still is) pretty limited.  So I took to the internet and consulted my good friend, Google Image Search.

What I kept seeing over and over again were patterns made of white and light blue diamonds, orange flags and busty lederhosen-clad fraulein.  Yeah, was not going to incorporate that last one...  But the diamonds and orange flags--no problem!

There was an attempt to incorporate German architectural elements into the design as well, but unfortunately most of that was blocked by the orange banners.  Still, you can see bits and pieces of it at the very top and bottom of the poster design.

The final bout poster for "Knocktoberfest"

Looking at the poster, I should have drawn Bones and the beer stein at the same time.  I purposely drew them separately to allow for compositional flexibility, but as a result I feel like her seated position isn't convincing.  Not in this particular stein anyway.  Eh well.  Lesson learned.

Fonts Used: Germanica, Market Deco

Tiki-Flavored Sammich

So something weird happened in August of 2012.  My league decided to vote me in as poster girl...

Seriously.  Weird.

But even weirder than being voted in was having to draw myself.  Don't get me wrong, since a lot of the art I worked on back in college was semi-autobiographical, I'm quite used to drawing myself. However, it was never really with the intention of promoting anything besides my own work. Plus, while I'm no wallflower, I'm not really much of an attention-seeker either.  

The familiarity with my own form at least meant that I could finish the drawing relatively fast.  Well you know, fast for me anyway.  But I definitely spent more time trying to figure out how to compose the rest of the poster.

This particular bout was Tiki themed--fitting as the last bout of the summer.  Anyway, as much time as I spent researching Polynesian and Islander design elements, I didn't really have the time or energy to draw much more than the skater illustration.  So I was super lucky to come across this fabulous font by designer David Occhino.  It's called "Tangaroa" and is based off of real elements of Maori and South Pacific designs.      

He was generous enough to provide a free, supplemental variant of the font (Tangaroa Glyphs) right on his website, and it was just perfect.  I used several of the glyphs as border elements and to scatter as background textures.  It was a quick solution to a lack of time and graphics.  Here's the final poster:

We've long since retired this jersey style.
And I've stopped skating in shorts in favor of capris.
Relevance?  None.  You're welcome.

While this wasn't our league's first doubleheader, it was the the first time that our A and B-teams skated under their official team names!  Our B-Team is known as Onslaught and our A-Team is Uproar.  Cleverly plays off the lioness imagery, no?

Oh, and remember how I said that I study several photos of a skater in order to properly depict their mannerisms and stride?  Well, I just wanted to share an image that a photographer happened to capture at that bout.

Image by DBH Photo

I'm skating with almost the exact same pose as the one I drew for the poster :)  Just thought that was amusing enough to share.  Feel free to disagree.  But doing so might make you a jerk face. 

That's right.  I said it.

Fonts used: Tangaroa Glyphs, Highjinks, Feast of Flesh, Market Deco

Questions?  Comments?  Gifts of puppies?  Feel free to leave them here :)