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 :) 

Speeds Kate 2.0

Finally finished up shading Speeds Kate's poster girl drawing from last year!  I thought about leaving it on a plain background, but of course my caffeine-addled brain just couldn't leave well enough alone.  So here it is!

Aside from the shading, I didn't really make any changes to this drawing other than changing the color of her knee pads to reflect the ones she has now (they match her gloriously purple skates!).  I was thinking about changing her hair color too because for a while it was this gorgeous teal with a purple pivot stripe running down it.  By now it's returned to its natural blonde so I left it as-is.

In case anyone is wondering about what fonts were used--> All Ages and Ghetto Marquee 

Btw, I borrowed the title from a fb comment left by our bout photographer, Steve Jurkovic :)

Hope you guys like it!

Speeds Kate and The Superhero Slam

In June of 2012, my league hosted a bout called "Superhero Slam."  While roller derby bouts are always fun, this one was especially so for a couple of reasons.  First of all, as we had newly formed a B-team, this was our first double header.  Double the derby goodness!  Second, we all really got into the superhero spirit.  Lots of us donned masks and capes--Some of us even full-on costumes!  And by someone of us, I mean me :P  I had made a Robin (as in Batman's sidekick) costume years back and brought it out one last time to wear while I wasn't skating.  I'm sorry to say that I don't really have any good photos of me wearing it (at least since getting into better shape), but I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't pretty freaking awesome.  Even had a working utility belt :)

The league voted in Speeds Kate as that month's poster girl.  Easily one of the best skaters I've seen, I can only wish that I had half her speed, footwork and tenacity.  And despite her tiny frame, Speeds has this intensity to her that I hoped I'd be able to accurately capture in her drawing.

 

She really does stick out her tongue like that.  Sort of a Speeds Kate trademark :P

From a compositional standpoint I know it looks like an awful lot of colors and patterns, but I based her boutfit on what she had actually worn.  Like those shorts and those tights--I did not make those up.  The rainbow socks I did, but really, those are a staple in most derby girls' wardrobes (I am the rare exception).  And yes, she really does have crazy-purple skates :) 

Because I was dealing with a major time crunch, I unfortunately had to leave Speeds' drawing in flat colors like you see here.  However, it was always my intention to go back in and give it the fully shaded color-treatment.  I don't have it here for you now, but it is almost done!  So until then, here's a look at her bout poster to tide you over.

With the bout being superhero-themed and all, it only made sense to design the poster to look like a comic book cover.  Again, I had to keep the background fairly simple because I just didn't have a lot of time.  If I were to go and re-work this design, one of the things I'd do is incorporate some Roy Lichtenstein-inspired benday dot patterns, in addition to putting more effort into the title design.  I had included a drop shadow behind Speeds' drawing to help her pop off the page more, but I hadn't noticed until it was too late that it had disappeared.  Eh well. 

Anyway, hope you guys liked Speeds' drawing!  And I'll be sure to post her newly re-colored drawing here once it's finished!

Belated Seasons Greetings

Click to see it at full size, yo!

I realize that Christmas was 2 days ago, but here's a little holiday card that I doodled up for my roller derby league.  I only decided to post it here now because I haven't updated this blog in quite some time.  There's plenty more artwork to post, I just need to get around to it...

This was something I just doodled up for fun.  I took a silly team photo that we had and added hats, scarves, antlers etc., and I made sure to photoshop in a photo of our mascot.  That's right--we have a mascot.  His name is Roary Feldman, and we love that lion! Anyway, hope some people got a chuckle out of this.   

Smack to the Future with Thikicole and Katty WhompAss

Our 4th bout of the season was a salute to the totally tubular '80s.  Always up for some nostalgic fun, many of our league members decided to celebrate in style!  There were ruffled skirts, neon plastic accessories, off-the-shoulder tops, thick waist belts, teased out hair styles and mullets as far as the eyes could see (through "blinds" shades of course).

Despite all of the garishly colorful aspects of the '80s, for some reason I had a hard time pinpointing what sort of imagery to use for the bout poster.  I think the problem was that it just felt like there were too many possibilities (Glam rockers?  Hideous fashions?  Corny TV shows?  The grody lingo?).  After all, the '80s were nothing if not a decade of excess.

This time around I was going to feature 2 skaters as well (#68iou--Thikicole and #412--Katty WhompAss), so I figured that it was probably best to keep the design simple.  I just had to make sure that I stuck with some distinctly '80s design elements.  So of course, I had to use hot pink!  And nothing clashes with hot pink quite as well as lime green. 

From there, the plan was to make the bout flyer resemble a cheesy '80s movie poster.  Because I was drawing 2 skaters, the "back-to-back buddies" pose seemed not only natural, but necessary ;)

Totally having a Corey & Corey moment right now.

Not exactly a fan of Duran Duran either, but Nagel
did the artwork for the album, Rio.

Although I would not call myself a fan of his, I also drew inspiration from artist, Patrick Nagel.  His work is just so dang iconic of the decade.  While Nagel would reduce down or stylize the physical features of his subjects so that they all looked alike, I wanted to make sure that Thiki and Katty both retained their individual appearances (what's the point of drawing real skaters if they look like they can be anyone?).  So, I drew them as I normally would and instead adopted some of his other artistic conventions.  This is primarily evident in color usage.  His subjects were always white-skinned (literally) with very minimal, flat, gray shading and limited color elsewhere in the composition.

Also, they were often topless...but we're not running that sort of an organization here :P

Nagel also made use of simple, often sharp, geometric backgrounds to offset the sensual curves of his subjects.  I used the shapes to frame the skaters instead of placing all those jagged edges behind them, but even so, the geometric shapes are there.

And just as a side note, those little skater silhouettes are from a recruitment poster that I had designed for The Dames about a year ago.

So there you have it--the bout poster for "Smack to the Future," featuring Thikicole and Katty WhompAss! 

Fonts used: Trajan, Forgotten Futurist, Badonk-a-donk, Chronicles of a Hero