Author: Cynical Woman

Cartoonist, Artist, Geek, Evil Crafter, Girl Scout Troop Leader and Writer. Also, a zombie. I haven't slept in I don't know how long.
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Cover Art – Eternally Noir

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Eternally Noir, 2004

I’ve decided to redo the art gallery for this website in a fashion that will make life easier for me. Rather than try to set up a page with little thumbnails that link to other pages I have to create by hand, I’m simply going to post each piece of finished art I’ve got as a blog entry, under the delightful category of “Gallery.” I’ll change the link at the top menu to go straight to this category, so you can see every blog entry just by scrolling through.

And since I’m redoing things, I thought I’d start way, way back at the very beginning of my career as a paid freelance artist. The image above was created in 2004 and is one of the very first ebook covers I did for Logical-Lust Publications. The title was Eternally Noir and the brief I got just said to design something spooky and sexy. This image was inspired by a Michael Whelan book cover done for the Tanith Lee short story collection Red as Blood, a series of fairy tales done by the Sister Grimmer herself.

The image started in ZBrush, where I created the tree in the background. I created the bloody red sky in Bryce, and put all that behind a model in Poser. Then after the final render, I took everything into Corel Photopaint to work a little post-FX magic, enhancing the highlights and shadows and adding that lovely poisonous red glow to the apple. You know, if I recall correctly, I may have actually created that apple in Carrara and mapped it in UVMapper. Can’t recall that far back to be certain.

Anyway, this turned out to be the first of many covers I have done for Logical-Lust, and the first of many that I ended up using everything including the kitchen sink to produce.

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ACW Episode 93 – Smells like Katy Perry

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Yes, I actually said this. And just to be clear, I really like the Katy Perry album in question. I’m just annoyed I can’t play it when the kids are around, which is ALL THE DAMN TIME. And I’m also annoyed that I don’t smell like cotton candy the way she does on the CD cover art. However, me getting my butt to smell like cotton candy would probably involve doing something highly lewd and illegal at a local carnival, which would then end in my arrest. So it’s probably not worth it. But I haven’t decided for certain on that yet.

I am hard at work on “The Little Death” for PerNoFiMo (Personal Novel Finishing Month). Aaaaaaaaaand… I’ve also started a new super-secret-special project, code named VeryScary. Details on this will be forthcoming.

Have a happy Turkey Day. Rats! will go up on Thursday as usual, but I expect things will be quiet around here otherwise this week.

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WIP – Pilgrim for Love cover art

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Here’s the latest cover I’m working on – Pilgrim for Love by Anna Austen Leigh. The brief I got made me think of Chaucer’s Canterbury tales, the really racy ones, with a love story thrown in for good measure. The reference material the author sent made me think of wood cuts and prints, so I did some fancy fiddling with Photoshop to come up with a woodcut sort of look in black and white. Then I colored the individual pieces and added some aged paper texture to get the feel of an antique illustrated book.

This isn’t final yet, but I’m hoping it will be soon. The book comes out soon from Logical-Lust.

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Rats! Episode 42 – What will he do?!

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Oh, the drama! There was nothing like a torrid romance to liven things up in the cadet dorms. We had many established couples in the VTCC. Some you knew were going to end up married right after graduation, and some you wondered if they’d survive the week or kill each other. It was more exciting that watching “Star Trek: The Next Generation” every Saturday evening in the Rasche Hall lounge. You guys remember watching STTNG? You ever heard of it? No? Oh, well watching Star Trek with a bunch of other geeks every Saturday evening was about as exciting as my romantic life ever got while I was in the VTCC.

Actually, that’s not true. I had a couple of abysmal boyfriends which was kind of exciting but they are best forgotten. Then I met the Hubster. We were so head-over-heels in love, it was sickening. However, he wasn’t a cadet, so we didn’t provide much fodder for the gossip mill in Rasche Hall. He was just another Star-Trek-watching geek I hung out with, except I liked to kiss him an awful lot. We haven’t changed much over the years, except that now we kiss while watching “The Daily Show.”

A few people got annoyed with me by this point in the comic series. They were sick of reading about “that damn party” that I had sent Irwin off to. “When are you going to get back to the funny comics?” they’d whine. “If you don’t like it, draw your own comics!” I’d whine back. Seriously, no one liked the story arc, which I thought was ashame. Rats was supposed to be about more than the usual hijinks in the VTCC. It was supposed to be about the characters, their little triumphs and crushing defeats, their hopes and dreams and greatest fears, they’re–

What? Oh, you want to know when I’m going to get back to the funny stuff.

Go draw your own damn comic! Meh…

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Quick Sketch – Autumn Leaf

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Princess has an assignment this week to find and draw an an autumn leaf. We picked up a bunch of leaves from our backyard last night. She’s not quite done with her drawing, but I decided to do one last night before bedtime. Here’s the results. This is just a quick sketch made with Faber Castell brush pens. Again, no pencil drawing. I’ve learned that when I just skip the pencil sketch and go straight to pen, I get a much better result. Things are looser, more fluid, and more organic looking. Penciling first makes my artwork look too awkward and constrained.

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ACW Episode 92 – Cats!! (Not the musical)

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My cats get into all sorts of trouble. Not just the two cats I have now, Hiccup and Toothless, but also the original three cats I had for years. BJ, Lydia and Fritti “moved in” with me back in 1992, and they gave me years of delight and plenty of broken objects to remember them by. While Hiccup is the one who has it in for Pixie’s playhouse dolls, it was Lydia who managed to fall through an open access panel on the second floor of our house and end up trapped between the walls on the first floor. BJ, my Himalayan, was the one with the dirty panties fetish. He’d love a perfectly good pair of Victoria’s Secrets to death, if I let him. As for hair clippies and ponytail holders, that’s Toothless’ preferred play toy.

Then there was Fritti, our big orange tabby, whom I secretly suspect snapped the head off the groom of a Lladro statuette after Hubster accused Fritti of swiping his wedding band. I can’t say for certain it was him, but that fat cat did have attitude.

Anyway, my house has plenty of cats, and they do lots of crazy things. That is the definition of ‘cat.’

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The Little Death – Inspector Slade

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More character notes on “The Little Death.” Agent Robin Helki is the heart and soul of the novel, but without Inspector Michael Slade she’s got no reason to really live. Who is Inspector Slade, and what is his relationship to Robin? How long has he been on the Fifth Precinct police force? What crime is he investigating now? And how does that affect Robin?

In “The Little Death,” there are espers and there are norms. Robin falls into the first category, Slade into the later. OverWatch has decreed that the two classes of citizens shall not interbreed for any reason. It’s simply too dangerous. Will Robin and Slade heed that warning, or take the risk? And does Robin really dare trust Slade as she slowly descends into the madness all espers fall prey to?

For anyone who’s wondering, I’m doing these sketches on cheap art paper with Micron drawing pens and a Pentel brush pen. The painting is done in ArtRage Pro. It’s a quick job, but enough to give me a feel for what Robin’s world is like.

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WIP – Medusa and Bats for 11 November

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Every day, this image gets a little further along. What’s nice is while working on this, I’m finally starting to understand some of the digital painting techniques I’ve been reading about over the last two years. I can see how to lay down the color and how to blend it now.

This happens to me a lot. I’ll spend a couple years reading everything I can about a particular graphics program and how to use it, then suddenly after all this reading and a lot of failed experimentation, I’ll suddenly understand how it all comes together, and voila! I’ll be able to make the program do what I want it to do. I wish I picked up things faster than that, but experience has shown me that’s not how my brain works.

Anyway, I’ve gotten a little farther with the blending. You can see more of Medusa’s hair and her face starting to take shape. I work on this from 6-6:30AM most mornings, after spending an hour on paying graphics work. That’s been my incentive to get up early lately, and this schedule has allowed me to make some progress. I think I’ll keep working on it and post another image around Sunday. Enjoy!

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Rats! Episode 42 – How to look cool on a date

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Confession time. I sucked at dating in college. As in, I could never seem to get a date. I had one jerk boyfriend my freshman year who dumped me after he graduated. After that, I didn’t date again until my senior year. The person I dated then ended up being the person I married, and am still married to several years later. In fact, if you include our time dating, we’ve been together 20 years. Not bad for someone who sucked at dating in college, huh?

I think the reason why I did so poorly on the dating scene was that I was not cool. I’m still not cool, in case you’re wondering, but I don’t give a damn anymore. That’s the nice thing about being in your forties, married and having kids. You don’t have to worry about crap like that any more.

Having said all that, I was never too short to see over the steering wheel of my car. My roommate on the other hand… man, was she ever short!

Enjoy your week!

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The Little Death – Who is Agent Robin Helki?

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It’s PerNoFiMo (Personal Novel Finishing Month) here and I’m currently working on finishing a novel I started 2 years ago. The title is “The Little Death,” and I can best describe it as Blade Runner meets Wuthering Heights. I start podcasting this the first week of January at the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast. It’s a sci-fi noir tale, not exactly erotica, but it does have a great deal of adult content.

By the time the first week of January comes around, I want people to be anxiously waiting for this story. Maybe not a lot of people, but at least a few. And I want those people to be asking two questions when the time comes. Who is Agent Robin Helki, and what is the little death? Here’s a clue to the first question, just to get you guessing.

More clues will be forthcoming over the next two months. I promise.

BTW, this is for Alice Gray and CityDifferent, both of whom have been very supportive of everything I do, including this novel. And also for Matt Fuckin’ Wallace, because he told me to “keep my chin up.” This is how I do that, Matt.