Valerie Draws

One of my boyfriend’s sons asked me to do a drawing of a pile of Beanies (my cat) attacking rats (from a 3D game), on the moon with a rocket ship.

With an imagination like that, how could I not. 😊

1. Final with background
2. Just the color line art
3. Just the line art
4. Idea sketch

I’ve been trying to get a short animatic done before Lightbox this year, just as a personal goal, but I kept getting stuck and procrastinating, which is always depressing.
After hearing me talk about it for a while, my boyfriend asked about the professional process, and when I said something about thumbnails, he said, did you do thumbnails? And I said, well, no. He asked why not, and I said it was just an extra step. He asked me to explain why studios like a thumbnail process, and after I got going explaining how it’s a fast and pressure-free way to work out the compositions and camera angles without getting attached to the work, I said…if your goal was to get me to see the value of the thumbnail stage, you succeeded, haha. He told me I should chunk out a timeline for getting everything done, with all the stages a part of the discipline, starting with thumbnailing my script.

And do you know, he was right. I stopped getting stuck, and started playing around with little ten second sketches with a script goal each week, and now I’m into it. It’s flowing so much faster than it was with me trying to jump right into boards, even with me messing up or eliminating ideas.

And it’s so cool and helpful to see all the camera angles changing on single spreads like this. Mini boards. 🤩

Just a few sketches from a little while ago that I forgot to post!

….legit. I get behind annoying slow people just to keep myself in check. I love and hate all you rule followers.

Mini sketchbook dump! Some of these are gestures from life, some of these are sketches from photo reference.

I posted this photo in my stories the other day of me minutes before totality, but I realized that I was wearing a tank by ! Thanks for the sweet merch, Amanda! Everyone comments on it. 🙌🤩

Just some random late night ink sketches ✨

Some pirate gestures from today’s All in Gesture with ! I got to catch it live again, which is always the best way. It was a struggle to focus this morning, arg, but I got some in and got to say hi to some of the other artists!

I went with friends to check out in the Arcade building in Dayton tonight, and it was awesome! It has the same great food and coffee as the homey artsy Ghostlight on Wayne, but with a more upscale big city vibe with drinks and live jazz. My friends were good enough to chat with each other for a while after coffee while I sketched some people. ❤️

Update: All full! Thank you, everyone!!

Hey there, everyone! It has been a while since I’ve accepted cartoon portrait commissions, but my car is in the shop and I’m broke, haha, so I’m offering four slots that I will get done by the end March.
So if you want a cartoon portrait, message me and we’ll talk about what you’d like done! Base price is $50 per full-body full-color character (1 person or 1 pet counts as 1 character).

I look forward to working with you! And paying my car guy.

A couple of quick gestures on my lunch break

sketches

I did go to see at on Friday! It dumped snow while I was there, and everyone on the roads was in a ditch, so a forty minute drive home took over two hours, but it was still totally worth it.
I got to meet John afterward, and got his autograph on a card about his new short film! He’s such a nice guy, and his talk was really inspiring. 😌

I was able to make All in Gesture live this morning with ! Yay. I love it live. We did Velma today, and our model was amazing. Thank you Olivia and Todd!!

I am so stoked that is coming to Columbus this Friday!! I am of course going. 🤩

I saw The Little Mermaid in theaters when I was six years old, and it changed my life. I saw Treasure Planet in college, and it saved my life. I saw Princess and the Frog as an adult, and it inspired my life. John Musker and Ron Clements are real heroes of mine!!

Somehow my planner is more of a sketchbook than my sketchbook. So here’s a non-sketchbook sketchbook dump!

My daughter had given me this sketchbook for Christmas, and she later had the idea that I use it for just faces. I thought it was a great idea because I spend a lot of time on figure and gesture, but not enough time on face shapes and expressions. I call it my WAITFORIT…facebook.

Also is it just me or are these lady’s eyes a little maniacal? A little bit wrong? Well, that’s what the book is for, to be a lot better by the end of it.

I got up a couple hours early to maybe do some dishes and wash some sheets before sliding slowly into work on freezing-rain covered roads, but I ended up sitting down with coffee and cracking open the sketchbook for my short instead.
I started designing one of the other characters even though I don’t intend to use more than shorthand for her. The full-body was the first one I drew, but she looked too young and mild to me, so I redrew her face to be more dramatic and gossipy.
I was gonna share the thumbnails I’ve got so far, but eeh, they’re pretty rough and don’t have visual value to anyone but me, yet. But it’s coming along one scrappy thumbnail at a time!

Between a thing this morning and a thing this afternoon, I didn’t have time to go all the way home but I also had too much time to wait around, so I stopped in nearby and sketched these ladies.

I also had a Tuscan herb bagel and London fog, and they were both out of this world good. 🤩 And I got this sticker to put on my next sketchbook since this one is almost done. Which means a sketchbook tour is on the horizon! 🙌

I’m supposed to be doing other things—and I am!—but I keep coming back here and doodling random things without a plan with ink and paint between things. It’s so satisfying today.

Just messing around in the ink and paint sketchbook a little bit!

It’s been a while since I’ve opened the ink and paint sketchbook! Since I have a storyboarding goal and deadline, I feel guilty when I do art completely unrelated to that. But this felt good.

Drawing in the wild! I sketched some folks while sitting in a Starbucks on my lunch break on Friday, and in a Barnes and Noble today.

One lady was reading a newspaper. A newspaper! I thought that species of human was extinct. 🗞️ ✨

We did Alice in Wonderland in All in Gesture this morning! Kelly was our Alice model, and she did a wonderful job. Thank you, Kelly and Todd!! 🤩

One of the things I’m going to do this year is make an original short animatic before Lightbox ‘24, and I’ve dedicated the sketchbook I got at LBX ‘23 exclusively to working out ideas for it. ✨

Your top nine favorites of my work for 2023! Hey, thank you for liking my work and writing kind words. Seriously, you make all of this even more fun day after day and year after year. And Happy 2024!!🥂🎉

Is it cheating to do two in one? I kept working on things and hated all of it, but I’ll post what I’ve got just to keep up with !

Treasure Planet has a special place in my heart. It saved my life once. I was going to tell the story, but since I hate all my sketches and it’s way past my bedtime, I’ll just leave this mess here and go to bed, haha. Next time.

I haven’t been creative in a couple of days for , but at least I’m studying these styles! I always loved the colors and shapes of Lilo + Stitch. So round and vibrant. 🌸

I love Glen Keane’s Tarzan. I just love him. I was gonna draw that scene with him and Jane on that vine having a moment, but instead of Jane, ME.
But last night was my last day working at Starbucks, and today was my first day as a teller at a credit union, and I have my daughter this week, and dishes and laundry aren’t doing themselves for some reason, and I’m selling my small business, and I’m freakin overwhelmed and exhausted guys. In all good ways, but seriously.
So instead, here’s just a study of another one of my favorite little Tarzan moments by Glen Keane. I still managed to draw myself in there though. I’m the one pulling his hair.

Do you wanna build a snowman? Olaf and the Abominable Marshmellow do for once! For Disember Day 3, my favorite snow characters are mixing it up.

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2, Mary Blair! I didn’t do anything creative, I just studied her style a little bit. She had a very simple, confident, paper doll feel to her style. I didn’t realize it until I was throwing down shapes of color that Mary Blair reminds me of ’s pastels and ’d collages. This was really different and fun for me!

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