Friday, March 21, 2014

Convention Excitement and New Website Update

Sorry for the radio silence everyone! It's been a mixed bag of bothersome snow, overtime at work, and health issues :< However I am happy to report, if you haven't seen it on my Facebook page yet, that I have secured a booth at Virginia Comicon's 2 day event this November 22nd- 23rd! In what spare time I can manage to grab I've been writing lists, working on the next Alencia book, working on prints as well as button and sticker ideas, and even figuring out how to get my hands my on a standing banner to bring to conventions! I'm SO excited by the possibilities for cons this year. I still won't get to attend as many as I would like due to my full time job but it just makes the ones I can attend that much more special.

I'm also hoping to snag a table for Nekocon this year. I was very impressed with how far Neko's Artist Alley had come since I last tabled there in 2010. While fan art is still prominent there were so many original comic creators (and crafters!) that it made my heart sing! At last one of my most accessible anime conventions has become more welcoming to original content creators. However I have to wait till the first week of May to register so fingers crossed!

In the mean time here is a sneak peek at a work in progress print I'm currently painting:

Also you may have noticed in the previous post that I have been tinkering with wordpress in an attempt to get a blog/portfolio site together as a main hub for my artwork. Well Wordpress has not worked out for me, but instead I've started a site using SquareSpace. I'm still working on getting my domain name attached to it but GoDaddy is not as user friendly as I would like >_> And while I have figured out how to do this in the past I'm still having trouble so please bare with me. Until then you can see my new site (with this blog attached to it!) at Francesca-rowan.squarespace.com/ I'm really loving the interface and that fact that I could import my entire blog over to it. I'm going to start experimenting with updating the blog from my website so we'll see how that goes but I might hold off so folks who have stuck to this blog so long can still enjoy my updates without missing anything. But when/if I start doing blog updates from there I'll give this blog a heads up so no one misses it.

Speaking of missing updates, if you follow me on Facebook be sure to follow these instructions so you can keep seeing updates from the pages you like (otherwise Facebook will try to corner us into paying for people to actually see our updates. I'm thinking about breathing some life into my google+ page or making a new one. Would anyone be game for that?)



So as I go on I'll be sure to share more peeks at con goodies as I make them. Stay tuned and as always, thanks for sticking with me! <3

Monday, March 3, 2014

MYST: The Adora Saga

Hey Everyone!
As today is a snow day from work AND I finally feel like I'm getting over this second head cold I decided to get some artwork done today. First is an illustration I was commissioned to do for the 'Adora Blog' where hundreds of artists have created their own rendition of the adorable Adora and where her father blogs about her adventures. I chose my theme from a long list that was written out and when I saw MYST was an option, I jumped on it!

Done with a mix of pencil, colored pencil, ink, copic markers, and Photoshop.

I'm also currently working on an illustration for possible convention prints, finishing the second Alencia book, and doing thumbnails for Unintentionally Alice, a comic project Ryan and I are both working on. I'm also still trying to figure out how to turn my wordpress blog into the perfect portfolio/blog hub but just when I think I've got it figured out I realize I really don't. I'm gonna keep working on it but if anyone has any tips about how to have a porfolio page and a blog on there please let me know. Here is what I have so far if you'd like to take a look and give me your feedback. Idealy I'd like to have a tab for just my portfolio (so it's kind of like my Carbonmade page) and then on another tab have the blog part where I can talk about WIP and my creative process. At this rate I might just stick to blogger and Carbonmade but it just doesn't feel quite professional enough :/

Anyway thanks in advance for any feed back!
Back to work for me!