Wondercon 2018!

It's that time of year again! Next week on Thursday, I will be headed down south to go and set up for Wondercon at the Anaheim Convention Center.

I will be sharing a table with one of my long time pals and Wondercon partner in crime, Joie Foster. She is a comic artist and makes some of the most adorable comics about My Little Ponies and my personal favorite, Sailor Corgi!

You can check out her website here if you're interested:

https://www.joiefoster.com/about-joie/


Ok, ok, soooo the details!

I will be in Artist Alley, table B-43

The convention opens on Friday, March 23rd at 11:30am and goes until 7pm. The convention center opens up at 10am and goes until 7pm on Saturday, but I just read that the tickets for Saturday are already sold out! 😳 

Don't despair though! There is still Sunday and the show opens at 10am and goes until 5pm. If you have a weekend pass already, then awesome! I hope to see you there, I love getting to actually meet people in real life!

Now for what will debut! *Drum roll please**

Every year, I like to try and create one or two new fan art pieces that I like to debut at Wondercon, since it is typically the first show of the new year before all the rest.

In January, I try and sketch up a few ideas or look at what characters seem to be pretty popular at the time. This year I settled on Pusheen!

I did a Pusheen and Sloth drawing a year or two ago now and it has been well-accepted, so I wanted to make one more to add to my collection.

Now, I cannot take full credit for my newest Pusheen addition, it was more of a situation where I had been seeing the idea all over the place and thought it was so freaking adorable that I had to to my own adaption!

All over the internet, I keep seeing Pusheen as Pokemon, all kinds of Pokemon! I have no idea who thought that Pusheen should be morphed into a Pokemon, but it's just about the most adorable thing ever.

I really wanted to do my four favorite OG Pokemon, but Pusheen is so cute on (his/her?) own, and I didn't want to simply just draw Pusheen as a Pokemon like I had been seeing, plus I like to put my own spin on things when contributing to the fan art world.

The only thing that could make this idea cuter, is if Pusheen was cosplaying as Pokemon, which is perfect for ComicCon conventions since cosplay is celebrated at these events. It is only natural that Pusheen would join in on the cosplay fun! 😸 

So I got out my ipad and started sketching away:

Initial Sketch

Clean-up Sketch

I really wanted to still see Pusheen's adorable little kitty face and the Pokemon's faces too. Once I was happy with the sketches, I transferred them onto illustration board and painted them with watercolor and added some pencil work.

I then scanned them and worked on the color digitally in Photoshop.

I'm definitely squeeing over the end result and am excited to have it join my fan art portfolio so other cosplayers can squee with me. 😊 💓

I was enjoying the whole dressing up as Pokemon theme so much, that I decided to draw Pikachu at Thor. I'm not too sure why I decided this now (I may have been watching a super hero movie on tv that day), but I managed to finish it in one day and just went with it! 

I did this one in my more traditional technique of pencil and digital color in Photoshop.

In the end, I'll have one more Pokemon themed fan art piece. 💛

The last piece that I will have to add to my fan art collection is a very special one that I fear may end up just being a vanity piece for me-oh well, I had fun with it (technique practice right?).

I was watching my younger brother play the new Zelda game on Nintendo switch a lot at the beginning of the year and it got me thinking about how much I love the Zelda games. In particular, I'll always be partial to The Ocarina of Time on 64, but I have always loved Zelda and played the game constantly on my gameboy growing up.

Anyway, all this nostalgia aside, it got me feeling all inspired and I wanted to draw Link and Zelda, but I wanted to draw them in a slightly more mature style than what I usually tend to gravitate towards.

I started out with a really rough sketch on my tablet (while I was on my brother's couch watching him game).

I continued to try and tighten up the sketch, their eyes look to funny to me here. 😹

You can see how I just keep drawing on top of all of my layers until 

I get the anatomy or line that I am happy with. 

End result and their eyes are better here! 😆

This part took the longest-oh and by this stage I had moved from my brother's couch and was working on the drawing in my studio! It's all still digital though, I wanted to see if I could make an illustration that was purely digital but still look like it was done traditionally.

So yea, this part took the longest, but it's also the part I enjoy the most because 

I can just zone out and get lost in the shading process and all the little details.

Coloring stage!

Ta-Da! The final look! 

I ultimately finish it in Photoshop and I'm looking forward to seeing how people respond to it...err..if they respond to it! 😅

Of course, new fan art aside, I will definitely have my little critter friends there for those of you who are into the crafty side of Ria Art World. 💖

I really hope to see you there!💕