(Oh, yeah...just noticed--Submission number 500 :) )

One of my most under-utilized characters, Sherryl comes out of obscurity (she hasn't been seen since 2010's "Snug as an Ugg in a Rug") to help sell commissions...hopefully. This pic is intended to serve as a second table card while I participate in Artist Alley at the conventions I attend. It may not have been obvious, but I've been able to provide paper and sheet protectors for all my convention commissions for some time now. I suspect that at least a few potential commissioners passed on inquiring about a pic simply because they lacked a sketchbook. Whether my suspiscion was right or wrong, it's here, and it's informational. It's first use will be at Anthrocon 2013.

Of note is that this pic is one of two (here's the other one) I did this month completely digitally. No pencil sketch preceded these two. As common a thing as that is in this fandom what with all the artists streaming their work sessions for their fans, it's totally new to me since the last time I tried this (six years ago) it was a failure. Recent inspiration from viewing the streams of a couple of artists I watch, and the discovery of a couple of freeware digital paint applications (AZDrawing and MyPaint) provided the impetus to give it another shot. And they both came out better than expected. I could concievably have streamed these images during their creation, except that I haven't set up my system to do so, and both of them took an unreasonably long time to complete to be doing them for an audience.

Both AZDrawing and MyPaint support canvas rotation, which was an immense help using a smaller-than-huge tablet, but AZDrawing is a B/W ink-only program. While that could have served my needs for this image, the nod went to MyPaint, as it has keyboard+mouse shortcuts that allowed me to perform pans, zooms and rotation without having to move off the piece to select the relevant tool. Being that this pic's purpose didn't really cry out for a backdrop, I added a simple drop shadow that makes it look like an animation cel. The only glaring issue with the finished artwork is that MyPaint apparently won't export a rotated image--it will always output a picture oriented at zero degrees rotation, regardless of how the artist intended the piece to display.

Trivia: In the original sketch Sherryl had been drawn barefoot. I wasn't satisfied with the foreshortening, so rather than potentially spending hours trying to fix them, I drew on a pair of Tory Burch "Chelsea" flats. Yeah, that's what she needs--a pair of $185 ballet flats :D

MyPaint digital sketch (5mb), cleaned up and colored in the same application, text and cel-shadow added in Micrografx Picture Publisher 10. full-size is a 18MB bitmap.
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