Sketchy Magee Dump

Oh, hey. Haven't seen you in a while. Welcome back for another Sketchy Magee sketchbook sketch dump. I've been a bit busy this year... which is a good thing! Since graduating college it generally takes me a little over a year on average to fill up my regular sketchbooks. This one took a little over seven months. I still don't draw everyday, like I should, but I've been doing a lot better and feel like I've been getting a lot better. So below are some pictures I took from my sketchbook to show off some of the work I've been doing. Enjoy!

These are some character sketches from "Air Aunties" the short comic I illustrated for the Ladies Night Anthology "Sisters".

Here are a couple other sketches from various projects I worked on over the past year.

I spent a lot of time at the beach this summer, so there were quite a few beach sketches.

I've been a fan of r/RedditGetsDrawn for a while. Whenever I don't know what to draw or need to do some warm up sketches I generally turn to that subreddit. Below are some of those sketches. Some of which I posted, some I did not. These are all drawings of user submitted photos.

Doodled quite a few of my favorite characters.

And of course here are few other miscellaneous sketches that I enjoy.

Not sure what is going on here...

ughhh... You're gonna have to ask John about this.

C'mon now, you know I wasn't gonna leave you hanging without some embarrassing self portraits.

Me marveling at the magnificence of my boobs in this bridesmaid's dress.

And one of my favorites from the Rogers Park Wine Stroll.

Wow. Wasn't that great. We all had fun today. Wait, what's that? You wanna know how you can have a little piece of Andrea art. Well, you're in luck. I'm getting ready to send out this year's holiday card and you can have one for free! That's right, just private message me your address on Facebook and you will be added to the Zidek Family holiday card list. This is my ninth year designing holiday cards to send out to friends and family and now is as good of a time as ever to add your name to the list! 

What's that? You wanna know how you can get a hold of one of my comics. You're in luck with that as well, because I have BONUS NEWS!!!



B-B-B-BONUS!
This year I tabled at two conventions, got comics published in two anthologies and finished my second issue of No Pants Revolution "No Pants 2: The Revolution Continues". So how am I gonna ruin that perfect even number of two? I'm tabling at one more convention before the year is out. Say what? Come see me on December 16th at Pocket Con at the Chicago Cultural Center! I'll be selling copies of "Mito and Me", "No Pants Revolution" 1 and 2, as well as the Ladies Night Anthology "Sisters" and the Northside Comic Artists anthology "Misadventure" which feature comics drawn by me. I will also be selling stickers and original artwork. So if you're in the Chicago area, come check me out. This event is family friendly and will also feature goodie bags and events that are child friendly. Click on image for more information.

Another Sketchy Magee Over and a New One Just Begun

2015 was an emotional year. There was so much new and fun and exciting and a lot of sad and frustrating and tedious. I started out the year pretty strong. I felt motivated and optimistic. Motivation slowly dwindled and obligations got in the way. There were times I wanted to put pen or pencil to paper, but I couldn't. I was too tired or sad or busy. There are places in this sketchbook where consecutive pages are weeks or even months apart. Christmas is over and New Years is over and for better or worse things are starting to go back to "normal". I forced my self to power through the last three pages of this book, that had been empty for over a month, so I could call it a day on Sketchy Magee before the New Year. It felt nice. I get anxiety when I haven't drawn in a while and the longer it is the more nervous I feel about what might happen when I finally start to scribble. Maybe I've forgotten how to draw and maybe it'll all be crap. But then I do. And it's fine. It's all still there. Right where I left it. 

So here are some bits from Sketchy Magee.

Some scribbles

Some comic ideas I never finished

Lots of naked women in weird poses

Lots of women with clothes on as well

(John wanted me to include this sketch with the randomly written "Nuttiness" on top)

Lots of goofy drawings of myself

(I hope my aunt thinks I did justice to the awesome slippers she made me in this drawing)

(Also this is the sweater my Ma got me for Christmas 2014)

(Also boobies)

And also, John and pugs

A new year and a new sketchbook. Wish me luck.

Who Needs Chopsticks? Part 2

Hey, so after sleeping on it I decided I wanted to balance the composition a bit and add some color and ambiance. I added in some background detail with the lanterns and that inspired the color of the piece a bit. I feel a lot better about it now. It was also quite nice to pick up my brushes again as it has been a few months since I have used them. All in all, I'm pretty okay with how it turned out. Enjoy. (to see the process sketches and line art click here)

Process shot featuring my teapot.

Adding the finishing touches.

All scanned and finished.

Who Needs Chopsticks?

I came up with this rough idea for a sketch featuring me with my mouth wide open vacuum sucking some of my favorite Chinese foods. I spent some time doodling in my sketchbook trying to come up with a composition I liked and did a final line sketch. Below are the results of that work. The problem now is that I don't know what to do with it. I played around with some coloring in Photoshop, but wasn't liking the way it was turning out. So, yeah, not sure what to do. I think I might just leave it for a day or two and look at it again and see if I can come up with something. Anyways, here is what I got.

Rough sketches

Final lines (at least for now)

A Couple Sketchy Self Portraits

An accurate representation of how I've felt all day today...

Another sketchbook has come and gone...

I think I'll call this one "Pinky". It is a bright pink sketchbook that I received from a co worker. It was a little shorter than I'm used to when it comes to sketchbooks at only 70 pages. I'd say about half of it was filled with figure drawings and the other half with some pretty absurd sketches, some that were finalized into illustration pieces and some that were just rough, head clearing, mindless meanderings with no future. Since you've probably seen most of the figure drawing pieces here are some of the sketches. Enjoy.

Boy climbing fence.

Rough sketches for my fire escape piece.

Me and my sister acting goofy.

Random model.

Freckled chick.

Some person.

Guy afraid of the HOUND.

Some goofy little ditty.

And now for some ridiculous sketchy self doodles.

Don't ask.

Apparently I didn't feel like finishing the panda.

 So it's official, drawing myself in my underwear is a thing. Also, if that first self portrait made me look way uglier than I actually am, then this drawing is giving me way too much credit.

This is about right.

So lastly, and possibly most importantly, I'd like to take this time to announce that I am officially dropping my daily comics drawing as a thing. I've got about six and a half months of daily comics done (January, February, part of March, June-August, and part of September). As it turns out they are not for me. This isn't to say that I don't like drawing comics, the opposite is true. I love drawing comics, it's just that my average day to day is pretty boring. Also, over the months I've tried a few formats and couldn't find anything I really liked. I also found with drawing a daily comic, I was forcing myself to draw things I didn't really care about and tended to force myself to not draw more of things that I think were actually interesting things that happened to me. I don't think I will ever stop drawing journal comics, that are comics about interesting things that happen to me, but I will no longer be drawing them on a daily basis. By doing this I will be able to draw comics that I think have more substance. So yeah... I'm currently working on spending time daily to finish inking those comics and plan on posting them on here fairly regularly until I have posted them all. All the while concentrating on other things. So there's that. My guess is that most people just look at the pictures on this blog anyway, so I doubt this will really make any kind of difference to anyone, as they probably didn't know I was drawing a daily comic to begin with.