Arizona,  Art,  Convention,  My Blog

2014 Phoenix Comicon Sketches

It’s been over a week since the Phoenix Comicon ended and while I’ve been updating my other sites about my adventures there, I’ve neglected this site. This is mostly because I don’t know what exactly to say about my trip in a formal, nice blog post. In order to keep the Phoenix Comicon excitement alive, I decided to talk about the sketches I did while at the convention. Originally I was going to include these sketches in my Sketch Book Saturday series, but I gave up on that idea and made a special post for them alone. 🙂

Before I left for the convention, I wisely decided to bring a sketch book with me so I can sketch if I get bored or I wanted to sit, rest, and do something relaxing.

On the Friday of the convention, my legs began to hurt from walking so I went to the second floor of the north convention building, found a chair to sit in, dragged out my sketch book, and began to draw.

The first thing I drew was Case Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team. From what I could see, they had the roof open for the game that would be played there later that night….

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Although the proportions of the ballpark is not as accurate as I would like them to be, I’ve been trying to not aim for perfection when it comes to my recent sketches. Just draw what I see and if I don’t like how it looks, just try again. In spite of the imperfection of the drawing, I was very pleased with my sketch. Someone walking by even complemented me on my drawing! (BIG confidence booster!)

Unfortunately, there was a water bottle leak in my bag the next day which almost ruined my sketch book. The book was ok, as was most of the drawings within it, but the drawing that got the worst of the water bottle leak was, you guessed it, the Chase Field sketch. It has minor water warp on it, but it did smudge the pencil shading. The above photo of the sketch is how it looks like after it dried out and was smudged.

After sketching Chase Field, I sketched the table that was located in front of the chair I was sitting in….

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Upon completing the table sketch, I thought about moving to another location so I could sketch another building that I couldn’t see from my chair. Although this was a good idea, when I looked up I saw many people gathering and sitting on the floor to rest. They had the same idea I had which is to retreat to the second floor to sit and rest for a while. So, if I wanted to sit in a chair (and I did) I’d need to stay put.

Since I sketched everything I wanted to sketch, I decided to just draw whatever I could think up at that time. This ended up being a girl with a hair cut similar to a cosplayer’s wig I saw earlier that day…

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Her clothes were a costume I was working on for almost a year now but never finished. At that time I thought about different costumes I wanted to wear that day but couldn’t because they were incomplete. This costume was one of them, so to prevent myself from beating myself up for not working on the costume, I drew it.

Another costume I drew in order to prevent myself from beating myself up for not completing it is one I started and planned on wearing to the Doctor Who 50th anniversary premiere. I called it “Princess Tardis” and the idea was to make a princess dress with a tiara but used all reference to the Tardis would be very subtle. No police signs, wood designs, or anything that would give away that it was obviously a Tardis. It was hard to imagine and it took me time to figure out what elements of the Tardis I could include in the costume that would make even an non-Whovian think it’s pretty. While sitting in the chair, I began to sketch and… well… I think I finally figured out what I want the dress to look like…

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See? Not obviously a Tardis. Just a pretty princess dress. And that was my goal. Just pretty. There are some things I want to change with the design, mostly the underskirt (I’m going back and forth if I should make the main fabric design the Tardis console or the living metal tree in Journey to the Center of the Tardis) but this is the general idea of what I wanted to do.

Since a princess needs a tiara, I sketched an idea for the tiara…

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Probably the most Tardis references the costume will have are in the tiara. There’s the light on top of the Tarids, the Seal of Rassilon, the light drop things that came from the living metal tree, and the windows in the Tardis. I’m not sure what I was thinking of doing on the right side of the picture though. I remember I didn’t know what I was drawing when I drew it, but eh. It’s an idea.

The last drawing I did at the convention was of Merida from Brave. I saw a few Meridas walking around and it made me think of a friend of mine. So, I drew Merida…

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Well, that’s all the sketches I did while at the convention! Part of me wishes I drew more than that, but I was too busy having fun and wandering around to sit down and sketch more.

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