Category: My Art

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Malarkey Maddie

As I wrote before, for the month of January, I’m drawing one new superhero lady every day. Once the month is up, I’ll be compiling the sketches into an eBook.

Today I want to show you one of my favorite ones I’ve done so far.

Her name is Malarkey Maddie.

superhero lady sketch malarkey maddie original character by kelci crawford
Malarkey Maddie!

I loosely based her on a fan I met at Phoenix Comicon, who wore a shirt saying something like “Crush the Patriarchy!” My response was, “Down with the Patriarchy! Up with the Malarkey!”

Malarkey stayed floating around in my head for a while until this sketch series happened. Then I thought back on that fan and that phrase, and went, “What if a superhero lady incorporated that into their superhero name?”

And Malarkey Maddie became a superhero.

She may not fight against the Patriarchy, since it’s an abstract concept and not a person. So she has yet to get an arch nemesis.

She IS, however, super strong and has the ability to fly.

malarkey maddie superhero lady sketch by kelci crawford

 

She doesn’t have a story yet, but she’ll be mentioned in other stories I’m working on. Maybe she’s the favorite superhero of Charlie from Charlie & Clow? Or Tracy’s favorite comic book hero?

Who knows what the future will hold for Malarkey Maddie?

If you have any ideas, I would love to read them in comments.

Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

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Updates on Superhero Ladies and Women Warriors

jen cho nagatana superheroine original character art
Jen Cho, aka Nagatana (click to enlarge)

The Superhero Ladies project is coming along nicely! I have 17 ladies already drawn and the month of January isn’t even over yet. Hopefully I can keep up the good work and have lots of awesome superheroines by the end of the month.

There’s a few characters in the project that I’m thinking of branching off into their own stories, or maybe even comics. So who knows?

Another project I’m working on is one I’m reviving from hiatus.

The Women Warriors Project.

I put it on hiatus for a few reasons.

  1. At the time, there was a lot of freelance work going on and I couldn’t update it consistently.
  2. It was hitting an artistic wall, where I felt like every piece I made for the series was getting worse.
  3. I wanted to experiment more with tools like watercolors and acrylics, and I didn’t have the resources or time to do it at the time.

But I’m bringing it back! With a few changes.

Firstly, there will be a new finished painting every month. Acrylic, watercolor, doesn’t matter. It’ll be a painting.

As progress is made on the paintings, I’ll be posting them on the Women Warriors Project blog. The intention is to make a chronological series of posts, showing a painting from initial sketch to finished piece. Tonight I made a sketch to develop an idea for the first painting, so expect to see it on the blog soon!

Know any cool historical women warriors? Leave their names in the comments below!

Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

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The Superhero Ladies Series Returns!

A while back I wrote a post about how I wanted to do a series of illustrations showing Superhero Ladies, dressed and posed like human beings, not like…whatever comic books thinks is sexy.

While there are ladies in comic books and graphic novels that are in charge of their sexuality, and there are superhero ladies who are clothed, they seem to be the exception, rather than the rule.

Thus, I came up with the idea of the art series Superhero Ladies: a series of illustrations showing superhero ladies dressed and posed like…actual people.

sojourner superhero ladies art series
Number 1 in the series.

I put it on the back-burner, though, because I wasn’t sure how I wanted to exactly tackle this series.

But then I wrote about my Goals for 2015. And one of my goals is to make more eBooks full of sketches.

So I had the idea, “How about I make my first eBook of sketches be the Superhero Ladies series?!”

So that’s exactly what I’m doing.

This actually ties in well with another one of my goals, which is to draw two sketchbook pages a day. So I’ve been drawing quite a few superhero ladies this week already.

Here’s a peek at just one of the new ones:

mary wildfox superhero ladies art series sketch
Mary Wildfox (Click to enlarge).

I forgot to mention that the Superhero Ladies series will feature entirely original characters.

So, no, I’m not going to be doing re-designs of famous superheroines like Spider Woman, Power Girl, Captain Marvel, or anything like that. That can be addressed in a different series of sketches altogether.

Nope. This series will feature only original characters, costumes, and (hopefully) powers.

I’ll post more sketches occasionally. I don’t want to post them all online because I don’t want to spoil any surprises I have in mind for the eBook.

Speaking of books, though, Johnson & Sir have a book on pre-order. I talked about that in this post.

I’m working hard to make sure there’s new prints, books, and more for you. If you have any suggestions or ideas of what you would like to see more of, leave a comment below!

Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

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Writing Claire’s Story

claire comic post apocalyptic zombie fighter
(Click to enlarge)

So one of my New Years Goals was to write 1000 words a day. Which sounds pretty lofty, but really I can accomplish that in about an hour. Sometimes less.

In writing 1000 words a day, I’m actually getting a LOT of writing done.

It’s not just blog posts either.

Thanks to my 1000 words written a day goal, I’ve revisited an old script of mine, and am now in the process of writing it and continuing off of it.

I’m talking about my post apocalyptic lesbian love story with zombie-killing, starring Claire and Tracy.

claire and tracy in work in progress

I finished editing Chapter 1, and I powered through Chapter 2. It’s a GREAT feeling knowing there’s progress finally being made on a project that’s been on hold for months.

I’ve been revisiting this project in my sketchbook, as well.

claire and tracy comic work in progress art sketch
A Work in Progress (click to enlarge)
claire and tracy comic work in progress art sketch of environment
Sketching out an idea of the world they explore. (Click to enlarge).

And I’ve been doing some sketching to flesh out their world bit by bit.

I’ve also been looking at this list of post-apocalyptic tropes to avoid and what hasn’t been done yet. I’m hoping to add elements of things rarely done in post-apocalyptic stories, pulling inspiration from this list.

Like bike-riding. Oh my shit there need to be more bike riders after cars become useless hunks of metal.

What are some tropes of the post apocalyptic genre you can think of? What hasn’t been done in a zombie story yet that you can think of? Leave them in the comments below. I would love to hear about them!

Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

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A New Commission, Finished

art commission by Kelci D Crawford
(Click to enlarge).

You should click that image up there and get a better look.

No, really.

I’m so proud of this new commission I finished for a friend of mine. The client is an old high school friend of mine and the commission was to draw her family.

From left to right, they are: Delias, Kendall, Andris, Jake, Zo, Leon, Margie, and Itzal.

At the moment, I’m not available for commissions. There’s a few things I need to sort out with my day job first.

Once I’m available, though, I’ll announce it here on the blog and on my Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.

Thanks for checking out the new work! There will be more of it soon.

I’ll see you tomorrow with a new blog post. :D