Playing with some #BobsBurgers fanart to get back into the swing of things after a mini-sabbatical in Japan. 🎨✈️
Every couple of years, the hubby and I take a 6-week "mini-sabbatical" (heavily inspired by Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding). This year was a return to Japan! It was a total reset—so much so that unfortunately I had found my drawing skills starting to atrophy...
While a bit discouraging, it was the perfect excuse to dive back into illustration. I’m leaning into a Louise/Logan "enemies-to-friends" trope. My headcanon: An older Louise takes over the burger mantle and franchises out, with Logan handling the quality control. 🍔
The Process & The "Adobe Thumb" 🛠️
As with most of my projects, I started sketching in Krita, and brought it into Affinity for the finishing vector work. I needed the practice with both the drawing and software, especially since I don’t have the same decades of experience with this software as I do with Adobe.
Honestly, I really enjoy being out from under the "Adobe thumb." If you’re not an Adobe power user, the Affinity suite is a wonderful alternative for vector work and page layout. Krita, on the other hand, has been a powerhouse for digital painting, sketching, and light hand-drawn, frame-by-frame animation. Between those and Blender for motion graphics, I’m loving building my own custom creative suite!
📢 Shop Experiment: Remember to comment on my shop experiment and tell me which of my illustrations you'd like to see on specific types of products and apparel: Link to Post
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I'll be real with you. I wasn't happy with my art. I won't go everything that happened in Jan but also decided to try something new approach with my art. I've tried to draw with a lasso tool before but I had a crappy tablet. And bad stabilization. I forgot art is supposed to be fun. If people don't like my stuff, they can scroll away! Lol I want my art to be spooky and fun. So expect changes from now on.
Also Fatso she's not being romantic. Stop it. (I didn't mean to give her boobs...)
Continuing to play as a student of life, the universe, and everything with a new drawing experiment: Prompt-fire Comics. 🔥🖌️
The idea is to merge my figure and gesture studies with quick-fire storytelling to build the speed and efficiency I’ll need for more complex hand-drawn animation (and comic creation!) The rules are simple: 3–4 panels, a random prompt, and a timer set for 10–15 minutes.
As per most of my creative expeditions, while the idea is simple, the execution was less straight-forward.
The first comic, "The Serene Swimmer," actually came pretty easily to me and fit nicely within that 10-minute window. The second piece was definitely more challenging as I tried to figure out the story behind this "Odd-Couple" without exploring the more obvious routes, which of course led to a bit of overthinking the problem, spending closer to 17 minutes on the prompt.
I’m not entirely sure how successful I was with either speed or storytelling, but that’s exactly what this type of practice is for! It’s also fun to be revisiting a bit of my Improv (Comedy) experience with more quick-thinking, off-the-cuff style storytelling—something I haven't played with enough in recent years.
Ultimately, I'm always looking for ways to both improve my art, as well as increase my speed/efficiency. It’s a work in progress, and while the growing pains are real, I’m sticking to my mantra to simply Follow the fun! (and hopefully the speed will follow!) ⏳✨
💬 Which character design styles are you currently loving? Let’s talk shop in the comments!
☕ Support my "student of life" adventures: ko-fi.com/lindseyabendschein
Another post-sabbatical project! I’m revisiting some of my #MerMay illustrations, this time focusing on digital painting. 🧜♀️🎨
My natural tendency is to live in the vector world. I love being able to finely tune every single line to the Nth degree—even down to individual stroke widths. Way back when I was first introduced to graphic design software, I immediately fell in love with Adobe Illustrator. I love the clean look, smooth lines, and sharp geometric shapes vector art produces, and most importantly, the ability to scale and rework a piece while maintaining fidelity. ✨
As I continue to stretch outside the Adobe sphere, I thought this was a good opportunity to stay entirely inside #Krita, taking this project from sketch to final paint. While Krita certainly has similarities to Photoshop, there is definitely a learning curve between (re)learning key commands, brush options, and customizations, and even understanding how the layers blend and interact.
Much like with Blender, there is a lot to learn, but I’m hoping as I continue to explore digital painting, these skills will transfer over to my 3D work with creating more of my own custom textures and materials. 🛠️
This whole creative journey has really been an exercise in exploration—trying to find my own path between learning the nuances of the software and discovering a workflow that actually makes sense for the type of work I truly enjoy creating and want to pursue. I’ve spent the better part of my life as a student of life, the universe, and everything, and right now, that means finding where art meets leadership and youth development.
I’m especially looking to connect with like-minded collaborators—fellow explorers navigating the jump from Adobe to open-source, or those working in the youth development and education space. If you're building something in that same sector, let’s exchange some learning headaches!
It’s been so satisfying to feel the momentum finally picking up. I honestly feel like I’m on the cusp of breaking through to that next phase of the journey. There is a lot of excitement ahead, and I’m looking forward to continuing to share the experience (and the inevitable "growing pains") with you all! 🚀
💬 Shop Experiment: I'd love your input! Head over to my Instagram post and tell me which illustrations you’d like to see on specific products and apparel.
Playing in Blender some more with this tribute to my favorite coffee in the city, Stone Creek Coffee! ☕️🏙️
The coffee scene in Milwaukee has been growing a lot in recent years, which is pretty perfect for me and the hubby. We love taking walks or bike rides out to all the various coffee shops to reconnect over a cup of coffee. While we’ll sometimes indulge in a latte or seasonal drink, we typically opt for a decaf paired with the more super-charged Nitro cold brew—and for me, Stone Creek’s Jet Black is my favorite in the city! 🥯
This animation served as another Blender intensive, this time focusing on collections and arrays, and continuing to experiment with the visibility options of the different elements. Based on some things I had read, it seemed as though I had been under-utilizing collections, and so I wanted to see how they might come in handy for what I was hoping was another relatively simple animation.
As per most of my Blender experiences, things were not nearly as straightforward as I was anticipating. While headaches ensued, there were successes and lots learned, which is the ultimate goal. I’ve been enjoying this simple animation approach of focusing on one or two new elements to experiment with in Blender (and working entirely outside the Adobe suite!). 🛠️🎨
The most challenging part for me is often keeping things simple, and these very short, basic animations have been excellent sandboxes for my Blender education, as well as helping me bring new life to various projects I’ve had in development. It’s been fun overall, and I’m looking forward to more to come!
📢 Shop Experiment: I'd love your input! Head over to my Instagram post and tell me which illustrations you'd like to see on specific products and apparel.
☕ Support the Journey: ko-fi.com/lindseyabendschein
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Continuing my motion design journey in Blender with this project dedicated to the Boys and Girls Brigade and their Leadership Training Conference (LTC) camp! ⛺️✨ I have the absolute joy of volunteering for a week up on Onaway Island every summer, and this piece was a fun way to bridge the seasons.
In the animation, you'll see our winter snowman (paddle-arms and all!) melt away into the bright, sunny waters of Waupaca’s Chain ‘O Lakes, revealing the LTC letters. It’s a bit of a visual metaphor for the transformation that happens up there every summer. 🛶☀️
This was definitely a more ambitious project than I initially anticipated. Incorporating 3D elements and camera movements presented quite a few "learning opportunities" (to put it mildly!) as I continue to navigate the complexities of Blender.
My goal is to transition the motion graphics and animation work I’ve traditionally done in After Effects and Adobe Animate over to Blender, working entirely outside the Adobe suite. 🛠️
As free software, Blender is incredibly accessible, but it comes with an exceptionally steep learning curve. It’s not always intuitive—especially coming from outside the 3D modeling world—and I certainly have a litany of gripes and frustrations as I go! However, I’m truly enjoying the challenge and seeing the results. Blender definitely keeps me questioning and developing along this creative journey. 🎨
The Brigade has played such a key role in my life. For many years now, the hubby and I have volunteered with the LTC camp, and we’ll be back up there again this June! I always feel like I’m growing alongside the amazing leadership and students who attend. It’s a transformative time for everyone involved, and I highly recommend checking it out. 🌲⛰️
🔗 Registration for LTC Camp: bgbrigade.com/camp-onaway
📢 Shop Experiment: Don't forget to check out my previous post and let me know what products or apparel you’d like to see in my new shop: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTz9lOKjXOr/
Open to suggestions about video editing for GIF-making without photoshop. I found a GIF tool that works well but it doesn’t have the ability to change colors like photoshop does.
