Of Workouts, Twitter, Steampunk & Josephine

Heya, world!  It's me Chaz Kemp with another installment of my blog.  Woo Hoo!  That makes 2 in a row!  I'm on a roll.  :)  Thanks to everyone who read my inaugural post.

A good art tip is a cool way of starting off a blog ya?  
Exercise.  Ya, I said it.  Exercise.  I try to do it first thing every morning so that I feel really good all day.  You know all of the benefits so I won't get into that... All I'll say is that it puts me in a confident, positive and happy frame of mind.  Simply put - I draw better once I've done something physical.

Yesterday I got to hang out with an old friend of mine named Jyoti. He runs his own business as well and we talked about ways to stay inspired, goal-setting, motivational techniques, etc.  We hadn't really seen each other in quite a few years and a few weeks back he called me out of the blue!  He's a really great guy and though his business is different than mine, I got a ton from our conversation.  Life really does rock!

I created a brand new Twitter account and I'm clueless as to how it works.  I understand Facebook, MySpace, my email, the internet and this blog.  I'd jump on Twitter and ask for help but that'd take up some of the 150 letters that I can use to create a tweet. siiiigh  I only joined it because the Artist's & Graphic Designer's Market 2010 said I should.  It's a very good book, by the way, and the one for 2011 should be out now so buy it here.

On a side note - my girlfriend Nessa & I love to have little role-playing side adventures over email. They're like creative writing exercises for our own amusement. Today's was a rousing steampunk adventure wherein we fought a whole dirigible filled with cross-dressing villains. I won't get into too much detail except to use the words: Leather harness, cowboys, exploding tapioca, unibrow, pump, job opening, spiked whip and cake.

Moving on... Here's a line drawing I'm doing for a project called Gaslight Underground, which is a steampunk live action role-playing game.  It's going to be so completely awesome your head might fall right the heck off.  Anyways, I promised I would show you guys some work-in-progress kinds of things so you can see my work as it's happening:

I call her Josephine, which is a groovy Victorian name.  I've decided to make her elven and give her a sweet jacket because that kind of puts the "punk" in Steampunk.  When my client is ready, I'll do up a version with just the base colors, I'll tweak the outlines, do the shading and then do the background to give it the Art Nouveau flavor that I love so much.  I'll make sure I post drawings at each stage.

OK - until next time... DON'T eat the cake - you really don't wanna know where it's been.  - Chaz

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