The Office

I'd like to take this chance to plug two artists that I think are absolutely amazing.
The first is Makani (aka Heather Campbell). Her work is pretty much everything I want my work to be. The lines are clean and the colors are bright and vivid. Her (or, let's face it, J.K. Rowling's) characters are cartoonish, yet not exaggerated. And most of all, her art looks so alive! Her panels are like screenshots from an animated film. It's as if motion is their natural state, but someone has forced them to a standstill.

The second artist I wanted to mention is Vera Brosgol (you might have seen her comics in the Flight Anthologies). Her work is, at times, weird, sweet, cute or just plain adorable. I could keep on linking to images I like, but I've run out of epithets.
It feels like she's bursting with fun concepts. Bird hats? Turtledogs? Her use of simple lines and just-enough detail might look simple at first, but it's that particular quality of her work that allows it to so clearly and powerfully convey all her ideas.

I was meaning to write this yesterday (notice the title was "transitional period"), but I got sidetracked with my thoughts on what deserves being uploaded to the net.
I've been feeling, lately, that I'm at one of those points in my life (or in my evolution as an artist), again, were I need to change my style. My characters' poses are stale and it seems like they scroll through the same 3 expressions. Seeing other people's work only makes these feelings stronger. Maybe it's time I started taking life drawing classes. I'll have to ask around.