happy holidays!

Okay, so the color looks really weird on the monitor I'm using but is printing normal, so I'm hoping it shows up not-fluorescent on your screen. It's my holiday card...or more precisely, the third draft of the holiday card my mom is sending out wherein I finally managed to eradicate all my sick sense of holiday humor. So have a nice whatever you celebrate, oh and check back here again before the end of the year..that's all I'm going to say for right now.

week-end

So I just finished up a somewhat larger piece for somewhere else (details soon), and this has just been a kind of stressful day, so obviously I sat in front of the computer for another hour to see if I could do an all digital drawing of how I felt. It looks a little shoddy, but I wasn't using a scan of a hand drawing as basis like I've always done before. And while you don't have to worry about me going missing, the comment on attire is 100% accurate.

and so, they called her, the runaway queen, because it seemed she'd walk out on most anything

Things never turn out quite like they do in your head, but this isn't all that shabby, big-picture wise.

apresto firenze

And so closes my last night in Italy, going to snag a couple hours of sleep before heading to the airport. Here's a little journal sketch I did today while staring out over the whole kit and kaboodle. Promise to post some final project pictures in the coming days. Ciao!

Buongiorno Pipstrello!

So here's the children's book I made for my illustration class. It could only be 6 pages (plus cover, which is the first page, except the print version had the title in a horrendously clashing font color and the wrong name..as in my name..it's only ten letters folks, not that hard!) and no words. Enjoy!

COVER:Buongiorno Pipistrello by Tori Holder

warning sign (a pretty words post)

Just a lazy, dreamy on and off rain day in Florence, so here's something from le sketchpad that I never got around to posting. I left it really rough, I know, but I just really wanted to draw something with deer and cat interactions, as videos of it are pretty much my favorite internet thing, and by the time I figured out deer legs, I'd pretty much gone as far as I needed to go with it for right now. Not that I don't care, it just wasn't the same on paper as what I thought drawing it would be like. Still a nice one anyhow, no?

grainy

So just trying to keep up with my dwindling time here, as well as posting things as I make them. So here we go: lately I've really gotten into signing up for Art House Coop projects. A lot of them are free, and just really really fun, I'd suggest checking it out. But anyways, this was for one of them, the 4x6 exchange, which means someone somewhere will be getting this someday soon.

It's a drawing based off a photo, but not in the traditional draw off a photo way. I was trying to build up from little crosshatches like film grain arranges and makes images. It was really repetitive but fun, I don't know, I've just been going off in funny places in my head lately and really thinking about what builds up all the little things in my life, in this case quite literally.Well, we all have our weird stuff.

texture study/tide over

Alright, so I got a good load of work done on new comics yesterday in a little cafe where either they had a very short playlist on loop or it was a legitimately 30minute long rap song with a very strange dubby breakdown halfway through (yes, I feel the need to destroy all your conceptions of a charmingly quaint classy Florence..furthermore I may have been semi-kicked out for bogarting a corner table for almost two hours while only buying one drink..) Anyway, I ended up drawing far past the time I could go scan something, so ya'll are going to have to wait. In the meantime, enjoy this doodle I did at the same time of different textures/organisms I've been messing around with a bit.

Ciao. Io devo studiare Italiano aora perche non parlo o scivo molto buono  perche non sono brava de ricordo lingua straneri e fa un esame domani. (I think I just said "bye, I have to study Italian now because I don't speak or write very well because I am not clever at remembering foreign languages and I have an exam tomorrow.)

accumulation

The illustration that has been eating up all my time these past 3 days. Click for detail. Enjoy. 

illustrations 2 & 3

Okay so here's the other two in the dressed animals series. They're designed to be ipad wallpapers (that was the assignment, I just drew weird stuff not caring). So if you'd like, download and use as a wallpaper, and then tell me or send me a picture, so I can finally be at peace knowing it's been field-tested and really works as a wallpaper (okay, now I'm just being snarky..but really let me know if you use it). Oh and if you missed the first one, or the drawing the series is based on, more animal fun for you!

And one last thing...yes I am still doing comics. In fact, I'm so bombarded with material that I've just been sketching them out and then moving on to the next one before I lose the idea, but by Saturday I should have time to fully finish and post some that are in progress.

Illustration 1

Okay, this is the first in a three part series I did for a class project (the others are finished just not scanned in).Meet Sid the Zebra:

watercolor and china ink drawing

 If you really like him, stay tuned, because like I said, he has buddies, and also, I'm probably going to sell a lot of the stuff I make here for super cheap before I go just so I don't have to hassle getting it home.

R2 Duomo

Yeah, so this has come up multiple times in conversation so I just doodled it out.

some holiday cards I did

usually make more, but well, yeah I ran out of time...

this one's just an in-progress scan.I need to finish it tonight, let you know how it goes.

and then there's this one I sent to in a card exchange..SIERRA HOUK if you are reading this and haven't gotten your card yet, no peeking!

I mean it!

Okay, think she's gone now.

 

All Doctor Who related cuteness is property of the BBC, I bow down to you, clever television folk, and do this purely out of homage of the best show ever.

Happy Holidays, readers!

Love, Tori

snowfriend

So we had out first day of snow today, just a light bit of cloud confetti, nonetheless, I was ecstatic (don't believe me? proof ). Anyways, I returned home to see this little guy (whom I hastily dubbed Squirrely Squirrel) frolicking and snacking in the trees with a wee bit of snow on his wee lil nose!

just a little doodle before bed.

goodnight.

roar

So this is a little book-type thing I made in 2009 that I just had returned to me yesterday. It was for a creative writing course, and I had turned it in with my portfolio and apparently the professor had been cleaning up her office and found a lot of unreturned portfolios. So I thought I'd post it, just because while it's very rudimentary, it kind of was the last thing I did that lead me into really deciding that maybe making comics what what I really needed to do ...because I did shit like this all the time and then thought, "you know, if I put a little more effort into it, maybe this stuff could be something". Also, it folds out so that you don't see the next page until you're done with the page you're on and was made using all 100% post-consumer recycled materials (looking over the in class comments that were also in there, these seemed to be things people really liked that these pictures don't get across.

finger is kind of casting a shadow over the word "she" in case you couldn't read it

this is what happens when I have too much coffee

Between normal life, making fliers, working on my Halloween costume, and getting some pieces ready for a publication my friend's putting together, I am creatively tapped out, so sorry if my posts are skint in the next week or so. However, this popped in my head and I had to get it on paper and on the interwebs.

halllloooooowwweeeeeeeen!

As promised, something I was working on today. Just a little doodle, I actually kind of hate some parts of it, but I'm doing this new thing now instead of just giving up on something the second it doesn't work, just keep at it. Everything's practice, and it's the only way you ever get better. And some bits of it ain't too shabby.

 

yeah just in case ya didn't know, kind of love halloween.

Well, nighty-night everybody, think I just going to pop in the shower a then maybe read/draw a bit (just now realizing I sound like every girl at the beginning of the horror movie..ut-oh).

everybody wants to save the world

And sometimes, it's rather easy. Sure, maybe there's a protest (or ten) you're too far away from to partake in, maybe you haven't managed to make yourself carbon-neutral, maybe your cape just isn't back from the drycleaners yet. But you know what you can do? You can sign this petition for the Sierra Club to help them get permanent protection for the Arctic Refuge. And yes, I know, I don't usually use my blog like this, but I was asked to make a pledge for how many signatures I thought I could get, and well, I really aimed um, ambitiously. So please help them save an important threatened habitat and help me not let them down by filling in tori holder in the bottom two fields where it asked who referred you.  Thanks a million, and I promise I won't make (too much) of a habit of this.

because this lil guy unfortunately can't stand up for himself, otherwise we wouldn't need petitions

hey-hey-look-at-me / please pick up after your dog

So today I made the occasionally wretched trek over to the internet, checked my email, logged onto facebook and twitter (btw, if you read this and are like "oh I want to friend her" please don't, I only friend those whom I am actually friends with and then feel bad deleting the requests of those people who are like "be my friend person who doesn't know/can't recall me"...I am pretty good at checking out my twitter followers and comments here, so if you'd like to forge a fake friendship with me that way, do it to it!) But after deleting the requests of the people I didn't know, noting that my kinda-sad number of followers remained the same, and then getting into one of those little chat conversation things with a friend of mine about some new artwork he posted, I just got that ennui internet feeling, which turned into an almost revelation. Because in the conversation, I'd said something to the effect of "looking at other people's creative productivity makes me feel like I'm pretty much awful" and Sam was like "stop your self-deprecating bullshit, it's annoying" (except that he's far too nice so it was probably full of kind and cutesy words no one really uses, by the way you should go to the "rad places on internet" tabn after reading every single post here and find his blog's link, so you can look at something, you know, good) and isn't it just the same way with social media, blogs, or even the frequency of your phone rings.. just because you're (and by all you-terms, I mean me) not the most popular, famous, competent, talented person in the universe; well, there must be something grievously wrong with you, isn't there? I mean, why aren't people hanging on your every word like any insert-name-here you can think of? And then you realize how utterly dumb you sound. So that's it, I'm me, you're you, and I will do my best to be a better person pretend you're important if you do the same.

Unrelated in every way here's a little piece of paper on the side of the table while taking time off the computer drawing, I apologize for the poor quality...I love drawing lightly in pencil, but my scanner hates it.