Two traditional marker illustration or and anthropomorphic male sheep character with light blue wool trimmed into a pattern similar to a long sweater. Left illustrations shows sheep looking regular with a full body of wool. The Right illustration shows the sheep treating his wool off in a fit of rage revealing his chiseled muscles underneath!

My month went hot and cooled down in more ways than one as I fiddle with tiny art and life tasks throughout August.

Alley Art Fest

The most notable and bittersweet art event I’ve done is this month is Alley Art Fest in Aurora, IL which will be the last event they’ll hold. I thought I had Anime Magic earlier, but I never got true confirmation about getting a table there, so apologize for any past misinformation.

Overall, Alley Art Fest went fine for me. I tried new improvements by printing small, make-shift signs glued on clothespins to keep the prices in front of people and reduce the potential sticker shock.

As usual, I was nervous about the validity of my work as a comic artist who hasn’t written anything new in years. But as usual, the feeling faded away once I got to the Downer St Bridge to set up. Parking a block away from my spot at the festival was a sore reminder my regrets not having a cart.

As the typical fool, I assumed I was healthier than I am, struggled to carry a folded table, a folded chair, weights, tent, and the rest of my art merchandise in my flabby little arms. The consequences of my sedentary life continue to hit me for the rest of the day when I made the rash choice to try standing at my table all day. Taking breaks with a chair, my feet were killing me. I need to remember to get better shoe soles if I want to stand longer than 30 minutes.

Ironically, I was more concerned for my health during the hours of the event. I brought bulk packs of granola bars and portable fruits to snack on and I refused the temptation to buy a beer to drank more water to stay hydrated and lucid.

No matter how many water bottles I brought, it still wasn’t enough during the warmer overcast day. Chatting with fans started strong in of the morning but by late afternoon, I was slugging down ready to nod off.

On September 12th, I’ll be Tabling at Fandom, Art and Music Expo in Joliet, IL. Here, I’m in a wacky interview with them about me and my work! Please enjoy!

Artist Alley Bingo

Many crowd reactions got messing around with making an artist alley bingo card. It’s a goofy little collection of the most common questions and actions I see behind the table, so it’s all in good fun. First, I started in Photoshop, but then I found a generator online that can shuffle the words.

You can make your own card on this generator if you want. Add my words or add your own if you got ’em! You can even print shuffled PDFs to pass to your friends to pass the down times! www.bingocardonline.com

I have a full year packed with cool conventions and events! Take a look through my Convention Schedule to see where I’ll be next!

Commissions

I’m still hard at work on this animation commission I took back in June. Despite this, the feedback I get with the work in progress posts tell me I’m in the right direction, it’ll just need more polishing.

This project will definitely increase my commission prices in the future. I assumed I could get through it withing a month and the project went far beyond my personal scope.

Blackmask

My hope for September is to knock out all these commissions so I can lock-in on creating new marketing material to on-ramp the release of a future demo for Blackmask.

Digital Color on Traditional Pen sketch on grid paper of three different scenes of an anthropomorphic male raccoon meeting with different types of anthropomorphic animal characters. Top sketch is of the raccoon meeting an anthropomorphic female wolf wearing a bandana and a leotard sitting at a bonfire.Middle sketch is of the raccoon meeting an giant anthropomorphic female goat with a second snake like goat head for a tail looming over the raccoon over a cauldron of fire. Bottom sketch is of the large raccoon peering his head through a hole to meet an circle of anthropomorphic mice sitting around a small lit branch.

Much of the programming aspect of Blackmask is in Adam’s hands, so right now my goal is to juggle my own pixel art projects, commissions, and writing tasks with a day job without burnout and demoralization.

Traditional Ink and Gouache Paint double page spread of an anthropomorphic dog in a pink dress and anthropomorphic raccoon in a blue coat having garden tea party in front of a large hedge wall. The dog is surprised by the arrival of a living hedge animal sculpture emerging from behind the hedge wall which the raccoon is unaware of behind him.

Pen and ink sketches on grid paper and post it notes depicting four different styles of doors. A post it note below demonstrates a simple sketch of a small house with a mouse inside the door. An anthropomorphic male raccoon wearing a long coat is hunched in front of this house to speak to mouse. Written text reads, "Mouse Town, Cole must crouch to interact with door."

The game is hitting a point where it’s taking up my mindscape and I need all the bandwidth I can scrape up to spread to word to everyone anticipating this game! Heck the Blackmask website badly needs an update, so I gotta get busy!

Pencil sketch of an anthropomorphic male raccoon in a long jacket being judo thrown by an angry anthropomorphic female dog wearing a flowing dress.

Despite the shiny objects of art tasks I want to do, I press forward on Blackmask to prove to myself that I don’t flake out on things.

Pencil sketch of an anthropomorphic male raccoon wearing a long jacket, trousers under a padded codpiece and belt. The raccoon throws a round bomb at the camera.

I’ll be attempt to update the Blackmask website with more blogs, manual drafts, and mailing list letters in the countdown to a demo release! You’ll get more information about the gameplay, such as deeper showcases of the stealth systems, introduction of the characters, and more insights on the overarching plot of Blackmask.

Other Art

Digital color over traditional ink half body portrait drawing of an anthropomorphic female green dragon wearing shiny white armor, over a half red, half blue doublet.

Early in August, my attempt to color my sketches in the morning. I reflected on my unwillingness to draw on digital and I assumed it was me not setting up my day to take time to just draw on my tablet.

I attempted things like directly coloring on my pencil sketches under a Multiply layer, up to looking through my files of scanned ink line art and flat coloring them, all the way up to taking time to arrange my Pizza Man pages to color.

Traditional pen and digital color illustration of an small anthropomorphic male raccoon wearing a long blue jacket carrying a massive backpack full of trinkets, tools, weapons, and valuables, as he looks up in terror to a colossal anthropomorphic female dog with extra heads for breasts, reminiscent of the Greek mythological beast, Cerberus. She wears and outfit of elaborate gold and jewels over a loincloth, as she stands in front of a foggy barred gate gripping her bident, glaring down to the small intruder approaching.

Traditional pencil sketch of an anthropomorphic female dog with extra heads for breasts and a long spade tail, reminiscent of the Greek mythological beast, Cerberus. She wears a breast-less leotard, chest harness, leg greaves, as she wields a three pronged pitchfork.

Traditional pencil sketch of an anthropomorphic female rottweiler-like dog with extra heads for breasts and a long spade tail, reminiscent of the Greek mythological beast, Cerberus. She wears a topless robe patterned robe and various pieces of arm and ankle jewelry, while attempting to stomp into a smaller wolf warrior with a cape and spear.

Traditional pencil sketch with digital coloring of an nervous anthropomorphic male dog with blonde fur, having his hand placed on the breast of an sultry anthropomorphic female dog with dark fur, and extra heads for breasts, reminiscent of the Greek mythological beast, Cerberus.

Digital illustration of an anthropomorphic male poodle with long puffy fur that billows out of at the legs and arms. He wears a fancy 17th century dark indigo jacket with tight green pantaloons,wearing dark red ribbons in his ears, carries a cane with a round gold handle and a tiny dark indigo hat at the top of the dog's massive pompadour.

This plan crashed and burned by the time I returned to taking more hour at my day job. I’m sure it’s a combo of tiredness, mental burnout from my previous art, and a general apathy toward the direction I’m taking with my art. I’m spending more time writing Blackmask than drawing.

Pencil sketch of an anthropomorphic female rabbit skeleton wearing a metal helmet with wings for ears, a rebraces, vambraces, cuisseses, greaves and no chest armor while wielding a poleaxe. Second pencil sketch of an anthropomorphic female rabbit skeleton wearing a metal helmet with wings for ears, a pair of rebraces, vambraces, cuisseses, greaves and no chest armor while wielding a poleaxe and having the loose cups of a metallic bra hanging from her neck.

Traditional art and digital color scene of an army line up of anthropomorphic bull characters in green armor and shields. A bull wearing red armor and a cape stands at the very front of the line up with sword and shield in hand ready to lead the charge to an unseen enemy. All bulls display an emblem depicting a bull head eating a laurel wreath.

Pencil sketch of an anthropomorphic horse character wearing a large armored ushanka style helmet with a small flag on top of the head, a light chest plate and pauldrons, over a dark colored tunic, and light metallic greaves on the legs with studded horseshoes. The horse also wields a halberd with an unreasonably long scythe part.

Twp traditional ink different pose sketches of an anthropomorphic female jackal with short hair, a missing eye, wearing a short tailcoat a prosthetic metal right leg, with matching metallic left boot,

Traditional pencil sketch of an anthropomorphic female jackal with long hair, eye patch, a prosthetic wooden right leg, wearing an eye patch, long coat, stripped trousers, as she shoots with her walking cane's with a hidden gun at the handle.

Two Traditional ink and digital colored drawings of an anthropomorphic female sheep with light pink wool trimmed into a pattern similar to a long dress. Left pose is a neutral standing pose with her hands clasped forward together. The right pose has her rolling up the "sleeves" of her wool arm, revealing her muscular forearm in a threatening manner, as she calmly says..."I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave..."

If you want to see the rest of my artwork, I archive my work all over my website! You can also find my work all over the internet, such as Bluesky, Newgrounds, and More! Hope to talk more in the future and I’ll chat with you next month!

I make plenty of other illustrations that you can browse on my website. You can also commission me to create artwork for you and catch me drawing live during my weekly art streams!

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The Cartoon Art of Ryan Francis

August 2026 Sketchbook