NewportMuse

Birthplace: Los Angeles, California

Birthdate: March 5, 1970

Hometown: Whittier, California

Lives in: Honolulu, Hawaii

PLEASE NOTE: I do NOT do requests or commissions. I have had many bad experiences with them and have stopped doing them altogether. Other Deviants are ready and available to take requests and commissions and I encourage you to support them.

I am a cartoonist, graphic artist, web designer and filmmaker born and raised in the Los Angeles area. I have been drawing pretty much my entire life. My earliest memories of drawing are of preschool paintings when I was 4 years old and drawing the railroad track designs from the classic TV dance show "Soul Train" on every sheet of paper I could find. It got me in trouble with my parents when I started drawing all over the books they bought for me.

I started drawing the Smurfs when the original TV series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions aired during the 1980's, and from there I developed my own drawing style. If you look very carefully, a lot of my original characters have a Smurf-like appearance. But unlike the Smurfs, they actually have necks.

I live in Honolulu, Hawaii where I graduated from Hawaii Pacific University with a Master of Arts in Communication in December 2016. Relocating from L.A. to Honolulu was the biggest move of my entire life, leaving behind everything I've known in Southern California and the American mainland for a college in the middle of the Pacific. But I chose this path to ultimately start a new career. And what a better place to study than in paradise?

My thesis at HPU was "All About Honu", an online series of short documentary videos on Hawaiian green sea turtles for Malama i na Honu (Protect the Turtles), a conservation group here on the island of Oahu.

My DeviantArt Repertoire

My Little Pony: Two of a Kind -- Far and away my most popular drawings. The ponies from the animated TV series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic are together with their human counterparts from the spinoff series My Little Pony: Equestria Girls in a combined universe centered around Princess Twilight Sparkle as a Friendship Studies teacher at Canterlot High School. Sunset Shimmer is one of Twilight's human students and Princess Celestia's adopted daughter. I am the resident MLP fan artist at Comic Jam Hawaii and people gather every time I draw Twilight and the gang.

The Smurfs -- It's what first brought me to DeviantArt in 2013. I specialize in Smurfette and Vexy having fun as sisters and best friends. Also in Grouchy and Vexy as a couple, aka "Grexy"; Smurfette as the assistant leader of Smurf Village; the Smurflings adopting Vexy as their own "smurfy aunty"; including OC's from other Deviants with the official Smurfs; and the female Smurfs introduced in the film Smurfs: The Lost Village and the second Smurfs TV series now on Nickelodeon.

Original Characters -- not that many, but they are Alpha Girl, a Japanese-American superhero based on Honolulu; Kimo the Sloth; and Ricki Lee & Tony, a young couple raising their two sons in Honolulu. I also post other new OC's as they are drawn up.

Faith and Volunteering

I am a Christian -- a follower of Jesus Christ -- and worship at Calvary Chapel Downtown, a small church in downtown Honolulu. Through Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, California I went on a relief trip to New Jersey in February 2013 to assist victims of Hurricane Sandy clean out and rebuild their homes.

Since moving to Honolulu, I have volunteered at an after-school program run by City Church Honolulu for children in public housing, teaching them how to draw the Smurfs, My Little Pony, cartoon animals and other characters.

Favorite Ways of Wasting My Time

Twice a month I participate in Comic Jam Hawaii, a Facebook group of local artists that meets at Pearlridge Center in Aiea, Hawaii to draw, collaborate and share our artwork with the local community. I am the only Smurf and My Little Pony artist in the group so far, and MLP fans tend to herd around me to see my pony drawings. Recently I participated in an artists' panel at the Super Saturday comic con in Honolulu in June 2023.