Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Two Pieces Today

I thought that I would share a drawing that I did for a friend a little less recently. Its a piece that I'm quite happy with overall although anime isn't a genre that I stereotypically choose to draw in.

This is just the scan, loosely shaded and with no lineart. I typically don't even do lineart when I don't have to. In this case I used a tutorial from a friend to colour it and didn't need to go through the trouble of making the actual lineart.

I did however, do some preliminary shading on the drawing before I did the scanning. You'll see in the coloured version how this helps with the actual shadows in the colour.

Anime is pretty easy. I don't think I need to go into any process here. Its just a simple anime lineart that doesn't even really have any complex shapes. Although my goal was to have her look slightly wistful and mysterious. I think that she loses that in the coloured version and I much prefer the non-coloured. That's just preference though. Most people generally take to the colour, I think, because well, its colour and that's eye catching while white and grey and black, but mostly white, aren't so much. Anime is really popular. I don't think you can get your art any more noticed unless you took photographs on naked women and call it Art. The world is great isn't it? Anime, simple and easy and not overly unique, or nudes pretending to be real art even though most of the time its gratuitous nudity that is unneccessary.

So along with the sketch and the coloured version on here, you can also see the final version with a background over here

Monday, December 11, 2006

Two of Hearts

This is another work in progress for a card deck collaboration that I am doing with Anne. There is still the colouring to do which I am just starting here very quickly, but I wanted to get the pencil sketch up to know that I hadn't forgotten about her entirely.

The idea was just to have two girls nearly identical forming a heart out of their curved hands. Its not unique, but it is somewhat tricky. This is the result.

I'm actually quite fond of it. Its a new style for illustration that I've adopted. Influenced mainly by Stephen Silver and Mike Dashow. Two men, who I think, have incredible talent.
Over my break my priorities are going to be with Aggro as I haven't done much due to lack of time, so shortly I shall be able to fill computer screens with Ainsley and Liam once again.

Also in browsing the internet the other day I came across Kawaii Not which may, or may not be, the cutest webcomic I've ever seen.
This one is my favourite.

How Strange

I think, as what happens frequently with Neil Gaiman, my posts have suddenly been eaten by some sort of internet monster.
Somewhere. Somehow. 6-10 posts disappeared. I think its because my internet has been cutting in and out so I think they are posted and it turns out they just aren't.
Just had them linked from deviantart too. I guess it shows I just shouldn't be lazy at all.

Kudos blogger. Really.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Robyn

A portrait I did of my friend for her birthday.

The funny thing is I did it the night before and managed to cram in a fairly detailed portrait in less than 8 hours while doing my projects to finish my semester. It was quite fun. Ish. Funish.

The drawing itself is on 110lbs paper and done in various graphite lead. The shading was done with blending stumps to give it the smooth skin.

The hair is the most process though. She's blonde. As I looked at the picture I couldn't figure out how to make her hair "blonde."

My process started as creating a light base with one of my pencils. From that base I added dark shadows where needed and built up the various tones. Hair as a lot of tones and if they aren't all there, it will look flat. When I had all my darks and mitones in I took an eraser and erased out highlights. All the fine lines that can be seen at the top of the hair are done using an eraser with an edge. Then I took a finely sharpened pencil and added shadows back into where they were needed. I actually really like how the hair turned out. Its the first time I've done it in this way and it actually worked extremely well.

As always, a larger version may be seen here.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

The Point of No Return

Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I absolutly love the Phantom of the Opera. At two I could sing almost the entire thing by heart, at 12 I picked up the french horn in the hopes that one day I might play the music for it. I was excited, and disappointed, by the movie and even managed to score some tickets when the broadway show was in my hometown this past summer.

Also, Gerard Butler is extremely nice looking and its too bad that Christine never goes after him. I always liked the Phantom more the Raoul. Raoul is whiney.

This is how I'm hoping the work in progress in the previous post will look when its complete, except prehaps more complex and detailed.

The smoothness is what I was going for. Its a very dark image, but the softness gives it a warm feeling. I'm quite fond of it. The process was simply added various shades of colour and then blend them to look even.

The hardest part was definetly her hair. Curls were quite hard to get to look right with highlights and low lights. The other issue was the lace on top of her dress which I just didn't do. The way it is though adds to its feel.

If you want a bigger version that can be found here.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Aly (Work in Progress)

I wanted to share a work in progress that since I haven't had a lot of time outside of school, is still in its early stages. Its good though because it really shows off the process involved.

The reference photo is underneath with low opacity so that it can be seen where I'm going with this.

Anyway, the process isn't so much hard as tedious. Its one of those tedious processes which is quite time consuming.
The first step I do is the background. Sometimes its just a solid colour but I wanted to have some cool atmospheric stuff. Starting with a solid colour I added lighter shades with the paintbrush tool and then did a gaussian blur. It makes a nice smooth surface and gives a starting point for the types of colours that will be used in the rest of the piece.

My pallet is the next step and I make sure I have all of the colours I'll use for my skin tones. (Its still visible in the upper left corner) Then taking the one that will be the bast I draw out the basice outline in the flat colour. With a size 24 paintbrush I began to add the highlights and shadows to the face. Its clearly visible. The rest is just a matter of smuding and blending with the blending tool. I always put them in the upper left so that its just a matter of grabbing the colour selector and getting the desired colour from there. It saves a lot of work with trying to find the right shades and maintaining the uniformity within colours.

So I'm hoping to get some time to do it. Although with school and other things I haven't had the time. Here's to hoping.

Thursday, November 30, 2006

A Quick Pencil Drawing

Its just a quick drawing I did over my lunch break one day. I was eating a bagel and that quite possibly may be why it didn't turn out quite right. As a Christmas gift to a friend I was going to draw a picture and then I realized that I can't draw myself at all.

Is that odd? For an artist who does a lot of portraiture to not be able to draw themselves. Perhaps I just run against the norm, which either makes me astoundingly cool or have some kind of deficiency.

Either way, this was done based merely on a reference picture of me for pose and nothing more. I basically just sat down and drew and this is what happened. Its got some sort of unique charm and appeal to it even though its quite ugly if you think about it. I don't look like this. I just, have a posed picture like this and I'll leave it at that. Its not quite finished, I may yet finish it, but as far as I'm concerned from the neck down she's done except for some small sweater details.

She has a horse mouth. That's depressing to me.

Also, I managed to make a layout and its wintery since it is winter afterall. Although as for the snow, I'm spending Christmas in San Francisco so while everyone is freezing in Canada I'll be enjoying a harbor cruise in a t-shirt and maybe a sweater. I'll get some drawing done while I'm there with any luck. I'm not keen on the actual going, but there will be the Golden Gate as well as Interesting People. I've been there before. I think its the only city in the world where you will find a homeless guy who tries to scare people for money and another who sings the SpongeBob Squarepants theme song at the trolley station.

FYI it might do one better to click on the above image. Its not very clear, but it is when you click, so you might fancy a visit to something slightly larger and less aliased.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Learning to make use of what you have

Being a new media student I am quite lucky to be allowed the use of a broad range of programs. Pretty much everything from 3D programs, to Adobe Premiere and most recently, Macromedia's Flash. Which isn't bad of a program. In fact, quite fun to play with.

One of my introductions to flash was to get the hang of the actual drawing of objects in the program. This made me happy. I get to draw in class even if its on the computer its still drawing. So I drew a girl and gave her a particular style and then thought she needed some colour to give her some life. For some reason I'm reminded of Stephen Silver when I look at it. Of course, I could say that as far as my more illustrated work goes, he is an influence among some others. What people may be familar with is Kim Possible. Mr. Silver did that.

The above drawing was pretty quick and done with my mouse. So either I've gotten more control with using my mouse or Flash is really that much easier. I'm hoping its the former as that would be splendid to note. I would have used the tablet, but since I was at school I didn't exactly have free range of a tablet pen.
And speaking of tablets. My world would be complete if only I could manage to afford a Cintiq. I don't exactly have $3000 though. My parents wouldn't go for that either.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Ainsley

A few posts will probably surface sometime today or in the next few days, possibly. I still need to make a layout. Really, its on its way. I'll pretend I'm not outright lying through my teeth.
No I haven't really started it. To be honest, all I've done is plan it out on paper.
I have done that, give me some credit.

What I do need to do is get some blogs up here.


My first is an older drawing from this year. A lot of it was a study on human anatomy as practice with a photoshop colouring technique I hadn't used before. She was done for Aggro the comic in question requiring her to be less dressed than her usual self.

It was a challenge to do anatomy that I don't normally draw while still maintaining the look of the actual anatomy. Going off of what I know of a lot of people, and that is making certain aspects of the female look remarkably fake, I used a reference. What I've noticed, mostly in male artists but they can't help that, is that the upper half of the female looks to be, well, balloons. That's not true. Look at any anatomy reference book. I tried to stay away from that. Ainsley may be a cartoon character, but its important to maintain the realism even in that realm.

I'm a big fan of believability. I like my art to have that element of "Yeah, I can see this being a real person" and hopefully that's reflected in this one. The photoshop techniquie is one that uses the layout properties. Overly allows you to blend colours better and still see the lineart you are working with without actually have to make lineart. If you're like me, that's a great thing. I should post the tutorial. It was made by a friend, but its really great to have. The rest was done with the sumdge tool and the finishing touches of addings ome small highlights were done with the dodge tool on 7 opacity.

Click on the image for a larger version or here for a better closeup.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Sketch Blog? I think so.

working on a layout.
This will be a sketch blog.
Give me some time to sort it out.

This is actually for a University project so it may take a bit to get a layout and up and running completly. I mean, afterall, I do have a month.

For now head over to www.guitarcrash.net/meresoftwilight