Don't come around tonight

It's bound to take your life.

Never Gonna Give You Up

My sincere apologies for the lack of updates. I, uh, forgot my login info. What a winner!

Here's a thumbnail sketch that was originally going to be part of the header.

And here's the original inkwork for the "All I Ever Knew of Love" image. Large size for your viewing displeasure.

Oh yeah, hi.

I apologize for the complete lack of updates lately. I've been having a bit of a block. I think I'm finally, FINALLY starting to get over it though so maybe I can post something soon. God I hope so.

Let the wild rumpus begin!

Just a little Where The Wild Things Are fanart, done in the neat public sketch program called Harmony.

http://mrdoob.com/projects/harmony/

James said it has a "Scary Stories" vibe to it, which is perfectly acceptable. ;D

Plague - Final Stage

While I do plan to still add in a background, that's going to take some time and consideration to be certain it lends well to the subject of the image. For now, though, Plague is finally fleshed out after several hours of hand-texturing/rendering the image. No pre-existing filters or textures were used, which is actually a first for me, though I used those methods sparingly anyway. Mainly, I wanted to prove to myself I could accomplish a polished image without the use of any form of "cheat."

I'm pretty pleased with the results. :}

Step by Step Plague

I scrapped the bear sketch and decided to work on a picture of a Utahraptor character of mine named Plague. Here, you can see that I did the start of the sketch with red mechanical pencil lead (.05) and then refined the lines with normal black lead as seen in the next image.



I eliminated the red sketch beneath the black with Photoshop CS3, then darkened and added a touch of sharpness to the linework to polish it up a bit. This is the first time I've used this method as far as linework goes.


In this image, I've laid down the basic flat colors of the character's design. He's fairly simple in terms of design in general, though I did change one aspect of it; his tongue used to be colored a splotchy green, but I opted to make it a more natural pinkish shade. It just gives Plague a little more realism, rather than designing him purely on the merits of artistic license.

Now I'm working on readjusting the colors and rendering/texturing everything to give Plague a more fleshed out, finished look. I'm still debating on what to do with the background. Stay tuned for the final stage!

Artist

"Lovely colors bloom on skin, thristy eyes will drink them in, and know the hands that make them bloom will paint new pictures for you soon."



Just a little thing that popped into my head today. Might expand on it later.

A bare bear

Good god, I should be in bed right now. Tonight I saw an awesome movie called "Moon" and I have to recommend it to our readers. It isn't a fast paced movie, and it isn't over-ripe with CGI, and certainly doesn't rely on its special effects to tell the story, which is something I found to be kind of refreshing. Not that I don't like a well rendered bit of CGI, but it's nice to watch a story unfold that isn't dependent on that kind of thing. Anyway, if you get a chance, rent this movie.

On to the art update. Here's the sketch version of a picture I'm working on, obviously of a bear lady wearing lingerie. This is pretty much just practice with the stylized concept of the more filled out female body type. I'm used to drawing skinny or athletic people, but I've got next to no experience with full forms, as you can probably tell, lol.


The head looks a tad too large for the body, so I'll probably need to shrink that a bit. If you have critiques to offer before I get into the inking, please feel free! :)

Process - Guardian

Going through the progression of making a full picture, of one of my character-species, Guardians. I basically just wanted to do something in real-media, and try some stuff I have trouble with. It proved to be pretty fun.


1. The sketch. Ash drew the right leg because I'm a complete goober at digitigrade leg perspective. I was also pretty sick when I drew this and yes, that twisty spine was intentional. .03 lead pencil, about an hour.


2. I FUCKING HATE INKING WITH BRUSH PENS. So, of course, I cracked out a brown Faber-Castell brush pen and proceeded to completely destroy the picture with it. This took about an hour, which is shocking. Normally I spend a day inking. I guess it's because inking with a brush pen is sort of like driving a speeding car with no brakes and bad handling..


3. Uh oh, something vaguely interesting has happened. I cracked out my Crayola pencils and set of Raffine colored pencils that were kindly donated to Ash and I by Savannah Horrocks (thank you!) The colors here are mostly Crayola, as I'm more comfortable with them than softer leaded pencils. The Raffines were used to strengthen certain colors, and were used entirely for the pink flesh.
4. The markings. These are entirely Crayola and Raffine, save for the orange striping, which is Prismacolor pencil. This part took me the longest, probably three hours because I was having severe vision problems (double image and blurriness, wtf).


5. Everything suddenly changes. I rarely use watercolors because I have bad luck with them, but I decided to try slopping them all over my picture, anyway. I used mixtures of Winsor and Newton Prussian Blue and Burnt Umber, which made for nice shades of green and blue. The bright aqua on the antlers and knife are from a set of Talens brick watercolors. Used some prismacolor pencils in yellows and whites to bring the highlights up a notch, then went around the edges with a white gelpen and light colored pencils to sharpen things up.

And there we go, the image from start to finish.

We'll forget the sun in his jealous sky

I have some sort of outrageous cold/flu because I totally lack an immune system, but oh well. Picked up Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain at the library and am slowly making my way through it. If it helps me out with stuff, that'd be pretty sweet. :V

Anyway, found and old picture I'll.. probably never finish. Excuse the dong/murry purries. I opened it up and did a number on it in photoshop, and despite the partial inks, I actually really like it like this. I had Fields of Gold stuck in my head the while time I was shoopin' it.

Yellow is actually one of my favorite colors. It's a crime that I use it so rarely. >:( I like buttery yellow, though, not eyerape yellow.

And work on the blog continues on, slowly but surely. I can't wait until I can start linking it out and get imput and critique. Every art site I've ever been on, every single person is critique phobic, which is.. stupid. But then, I actually like trying to improve.

Love is not a victory march

So today. Today I really woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and my internet's all busted up, making working on this layout insanely frustrating. Got the shoutbox and shit like that in, which should be fun and useful for anyone too lazy to comment directly on the entries themselves.. Assuming anyone is inclined to comment at all. The woes of blogspot.

Had three eggs and as many pieces of bread for breakfast, tea, and watched some Olympic hilarity. Seriously, Canada.. How do you LOSE AT HOCKEY? Well, you're losing at everything. Like always.

And now I'm working on the header image, then it's on to the profile images, which are.. currently ugly placeholders. Here, have an unfinished AJELL head (my android character)

Note to Ash: Try to keep the labels consistent so we don't have a giant cloud of them at the bottom of the page. I looooves you.

Words, words, words, art, words!

Well, I suppose this is where I introduce myself with some doodles and talk about stuff. I'm Ashton, James' better half (no really), and I guess I'll be tossing the occasional sketch or two up on here. This one was drawn in Paint Tool Sai mainly as a concept of body build in werewolves. Top is some wolfdog hybrid guy, and below him is my most ancient character, Alexandria a.k.a. "Ebony." Posting this because it's pretty much all I have in my secret stash of never-seen-by-the-public-before art.

I'm pretty psyched that James is setting up this little corner of the internet for us, where we can just goof off a little and hopefully have a semi-professional type of place to ramble and share our stuff. I'm going to be talking to James about possibly doing a weekly or bi-weekly sketch webcomic type thing, pretty much just centered around the hilarious crap that goes on in our lives. We've already got plenty material to draw from; I think mainly it'll be a matter of coming up with a name for it. We'll see what happens!

Blog overhaul, and sum sketchums.

I like working on layouts, I really do. However, I hate dealing with code and html. Oh well. I've managed to smash Rounders into a 3 column layout, making this blog more like a website for Ash and I rather than just a dumping ground, which is nice. I hope pinkhead appreciates it.

I'm going to try to customize it further, because I'm a perfectionist and I won't he happy until it looks just right. Again, I hope Ash likes what I come up with. I'm definitely no web designer, it's frustrating but fun. Anyway, have a sketch I'm working on. FUCK CLOTHING FOLDS. They are my weakest link.


The character is Esau, the product of Ulisse and Simon's combined genetics. What a tragedy. I'll be coloring him at some point because I don't have a single proper image of him. The character Simon belongs to Ash, the other two mentioned are mine.

Oh, and have a progressive sketch of Jasper full of facial anatomical fail, just because.

I seem to do this bizarre sculpt method of sketching, constantly reshaping things. I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing.