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.