Monday 24 August 2009

Digital Painting

And here we have a couple of digital paintings I'm working on - and getting frustrated with XD





Previous viewers may recognise this loligoth girl. Toshiko Minimari! She's an OC of mine - I started out wanting to draw this in my usual illustrative style - but after some persuasion from a friend, went down the painting route instead. It's going well so far, and I'm rather pleased with her!





This is a more recent one, started only a week or so ago. I'm not entriely sure whether I like it. Her face is pissing me off something chronic. I may just delete her head entirely and start it from scratch.



Both images are being painted in PhotoshopCS3 with so many layers I decded not to count them.

A series of digital illustrations










The first three I am not terribly happy with, and may re-draw at some point. The fourth one needs a bit of work, but overall, I like it - the last three I adore. And yes, that library scene is of two blokes kissing.

All drawn using my bamboo tablet, straight into PhotoShopCS3, about an average of two and a half hours on each image.

Sunday 23 August 2009

Sketchbook - page fifteen, sixteen and seventeen

Three more sketch pages, this time filled during a day out first to the Tank Museum and then to Lulworth Cove, both in the south of England. I only had a pencil, eraser, black fine line and warm gray+1 tria marker with me - hence the style.



Two exhibits at the Tank Museum - the left imge is part of a 'walk through' experience, where you get to see up close and personal (albiet in a very sanitised fashion) what the Trenches were like in WW1. This particular exhibit is a man huddled into a small dugout, clutching at his hair and weeping. It's kinda creepy and rather upsetting to view - even though you know it's a manaquin and tape-recording...

The right image is a very quick, rough, pencil sketch of a 'Baby Gas Mask' - an all body suit that you placed baby in and hand pumped filtered air into. Apaprently it was never actually used, but during trials, it had a tendancy to send babies to sleep (probably due to carbon-dioxide build-up in the suit itself.)

I found both these exhibits intriguing, so I sketched them.



This is a page that I started in the museum - sketching visitors and children - and finished off at Lulworth Cove later in the day, sketching families at the beach.



This last is the view from my spot on the beach at Lulworth Cove. (I say beach, by the way, but it was really just a big, huge, long pile of pebbles of varying sizes >> Lulworth is NOT a good place to go wearing sandles...)

One of my favorite things about Lulworth Cove is the cliffs - they are cleared of any over-lying soil or grass, so you can actually see the rock. Lulworth's cliffs are the best examples I have ever seen (literally, with my own eyes) of the folding of the Earth's crust.

You can sit there and litterally see time on those cliffs, from the way it is folded and rippled. It's bloody gorgeous.

Sketchbook - Page twelve and thirteen

These two pages were filled while at Bromham-On-Sea, during a very british day to the sea-side (in this case, the tail end of an estuary, rather than the actual sea - but close enough)





The top page are all of the same family, playing in the sand, flying kites and so on - quite amused by the baby boy sitting fully clothed in the wet sand, picking up handfuls of muddy-sand XD Also a dead crab I found in a pool! I love drawing crabs.

The bottom was an attempt at sketching the donkey/mule riding stand. Apparently I fail at mules and donkeys XD and fail even more at trucks XD

All in pencil, fine-line pen and shades added with warm gray+1 Tria marker.

Sketchbook - Page seven & eight

These two pages were drawn while tending a carboot sale - all the people shown were random customers who either stopped at my stall or who looked interesting to draw but were standing further down the line of stalls.




Very, very quick sketches - no more than about twenty seconds each. Fine-lin pen straight into the sketchbook.

Windows and Doors

Here's the first image I've completed.


Started a new project, with the specific intention of making prints to sell at the local craft fair that's held every month.

Pen and ink on A4 printer paper - too many hours to count. Line work darkened slightly in photoshop, for clarity.