Muddah Fuggin' MONKEY!

After a floundering drawing session on Monday at the cafe haunt, a friend made some sideways comment about a monkey with a crank organ.  One fairly relaxed and anatomically warped doodle later I had the majority of the linework done in a shorter time frame than my messy frustrated scribbles featured in the rest of the night.

Now Thursday night and unsure what to do, I finished reading a short story before giving in to temptation and going back to this.  Cleaned up the lines, reworked the simple background to at least pretend I cared about the perspective, and toned it.

Then my friends demanded rain while I professed disinterest in adding umbrellas.  I was resistant, but gave in just to see what it would look like when both said to not add umbrellas to make it even gloomier.   Well played you two.

Done in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on my Note 10.1.
First drawing was slightly larger and in several layers.  Those were merged down, saved as a copy and scaled down so I had room for the environment around them.  Unlike on a desktop I have a layer cap due to memory restraints on the tablet.  I think I mention that as lot in posts involving this tablet...

A big catch-up

Someone at La Scalla, the cafe I spend too much time at, offered to me the actual method people use for digital speed painting, which happens to be rather far removed from the physical medium.  Layers; immense amounts of layers with varying opacity and usually specific details in a giant vertical stack.

Now my Galaxy Note has only 2GB of RAM so my layer limit is actually rather low compared to what one would do in Photoshop on a PC or Windows tablet.  Regardless the technique still works out at its base level and just means I have to smoosh more work per layer and lower my expectations.  Also I have far less brushes at my disposal and need to dick around with what brushes Artflow and Sketchbook Pro do have for quick texture or to just keeping things from being too uniformed.

The following posts are reverse chronological order (new to old) as I continue my fight to get the technique down.  Though I'm still rather slow and meticulous at this as with most things I do.

And a bonus because I like the one with construction lines on it:

Ants? Don't worry, I got this.

Digital doodle dragged between various programs and tinkered with for personal experiments.

I'm still not the most confident with coloring, though I did, whilst under duress from a friend, adjust some arm lengths and a few other things today after leaving it alone for a week or so.  Oh digital editing :swoon:

So I added a cape

Played with some sketching tools and wanted to do something with a silhouette and an oddly shaped head. Then I added a cape when the shoulder scribbles turned into one whilst I was debating where to put the clavicles.

Sharkarex? Tyranark?

Recently got an Android tablet for drawing on when I'm at my usual cafe spot or elsewhere when I have a few minutes to scribble something out.  This is one of the first larger ideas I completed mostly on that device--no need to stick to the mobile option when I'm in my own room, but the composition and the majority of the linework was done on it.

Sports?

Iron Mens

Three states of a loose and fairly quick drawing I did at my usual cafe haunt.  Basically I was having a miserable time trying to draw something of my own creation and was about mid-way through Iron Man Essential Vol.1 (first 32 or so issues from the early to mid 60s.)

While inking it I saw some issues and felt it would be fun to scan and do just a little clean up to the drawing, then I think what happened was that I was having trouble inking and blotched some quick yellow and dark blue to help me out... then I added more highlights and detail and worked on the shadows more and tried to fix some of the background... Oi.

The background and perspective look like afterthoughts because it was at the very start of this doodle.  I just wanted to loosen the cobwebs and practice some more stylized linework--oh, and hopefully speed things up, which sadly didn't happen.

UPDATE: It was brought to my attention that the sidewalk goes through Iron Man's left leg, and it does.  This was caused by putting the background linework onto its own layer via cut/create layer, and then just moving it around until I was pleased with the positioning.  With my nose to the grindstone (my tablet) the two lines looked like lighting detail.

So why don't I spend the 2 minutes updating the layer and re-saving/uploading the files?  To bring up the importance of a second or even third pair of eyes.  Most of us aren't grand masters so it's rather helpful to have another set of eyes ask you why you did something that looks out of place.  If you can't justify it reasonably, you probably need to fix it.

Desk toy

Wanted to mess around with my tablet but had no ideas so I decided to try and make a bobble head on my desk look dramatic.

Teddy

Pencil/Pen done at cafe:

Final image:

Timelapse of (most of) the work between the two:

More doodles for the week

Forced myself to sit down and do something. Of the scribbles for the week, these are the only four I didn't delete. No particular reason, these were just fun to do so I kept them.

Not putting in enough time currently.

Just Two Digital Doodles

First, an on/off evening with Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro:

Not a bad app by any means, but everything seems destined to resemble a sketchbook (the name is very literal) with markers and ballpoint pens. The paintbrush will probably resemble gouache when I get used to it since this app seems to rest between a random doodling app and something a designer/student would use to avoid spending hundreds of dollars on Prismacolor pens. Haven't spent much time with it so I'm on the fence about how much I like it.

Entry to a Halloween themed contest:

Won a $15 video game for a few hours of work last Friday when I realized the deadline was coming up fast (0100 PDT/1900 AEST, unless they do daylight savings). I still have major issues drawing curved lines that don't wobble (as in I can't) on my tablet, but that's just part of the game due to the mostly frictionless surface. Instead of blue shadows smudged, I wish I'd instead just mixed a darker color and done it with a hard edge since this method here isn't working out for me.

Who's Hungry?

Had a large blank file open (1200x1000 or 1500x1500, forget which) and was just messing around with Painter's pencil tools as usual. This giant tablet is a sketchpad that I occasionally use for coloring. Point being that this spawned from one of my several tiny doodles I had kicking around.

As for the drawing, I'm still hazy about pen tools when it comes to digital works. The hard edge is always too much for me no matter what I do, though I'd like to think I'm getting better at it, maybe I'm just getting used to it. Didn't have a clear intent when I started this, not even a colorset in mind. Also, despite my love of reds, I'm red/green colorblind and have no idea what this actually looks like... I hope it's somewhat close to how I'm perceiving it.

Beanstalks

A friend looking over my sketchpad noted I was sorely lacking in drawing scenery and environment and challenged me to draw a sci-fi scene. Promptly I went over a mental checklist of sci-fi novel stereotypes and came up with the standard orbital elevator, which he informed me is more commonly known as a "beanstalk".

The drawing itself was a bit sloppy, and you can see the loose doodles behind it. But all the while I drew it, I kept imagining a bunch of blue. Dunno why, just seemed a a way to do it. The execution of digitally painting it blue however did necessarily go as planned on all fronts, but a stepping stone is a stepping stone.

I'm sure I could tweak it more, but I've spent enough hours re-re-repainting it to figure out what I had in mind as I moved along. It hit that point where one needs to take notes of what did and didn't work, and the project must be set aside.

Also, I'm not sure if it's my colorblindness or not, but goofing off with the overlay (a layer of pure orange to dim the intense blue) I found that I actually did like the inverting one, even if it wasn't what I had intended.

MS Paint contests

"MS Paint what you'd do if you had a Jetpack"


"MS Paint your OWN PERSONAL COUNTRIES [sic] CURRENCY"


Sometimes you don't want to take "art" seriously and doodle in MS Paint. And sometimes you've spent too goddamn much money on a fancy drawing tablet.

Both of these doodles were for web forum quick contests. "You have 1-hour to draw..." and the prizes were Steam games that were on sale for sub-$10. Sometimes you churn out a quick crappy cartoon just because it's fun and because not everything needs to be a masterpiece. Also it's good practice to slam out a quick composition.

AYYYYYYYYYYYYYYBRAH "MOTHERFUCKIN'" LINCOLN

Do you think he'd still get elected?

I had that weird zombie-Lincoln face on my mind when I sat down with my coffee and sketchpad tonight. Took way too long to make this, but it was entertaining to do. The time was overspent guessworking the pose... a photo source would have been handy for speeding it up.

Usual method of red pencil, 2B, black smooth ballpoint, did a little blacking with a calligraphy pen (that's starting to dry out sadly), scanned it, tweaked the levels, filled in the rest of the black, and realized I outta digitally "inkwash" it just a touch with a transparent layer of grey. Sorta wish I'd used Painter's digital watercolor layer instead, but I didn't think of it till I started writing this.

WIP - A Shack

It's actually more challenging than you'd think to make a digital image that looks like non-digital media. Already lacking the surface texture, you need to tweak your tools and program(s) according to some approximate of what your eye think it's supposed to look like.


Wanting to do another quick animation, I needed a background. Then I realized I hadn't done any environmental drawing in too long, and never stressed it on myself in college--double whammy, so I got cracking at this. I probably drew 3 or 5 in my sketchbook before starting this, and this drawing has 6-8 layers for various generations, shading, and elements.

Yea, I'm that guy in your art class who re-did something to death, and might not have noticed a glaring problem while working on some minutia I wanted to get better at.

PS: To students of art: It's on your own shoulders to challenge yourself and vary your range of abilities. Especially since almost all upper-division art classes are "You have work due in 3-6 weeks, use your lab time to full effect, I'll be watching."

Quick Walk Cycle

It's been a while since I did one of these, so thinking about it I found for myself a quick project to do tonight. Wasn't as quick as it should have been, nor is it polished at all, but it had to be done, and it was fun to do it.

It started as the standard 4-frame walk (contact, down, pass, up) before adding two more frames to make a 6-frame walk. Never drawn one before since all the basic exercises are the 4-frame. Plus it now makes the step 50% longer to take the same step.

Good exercise. I might throw in a bit more time on it in a day or two just because I should for practice and cleanliness.

Pick Your Battles

Drawing I did in or just under an hour while "watching" (listening) a dialogue heavy movie.

Mato!!!

I got my new tablet finally. Replaced by Wacom 12WX with a superior model.

Anyway, I had absolutely no idea what to draw on it. So, this was my get-used-to-the-new-toy! drawing.

Character sheets

Basically around the winter/spring transition of last year some friends wanted to start an iPhone app development house. I've got a fancy-shmancy degree in studio art, and I'll totally work on the cheap to pro bono if it pads my portfolio. I didn't intern in college and I need/want professional degrading at hands of demanding management.

While the animation for the elephant was completed late in the game due to project mishandling and mismanagement at the fault of multiple hands and my laziness, the project itself was 90%+ completed, and then abandoned for various reasons that aren't the fault of one, but of the many. Anyway, these are two character sheets, one of which isn't completed as one can identify by Toast Man not having a shaded or colored 3/4 angle.

Done purely digitally back and forth between Painter and Photoshop.