Finally poked around Sketchbook Pro long enough to figure out how to use the paint tools more effectively. Well slightly more effectively anyway. Figured I needed to sort out something to draw/paint as a result. The lack of tiny screaming people was due to scale. I tried drawing a few tiny Lego men, but due to the scale they would have to have been tiny specs almost. Then when I changed the image to have the building be smashed I reasoned to myself the area would have been evacuated.
Should I change my mind on this one and look for a way to rework the buildings and add some color I'll add some sort of tiny military defense force on the ground too. Nothing too detailed if at all, the scale of the drawing itself is just too small overall to do much and I've have to scale it way up, do tons of work cleaning up the edges, and then scale it back down again.
This one comes in two flavors because I can't decide which one I prefer.
With lines on top.
Straight up painting.
And, yea, the perspective on the buildings is totally weird, but it's an improvement for the year so I just need to take mental notes on that one as usual.
Update: Touched up the lizard-beast, not the buildings though
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Rock Giant
A few weeks ago I got it in my head to do some sort of rock creature. Sourced by a photo of a gorila I found on Google image search. Just tinkered with it a bit more and decided it was best to move on.
Not claiming victory or defeat on this one, just posting it.
Not claiming victory or defeat on this one, just posting it.
Friday, December 13, 2013
Trying backgrounds again
My history with art and doodling sources back to elementary school when I'd get bored and want to draw little characters over any exposed paper and later on on notes in jr. high and high school. Nothing fancy, but the point is I've never done much work on backgrounds, and that fact shows up to this day and irks me to the point that (finally) this year I've actively been trying to focus on expanding my abilities there.
A month or two back I started trying to create a tiny universe to write short stories in, maybe as that web comic I've been telling myself to do for a decade. The way this ties in is that my concept art went from character sketches to, you guessed it, environments... from there I ended up going back to revisiting the basics of perspective and greyscale painting environments that can be colored later on.
I had the urge to do more backgrounds after that one, but some other ideas I fiddled with didn't pan out. Can't say why, but as I was skimming animation background archives on Google and Reddit's r/animation I was reminded that reality itself need not apply to the composition so I should go dick around. Somehow from there I wound up looking up backgrounds for Ralph Bakshi's "Cool World". Probably wanted to do a nighttime downtown scene and have blocked the rest of the movie from memory.
I had originally considered adding street lights. But instead of going back and repainting a fairly large amount of it, I just made two quick layers and doodled a few lamps and light cones to see if I'd even like the look. Here's that one for posterity.
A month or two back I started trying to create a tiny universe to write short stories in, maybe as that web comic I've been telling myself to do for a decade. The way this ties in is that my concept art went from character sketches to, you guessed it, environments... from there I ended up going back to revisiting the basics of perspective and greyscale painting environments that can be colored later on.
This one started out as a simple 1-point perspective line drawing that I colored right off without any underpainting. It didn't work out and my colorblindness handicap had me selecting some colors that I was told were a little too odd. So I duplicated the layer, converted it to grey (or saturation to 0 if you prefer), and used that as a baseline for bringing up the light values accordingly, eventually adding more details with great ease comparably.
These colors are mostly the originals. Not totally sure what the actual color names even are because I can tell from the red hints that I'm just unable to see some of it how most people do. But the important part is that it looks many, many times better than it originally did and was easier too. I still prefer someone else to help me with colors though, for the sake of humanity.
I had the urge to do more backgrounds after that one, but some other ideas I fiddled with didn't pan out. Can't say why, but as I was skimming animation background archives on Google and Reddit's r/animation I was reminded that reality itself need not apply to the composition so I should go dick around. Somehow from there I wound up looking up backgrounds for Ralph Bakshi's "Cool World". Probably wanted to do a nighttime downtown scene and have blocked the rest of the movie from memory.
I had originally considered adding street lights. But instead of going back and repainting a fairly large amount of it, I just made two quick layers and doodled a few lamps and light cones to see if I'd even like the look. Here's that one for posterity.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Messing around with digital painting some more
First of all: one had multiple hours doodling, correcting, adjusting, redrawing. The second one only just got past the initial stage for adjusting/correction.
Okay, now I can safely babble away merrily.
As of late I've only done line drawing, hatching, and non-shaded illustrations. It's what I'm most interested in, but I'm inconsistent at it. Getting better, I swear. Anyway, last week I dusted off my memories of how to paint (what I did the most of in college oddly) and have returned to trying out grayscale digital painting. Still prefer achromatic and monochromatic painting to full color, and have since before I learned just how colorblind I really was (standard male, not one of the other two rare variants).
So I've been messing around lately with 1940s themed concept art for a personal project and line-only drawings weren't working out so well on their own for me to practice the style. This was the impetus to make me go back to rendered digital paintings instead of just a bunch of loose doodles for my planning. Oh, and I always liked lowrider magazine camera angles and wanted to goof around with that.
This was done on my Wacom and 1/4 or less time has been spent shaping it up, fixing angles and trying to figure out what needs to be erased/redone. I'm posting it not as a comparison but because I'm unsure I want to keep working on it. Neither drawing is 1:1 to the source photo so I've had to do a lot of guessing of where parts are I honestly guessed wrong more than I'm gonna admit, even moreso on this one to the point that I think I'd rather start all over instead block in half of the car all over to figure out where I went wrong.
Friday, November 22, 2013
Generic Sci-Fi Guy
Was watching Game of Thrones S3 and feeling fidgety. Ended up trying an attempt at exactly what it sounds like.
1) Add a bunch of black hoses.
2) Put some humanoid thing in a chair
3) For the love all that is sacred to you, put a respirator on it. RIGHT NOW.
4) Goof off, act like you thought of it first.
I was messing around (read: lazy) and didn't look for any pose sources images, and mostly spent my time re-familiarizing myself with greyscale digital painting anyway. Wound up getting bored with the pose as a direct result and messing around elsewhere, which was non-boring.
Cintiq's are apparently famous for having bad default colors, and the LCD TV I use for my main screen definitely has contrast issues. I've got no idea how this will look for other people more than usual.
1) Add a bunch of black hoses.
2) Put some humanoid thing in a chair
3) For the love all that is sacred to you, put a respirator on it. RIGHT NOW.
4) Goof off, act like you thought of it first.
I was messing around (read: lazy) and didn't look for any pose sources images, and mostly spent my time re-familiarizing myself with greyscale digital painting anyway. Wound up getting bored with the pose as a direct result and messing around elsewhere, which was non-boring.
Cintiq's are apparently famous for having bad default colors, and the LCD TV I use for my main screen definitely has contrast issues. I've got no idea how this will look for other people more than usual.
Vanilla
Texture layer on divide
Texture layer on multiply
Monday, September 30, 2013
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:
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:
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Few more randoms
Just some random doodles from recently. Not all ideas pan out and others are just quick works for skill building.
Buncha quick heads from r/redditgetsdrawn I did to practice female jawlines mostly--and two instances of boobs, though they were secondary this exercise.
Early doodle on my Android tablet.
Sci-fi mining operation I couldn't color in any way I liked. Also I couldn't think up a fitting foreground element. Might try something later tonight on it, might not.
Early doodle on my Android tablet.
Possibly an even earlier doodle on the portable tablet...
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
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.
Monday, September 16, 2013
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.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
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