Bug dude

Must think of more interesting filenames

Sketching from a silhouette, this took about an hour and a half.  Amazing how much detail you can cram in when you do things in the right order.  Drew this after watching a few Feng Zhu tutorials, he explains things so clearly.  One of the things he expressed was how frustrating it is when you have an idea and you try to work backwards from the 'solution' that you have in your head, and how difficult it is to try and work out the formula to get there.  Instead, work from the start of the formula and then build your solution from there.  Bam!  Much less frustrating, more satisfying end result and the process is way more fun.  This method also accounts for my attention span limit before I want to draw something else.

Working in Grayscale

 Working in Grayscale dramatically reduces your filesize, allowing you to go huge with your resolutions without lag.  Lag is the worst.

Screamyfish Speed Painting

My First Speed Painting video!  


So much pressure to perform.  Just had to forget I had ScreenFlow running.  Hope you like : )


You can also view the video over on my Tumblr where I'll be dumping WIPs and videos in future, I think. 

Slitty McToothface

Slitty McToothface

Been a while since I drew a mutant, so here we go.  

This was actually brought about because I wanted something easy to draw so that I can record one of those speed painting type videos.  BUT NO.  Because the version of ScreenFlow that I have doesn't work with Lion UGH.  It took such a long time to work up the guts to actually have it running while I draw, too.  

So lame.

Base

Lines


I also suck at drawing larger figures, all my stuff turns out really skinny or muscly.  So this is practice in that area too.

Susan Tevega

Susan Tevega

Practising composition, contrast and lighting.  I'm trying to get faster, once upon a time this would have taken me a month and even then I wouldn't have been happy with it.  The biggest challenge I found when doing this was not being able to decide upon poses, positions, composition, backgrounds, themes...   That's the biggest time waster - indecisiveness.  An exercise in patience, this took one weekend.

Still a lot to learn and a long way to go...

WIP

1:  Sketch out figure in black and white.
2:  Couldn't help but add a tail.  Changed her pose to be more animal-like.
3:  Add face and gesture of hair.  Smooth out some tone.
4:  Add some detail, work out lighting.
5:  CAN'T DECIDE ON THEME D-: Jungle? Mech? Jungle mech?  GAAARGH.  Add some colour, although this is probably too early to add colour since I don't know what theme I'm going with yet.
6:  Chosen theme, now go wild with colour, lights and detail.
7:  Add highlights and lowlights using black and white adjustment layer as a guide. Sign. DONE.

BoobyCrabs

BoobyCrabs 

Learning from Feng Zhu what an amazing artist.  Also taking inspiration from Carlos Huante.

This is BoobyCrabs, an exercise in speed and patience.  Also to teach myself not to get lost in the details and let some stuff go in order to achieve an overall effect.

BoobyCrabs in progress

Painted on one layer.  Used a Black and White filter layer to keep levels and contrast in check.  Took about 9 hours total.
It's like learning to draw again.  As I never learnt to draw in school, so my stuff is not disciplined and often unfinished.  I get bored after the initial thrill of drawing something new and getting the concept layers down.  I then move onto the next sketch.
So I'm teaching myself techniques to get faster and more efficient, I have to finish what I started...

Practice Headless

Headless

A quick one hour practice sketch inspired by Carlos Huante. 

Need to get back in touch with anatomy and movement.

Self Fish

Squidface

"An erotic nightmare" - 9 hours total, a painting done from a tiny scribble that I did on my housemate's shopping list.  Squidface comes from an obsession with squids, I've only recently grown enough confidence and patience with this texture to be able to recreate it.

The process

Sketch to Basecoat, Shading to Lighting and Detail, Clothing on a separate layer.  Merge Clothing layer with Lighting and Detail, blend.  Draw background.  Blend figure with Background, add bounced light and shadows.  

Posings

Found these on my desktop from when I was trying to figure out her pose.  I like how she moves through these drawings.

From sketch to Photoshop

The original tiny doodle on my housemate's shopping list.  Then a screenshot of my attempt at speed painting.  I suck at this bit.  It's an area I need to practice on.

Jukebox Girl

Final

For my 100th Follower on Twitter, his name is Josh and runs a website called JukeBoxFor.Me 

Sketch to Colour

Sketch, get basic shape and form.  Move to base coat to fill spaces and affirm base colours.  Move to shading and detail.  Missed out a few steps in this one as I wasn't looking for an over-rendered feel.  Overlay original sketch layer on top of colour layer. 6 hours total.

Sign. Done.

Gaviel

Gaviel

Gaviel.  He came from a conversation with a colleague that led to an amalgamation of inspirational ideas ranging from Starcraft creatures to ugly Dell computers.  

Took a while to decide upon a style to draw Gaviel in.  I wanted to explore Comic Book art ever since I signed up to an App called xComics or something.  This style of artwork captures action and emotion with high contrast, vivid colours and a variety of line styles.  Next thing for me to try my hand at is portraying action.  xComics or whatever they're called, have opened up a whole new world of art for me with the tiny thumbnails that are embedded in their emails.

Gargh.  How I despise tiny thumbnails.  They are like the unreachable ice-cream that lies at the back of the freezer.

Enjoy!  Please leave me feedback using the comments thing.  That would make one most happy.

Process

Sketch, keeping it loose just to line out the silhouette.  Move to base coat layer to lay down a thick colour base to work from, define some outlines.  Next layer for working the outlines to build structure and form, fill in any white bits.  Then duplicate to Detail and Lighting layer to light the subject and further define structure, use the Navigator throughout to ensure it still looks good as a thumbnail.  Final layer is to finish off by further defining dark and light areas to lead the eye to details, Curving and changing Brightness, Hue and Saturation until the desired result is reached.  9 hours total.

Barbie's back

Cooor blimey

Recently it seems that the majority of those who like my stuff tend to be of the male species.  

So I thought I'd draw something girly, such as Barbie : )
4 hours total, playing with concept. 

Various layers used in Composition

Sketchy.  The bondage stuff is on a separate layer

Computer Fairy

Finished Computer Fairy

So I got distracted while painting Handwings, this is what happened.
8 hours in total.  Working on translucency and background as well as lighting and proportion.

Basic colour and a few of the layers used

Scetch

Handwings

What happens in the time it takes for stuff to render at work

This is Handwings, he is one of many creatures that happened on Friday at work while I was waiting on progress bars.  He's inspired by some artwork my workmate showed me from the game Starcraft II.  Absolutely stunning artwork available on the Starcraft II website.
I'm currently working on digitally inking him, so hold tight!

Lillith of the Dusk

Finished!  Took about 8 hours.  Working on details, perspective, shading and lighting.  Also an exercise in patience and perseverance because woah, there is many an unfinished sketch on my harddrive.

Based on fashion illustration from www.SteamPunkCouture.com.

First base coat of colour

Various layers used in composition

Fresh for 2011

A taster of what's to come...

Skull Fish

Smashing! Here is a sketch I did one day, just upped the levels and cleaned the scan a little so you could see the lines a bit better.  MAYBE I shall ink it.  Depends on the flow of the oceans and the stars.  

You know, I think this might look kinda awesome on a hooded garment...

Fetish

I might do a collection of these WHO KNOWS.  Crazy times.  Crazy.

RedBubble

So once again, I'm in need of a get-rich-quick scheme thanks to this economic climate.  I signed up to RedBubble where you may purchase my artwork.  ...Pow!

Love is...

...yummy toes.

Base coat

Sketch

Cow Bike

This concept came from my small obsession with skulls.  Recently I've been thinking about getting a motorbike, I want to make sure I really REALLY want one before I go ahead with it because it's EXPENSIVE and these are recession times, booo.

Base coat

Sketch

Play Thing

Playing with lighting and shadows once again.  I'm quite impressed with the ear there.