Month: August 2013

Watercolour Wednesday: The End

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We’re getting closer to the end of Blaugust and my enthusiasm has visibly waned. Truth is I have content for at least a couple of the missing updates, but I can’t quite get things together to my satisfaction. Anyway, let’s have a look at this week’s fanart, which was also almost a no-show. Fortunately my attempts to procrastinate ended up spurring me into this piece – I was doing some watercolour scribbles and decided to turn it into the painting for the week.

Last week we had an alien – Zurida, and this week it’s another alien – Ethma from The End.

Ethma

Because this started out as an unrelated sketch, I had to do some work to coax the composition and colours into the final image. I had a bit of fun with the vivid colours in the shadows, but I think my attempts to introduce darker tones didn’t work across bird-Ethma’s face.

Watercolour Wednesday: The Superfogeys

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We’re going from green hair to green skin this week, and over the week I’ve learned that I should have drawn Trigona with three fingers. I make up for it today.

Today’s piece features Zurida, alien villain from The Superfogeys, a comic about superheros somewhat past their prime. She’s accompanied by her son, Percy, as they walk past [spoilers spoilers in fact the rest of this post is probably going to be spoilers].

Zurida

This art depicts a scene that I imagined occurring not long ago in the story (although after showing John my pencils, he questioned whether or not this might actually have happened, I simply retorted that I wanted to draw it so there)

I had a good time thinking about what might be running through Zurida’s head here. Is she proud of her handiwork? Is she just getting on with the task at hand with no time to be sentimental? Perhaps she feels a twinge of regret – not because she’s done wrong, but because she’s granted Michelle eternal youth, while she herself has grown old.

Speaking of old, I did put in a token effort to portray Zurida’s age, but it was all quite secondary to getting the perspective and foreshortening right.

Finally, I liked the juxtaposition provided by Percy’s presence. He has an innocence and dumbness about him, in this picture he definitely wants to linger a bit longer and let the cogs in his head move as he makes the connection between Michelle and his mother.

 

[edit] Argument settled. The whole time I thought Zurida had been running things out of the Society of Heroes, but no, duh, it was her palace.

Musical Monday: Storm in a Teacup

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This will probably be the best recording I put up this month, and that’s taking into account the fact that I’ve edited the ending slightly to take out a flubbed chord.

I forgot to notate some of the fingering and counterbass notes in yesterday’s sheet music update, but I think it’s fairly self explanatory. There are some respectable jumps in this one, but even with the distances involved they feel quite manageable.

Anyway, enjoy!

Sheet Music Sunday: Song of Storms

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Running behind… running behind. I’ll get the recording up tomorrow.

This transcription presented me with a few dilemmas as I kept swapping between time signatures (3/4? 6/8?) and tempos. Anyway, here’s the score. A very straightforward one – but feel free to repeat ad infininatum instead of ending after two loops as I’ve done here.

SongOfStorms

Three-Dee Thursday: Pokemon Gym Badges

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I designed these badges and had them 3D printed by Shapeways. The first set is printed in sandstone, and the other set was printed in alumide. For the alumide badges I painted them and then used liquid polymer clay to create the glassy filled-in areas.

gen3

gen5

 

I have also printed Johto and Sinnoh badges, however they require additional work to complete.

You can get your own Hoenn badges from my Shapeways store here: http://www.shapeways.com/model/1065186/pokemon-gym-badges-hoenn.html

If you’re in Australia, total price may work out cheaper if you buy directly from my Storenvy store: http://chenonetta.storenvy.com/products/2257809-pokemon-badges-hoenn

Contact me if you’re interested in a set of Unova badges.

Watercolour Wednesday: Beeserker

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Today I reveal the other common thread between the characters I’m featuring this month – their names all end in “a”*. Today’s character is Trigona Ambrose, from the comic Beeserker. She’s featured here with the Beeserker and Scootsie – or better known to some as Imposter Minineko.

beeserker

Where are the Scienceman Twins? I don’t know! Maybe they are too busy with their new game or something.

The artist behind Beeserker is an old buddy from the depths of the internet ages, and an inspiration to all who aspire to maintain regularly updating blogs. Kyatt’s blog, Burn the Internet updated daily for five years until he decided to retire it from daily use on its fifth anniversary. Secretly I’m a little relieved, as I have a habit of checking Burn the Internet once every few months – or more – and forgetting where I’d last checked up until, inevitably leaving me reading the archives until 3am in the mornings.

Moving to this picture after last week’s painting was interesting. There were certainly some common threads – both comics feature robots and restricted colour palettes, though the kinds of colours available are quite different. A lot of what drove the direction of this week’s painting was the fact that I started the art tonight, so I didn’t want to be ambitious. I went for bold colours and lines (I used a sharpie for some of the inking!) and didn’t worry about fancy backgrounds. I’m pretty pleased with the result.

 

*Initially I planned to feature five ladies with three-syllable names ending in “a”. However I wasn’t very excited by two of them so they were cut. Bad luck Rumika and Marina.

Musical Monday: Rocket Jumping our way across the bass keyboard

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Yesterday I shared with you the sheet music for the Rocket Jump Waltz. It’s a fun little piece that isn’t at all like a waltz.

Today I’ve got my attempt at playing it!

It’s not perfect… I did promise that my recordings this month would be a bit choppy. The most distracting part for me is the C major to B minor alternation that means I need to do some leaps of faith across the bass buttons, which look something like this:

rocketJumps

Currently I’m doing that big jump between B and C marked by the arrows. There’s a B counterbass which I might be able to transition through, but I haven’t quite worked out how to use it yet. I think the key is just more practice. Also A minor.

Sheet Music Sunday: Rocket Jump Waltz

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Oh, right, this blog thing.
Been busy this last week… I’ll see about getting the fan art post up Tuesday if not its watercolour version on Wednesday.

Today’s sheet music is the Rocket Jump Waltz, which like Petite Chou Fleur originates from Team Fortress 2.

No it’s not actually a waltz.

Get the score here!

This transcription is an accordion-ised version of the track based on a transcription done by another fan.

Tomorrow we’ll find out if I can still play it!

Three-Dee Thursday: More Laser Cutting

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Here are some of the laser cut designs I made tonight. Most of these designs I’ve drafted on the bus to/from work. It was pretty quiet in the Fab Lab today so I was able to send quite few jobs through! I was also able to experiment a bit with the deep etching I’m using on the Tetris pieces and try out some special acrylic glue – I had designed most of my cuts to hold together via friction, but having taken them home and had a play I think I’ll need to head back some time and get some more glue in them.

charms_2013080800

 

Regretting not picking up more colours from the acrylic supplier… another time, I suppose.

Watercolour Wednesday: Rita

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Some progress on my Decrypting Rita fan-art, which I first previewed on Friday.

naturale edits

On the left – the art as-scanned. On the right, I’ve experimented with digitally deepening some of the shadows. Not quite happy with things yet, but it’s late and time to head to bed.

I was really not sure how I was going to tackle the colours for this one, considering the source material’s approach to colour!

I just had to conquer my fears and dive into it. I got a chance to use some new brown ink (the result of forgetting to empty my wallet before entering an art store), which I’ve used in the shadows across all but Rita1. I was thinking it’d work well to unify the colours across the image but I decided not to use it with the blues.

I reckon I’ll try out some more paintings with the new ink, might be good for some life drawing studies.

Meanwhile I need to work out how to get darker shadows with my watercolours. It’s been a problem in my last few paintings. Might just need to use black ink for it.