WIP | Page 2

Mega Monday #2

Posted on August 11, 2014 Leave a Comment

Well I was hoping to get all of the Generation 2 Megas done for this week but unfortunately I only managed to finish Ampharos and Scizor (Heracross was actually done last week, as I paired it with Pinsir).

My excuse for not posting Houndoom and Tyranitar is that I’ll be pairing them with Aggron and Manectric, respectively. Since they’re part of Gen 3 I’ll hopefully be able to share them with you next week! Here are some progress photos to prove that I’m not completely slack:

Doing all this art this month has been awesome, but it’s also been pretty taxing. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get all of the Kalos Megas done during the month but worst come to worst I’ll just put a couple of PokÃ©mon up each week and stretch out Mega Mondays past the end of Blaugust.

Fan-Art Friday: Decrypting Rita

Posted on August 3, 2013 2 Comments

This month I’ll be featuring fan art for five different webcomics. The plan was to do inks on Friday and watercolour them on Wednesday, but I might end up using Wednesday for different arts.Anyway, there are a few themes for the characters featured this month. They’re all ladies. Many of them have layered personae or alternate identities.

The most complicated of these is Rita – or Ritas – from Egypt Urnash’s aptly named Decrypting Rita. The story revolves around the reality warping adventures of the various Ritas. Frequently told as multiple stories in one, the comic employs many clever visual tricks to keep the action moving across the four main realities.

I started the thumbnail for this one on Tuesday, when I realised that I wanted to substitute Rita in for one of the five characters I’d be featuring this month. The scribble quickly evolved and suddenly Rita went from being the week 5 post to being the first one of the month.

The thumbnail has been done over a couple of other scribbles – the figures in the middle right and in the top left are part of completely separate ideas. (One of them is a sketch of someone on the bus. The other is just a figure extrapolated from random lines on the page)

Here’s the picture transferred to watercolour paper and inked. I completely winged the fingers because I’d left the hands as mittens in my sketch. Mostly I think I got away with it except for Robot Rita’s right hand.

Tepig

Posted on April 27, 2013 7 Comments

Finally finished off Tepig today. It’s been sitting around with just the tail to go for a while. The curl in the tail was very fiddly (I can’t imagine doing that at the original model’s scale!) but fun. The tail was a bit droopy but I’ve used some hot glue to make it stand up. I usually use acetone based craft glue, which is great for sticking the tabs together. For attachments however, hot glue is the way to go.

Also, here’s a photo of WIP Lapras.

My work process for Lapras has been a bit different than for the starter pokemon. Since each polygon is so freaking huge, using cereal boxes is a bit impractical. Instead, I’ve had the templates printed at A1 size and I’m pasting them to 200gsm brown craft paper. It’s flimsier stuff than the boxboard used in cereal boxes, so the shapes don’t hold together as convincingly. As I progress more, I’ll have to add more support (I’ve been kind of papier mache-ing around some joints as I go) and may need to make some kind of scaffolding structure for the insides. Another consideration is going to be portability – I’d like to take Lapras out of the house, which may mean making it modular.

I’ve put up a video of Lapras on my new Tumblr page.

Set Your Goldfish Free

Posted on October 29, 2012 Leave a Comment

This isn’t the painting I set out to paint, but I forced myself to see it through once it got going. The whole reason why I started this one is because I was dissatisfied with the way one of my other paintings was working out, so leaving yet another work abandoned seemed silly.

I don’t think it’s finished yet, but I’m not sure if I’ll push it much further either.

Creation

Posted on August 25, 2012 1 Comment

This piece was the major homework assignment from my life-drawing classes last year.

: The piece started in class with a drawing done from observation…

: We were invited to introduce a sense of context to the scene, drawing from the surroundings of model. However we were also encouraged to make the image as busy as possible, so many of the objects and surroundings here aren’t actually drawn the way they were found in the classroom. The pot plants, for example, came from the other side of the room.

: The model took up another pose and we were asked to redraw her in the image. She didn’t have to fit in the perspective or context of the scene. Some of my classmates drew the new pose over the old one. We had opportunities to add a third pose as well however I felt my image was sufficiently busy at this point.

: The image was divided into nine sections and we were given a few minutes to work up each section individually. It was interesting to see the works evolve by bringing each section to different levels of polish.

: For homework, we were asked to cut up our image and then enlarge each piece. The desired effect was to introduce some slippage and distortion.

: The new pieces would then form the basis of our work. We laid out the pieces in ways that would allow for interconnecting lines or concepts to be drawn across the image.

: It took me a few tries to settle on something I felt comfortable with…

: Eventually I felt that trying to fit all nine pieces in wasn’t serving me well so I took a few out. Here are my first attempts to link the pieces together and pull together a concept. The drawing process is pretty stream-of-conscious from here…

: Feeling the image was top heavy, I turned it upside down and continued…

: Here I introduce a bit of depth with black gauche. The image was pretty chaotic at this point as I hadn’t got in my head what I was doing yet. By blacking out a busy section I was able to get some of the clutter out of the way and concentrate on building up shapes and form.

: The white paint steps in here!

: This step feels much more cohesive than the previous ones. I’ve worked up a good range of tones and it feels like this has some real depth and flow to it. A a little yin-yang symbol appears. It’s a little scribble that I make while I try to remind myself to stay on task. I don’t really have a theme for the image yet, so it’s an attempt to find a conceptual direction… balance again?

: The yin-yang felt poorly placed, compositionally. With reminders that this was a life-drawing class and some encouragement to “find” people and body parts in our image the yin-yang evolves into a little person. With a focal point now found I have no idea what to do with the rest of the image. I’m feeling a little lost, but I soon work out what to do…

: I find a second person in the lower sections of the image! (You may need to view the large version to see my initial face scribbles)

: Now my picture has some direction! It feels like this is turning into a story about creation – of art and of ideas. The squared shapes and edges will become picture frames and the swirling masses will become hair for my creation goddess. There’s the totally unintentional treble clef in there too.

: I try to find some way to link my upper figure to my lower one, both visually and narratively. For this image we were allowed to use white and black gauche and a single pastel colour. It feels as though the ‘magic’ here is flowing like water, so I choose blue.

: Some better lighting here. It’s funny how much the colours change under different lightings!

: Here I’m working to integrate the white from the paper sheets with the rest of the image. In some spots I blend white in the surrounding areas to integrate things and in others I just try to match things tonally.

: More blacks!

: I use photo reference to fix up the hands.

: The completed piece! I had been unhappy with the straight-down blue line in the image which ran counter to all of the nice flowing lines so I played with the shapes a bit. I could have polished this a bit more but I was feeling a bit nervous about how I’d tackle some areas and felt they’d probably be left ambiguous instead of introducing details that might ultimately just confuse the whole thing. Part of what I like is just the simplicity in some of the bold blocks of black.

Flameface: Process and Progress

Posted on August 11, 2012 Leave a Comment

With the KoL calendar contest deadline extended by a week, I had just one weekend to put together a new painting. Here’s some pics from the working process and some explanations of choices I made along the way.

Thinking in 3D

Once I knew that my piece was going to be based on the fire-fighting world event, I knew I had to illustrate Lord Flameface’s castle. And I needed to do so from an awesome angle, showing off the foreboding, smouldering fortress. Lord Flameface’s abode was a delightfully simple assortment of blocks so I knew I’d be onto a good thing if I created a model of the fortress in Google SketchUp first. I’d then use the 3D model to experiment with perspective and composition.

Straight-on view of the fortress model.

The camera angle chosen for the painting.

The Draft

Using my lightbox drafting table, I traced the SketchUp lines onto a sheet of watercolour paper for a test-run. Since this was my first watercolour piece in many months I wanted to get to grips with the paints again, as well as identify any potential problem areas in the image.

I initially planned to place an adventurer at the base of the fortress all kitted out in firefighting gear.

I learned that anywhere I wanted to put the flames down I’d need to leave the white of the paper to shine through. I fiddled with basic portrayals of depth by shading surfaces differently but felt that I’d need something extra for the final thing to make the fortress look hot and fiery.

The draft taught me a bunch of valuable things and particularly helped in setting the pace for the final painting. I realised that I’d have to be patient with use of the blank ink and not hurry with getting the smoky greys in otherwise I wouldn’t be able to paint effective flames.

Additional Elements

I identified some of the areas in the draft that I felt were really lacking and areas I wanted to portray better. I then googled images of fire and hot coals as reference and practised these elements on another spare sheet of watercolour.

Onto the Real Deal!

With the title for my painting decided, I opted to swap out the adventurer for Lord Flameface himself. On a new sheet of watercolour paper I marked out my margins and bleed margins, then sketched in Lord Flameface. I also traced in the fortress. Then, it was onto painting!

Underpainting in yellow.

Introducing Reds.

I used Chinese calligraphy ink for the black, allowing me to drop in a lot of pigment at once and let it bleed about on the page.

I let the sky dry before working on the fortress, to reduce the chance of the paint bleeding from the fortress into the sky. You can see the sky has dried a bit lighter than it was when the paint was first dropped in.

Final pass to finish off Lord Flameface and make changes to produce a cohesive image.

Finally, I scan the image and balance the colours a bit in Photoshop. The final result can be seen in Tuesday’s post.

Response

Posted on March 20, 2012 1 Comment

Pencils for a comic page based on this dialogue.

This initially looked like it could easily be two or three pages but since I was having trouble identifying the best places to split the pages I challenged myself to fit it all in one. The dialogue’s pretty dense as a result. It’s funny how right I was in places about the space the text would take, and how so very wrong I was in others.

Interpreting the text and turning it into something visually interesting was tricky too. I didn’t want it to be talking heads the whole way through the page so I injected some personality, emotion and body language. In fact the driver behind this interpretation was the visual of Cedar’s outstretched arms as he displayed the marks on them to Nirri. Of course I then gave him an outfit that changed his movements doing so, but I’m glad I didn’t stick steadfastly to the original image in my head.

Caress – Step-by-step

Posted on August 29, 2011 4 Comments

I’ve been trying to do a phoenix picture for a while, but none of my concept sketches were working. Late last night I started on this piece though, and quite liked it. The bird isn’t a phoenix but oh well. Here’s some pictures I took during the painting process.

After doodling some concepts for the painting, I choose one I like and working from that concept, draw the imageÂ straight onto watercolour paper. I’ve included some shading to give me some information about light and dark areas. I struggled with the face planes for a bit but was able to scribble tests of what looked good for the fall of light by scanning the sketch and putting shadows down digitally in a trial and error manner. Once I was happy with the stark shadows on the girl’s face I copied these shadows over to the sketch.

Here’s the drawing submerged in our laundry sink. This is to stretch the paper – something I don’t normally do but wanted to trial this time. The idea is to get the paper to expand by soaking in all the water…

…Then tape it down securely to a board so that it remains stretched. When reapplying water during the painting process, the paper will not warp, or at least if it does warp, it will subsequently dry flat as the tape is keeping the paper stretched.

Once I have the image taped down, I put down some initial colours:

Then I let the picture dry (well, force it to dry with some encouragement from a hairdryer) and work mostly wet-on-dry for the rest of the painting process. I have problems with my tape – the paper pulled itself free from the tape as it shrinks and ended up cockling. I use this opportunity to take a progress scan:

I then soak the back of the painting to make the paper expand again and try taping it to my board again. It works okay but the painting still gets unstuck from the tape as it dries. Guess I need stronger tape. I’m not a fan of the gum tape stuff but maybe it’s the way to go…

Here’s the finished picture:

My big mistake in this painting was trying to use bruising and scratching techniques to get the feathers done. It really didn’t work out and I spent some time trying to work out how to heal over the paper. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. I’ve also done a pretty dodgy scan, the colours and contrast really didn’t come out great on my scanner. Come visit me and see it in person some time!

Kai Progress

Posted on August 24, 2011 1 Comment

Progress on the Lucian Freud reproduction, first posted about here.

Apart from just doing more shading, I’ve moved his eyes down a bit.

“Kai” (after Lucian Freud)

Posted on August 19, 2011 3 Comments

For our life drawing classes, we’ve been given a term-long project – reproduce a Lucian Freud work. The image that I am aiming to replicate is below:

The aim of this exercise is to learn about using line direction like contours – finding the planes of the face and so forth.

My progress as of yesterday is below. Curiously the image I was given to replicate is a flipped version of the image that I seem to be able to find online. It’s possible that one is of the original etching and the other is from images taken off that etching? Who knows?