Phlox

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Hey I actually did a thing I said I was gonna do! Today’s post is the completed painting of Team Altaira’s captain, Phlox.

Phlox

I used masking fluid to mask out the lettering on the shirt and the warning icons on the weapons. Other highlights were done with white gel pen and paint. The splatter on the right boot was created by blowing on ink patches; this time I tried using a straw to more tightly control the direction of the splatters. Additional splatter effects were created by tapping on a paintbrush held above the paper.

Custom Hydra Splatling

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Another piece of Oceanink Offensive prize-art, this time featuring II Phlox.

PhloxSketch

Drawing weapons from Splatoon is always fun, and working out how they fit together is part of the challenge. I actually had an “aha” moment when I worked out the handle for the Hydra Splatling is a valve wheel.

Since the previous one was inked I’m debating whether to ink this one before painting it – I’m not sure how much I want to have the entire set fit together visually. Currently leaning towards not-inking it. I’ll wait a day and look at it with fresh eyes later. I can already see some bits that I’d like to fix up before proceeding.

No I’m not delaying the painting to drag out another day of Blaugust content, what an outrageous suggestion!

Experiments in Printmaking

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For a while now, I’ve been making my own business cards. I like making my own cards as I’m able to make them with paper of my choice – usually a watercolour paper. This means I can give away little watercolour sketches or scribbles.

However as of late my printer has not been sealing the toner very well on the watercolour stock, so the prints have been coming out rather poorly. So I thought I’d have a go at engraving plates using my laser cutting machine and taking relief prints off those plates. I’ve had pretty mixed results so far. I don’t think it’ll work in the long run for something like business cards, but I’m interested now to see about making gift cards or similar using the same ideas.

printmaking

Starry Visions

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I painted this series of TARDIS inspired brooch designs! They’re one-of-a-kind watercolour pieces. I had a lot of fun working on the colour washes for each of them. The impressionist Van Gogh-ish designs were suggested by a friend, I mixed gouache with my watercolours to give a more oil-painty feel to them.

 

Anchor Badge: Step by Step

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anchorbadge

Here’s a simple picture showing how I made my Splatoon-based Anchor Badges! They’re laser-cut acrylic with paint in-fills. These first ones were made the whole right side painted red. I fixed that for following ones by masking around the border before painting in the red.

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FalleN (June Oceanink Offensive Prize 1/7)

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Phlox

The player described his squid thusly: “He’s very cocky”. I did my best to get that across in his portrait.

The face seems to have picked up a bit of splotchiness, not sure if that’s from the scan or if the art did just turn out like that. I did have trouble deciding how to tone the skin as it was described as being “tan”.

Got Kraken!

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Throughout the last few months we’ve been running the monthly Splatoon tournament series Oceanink Offensive. As prizes for the tournaments I’ve been doing art!

For April’s tournament, I drew portraits of the runner-up team Got Kraken. I’m pretty proud of these. I had a lot of fun coming up with poses and trying to illustrate recognisable weapons and equipment. I erased and redrew the Octobrush three or four times, and I’m really glad I did so because the end result is something I’m very happy with. I’m only a little sad I didn’t take some photos of my earlier attempts at drawing the Octobrush because I think some of them were actually pretty good stepping stones to what became the final drawing.

3c Alph Dimitri Kraka Rudepik

Enveloping

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Okay I had a nice weekend sans-Blaugust posts, and I’m still undecided about whether I’ll be making catchup posts.

In the meantime, I better get back to posting before I lose all motivation! I mentioned last week that I opened an Etsy store. Well one of the fun parts of having an Etsy store is sending out letters. Scribbling a thing on each letter I’ve sent out has been a good little exercise. However I’ve found it pretty nerve-wracking as I haven’t planned the drawings at all.

For first envelope, I decided to utilise the top right area for Zapdos’ head. Then I realised that’s where the stamps needed to go. So I rewrote the address upside down and put the stamps in the new “top right” of the envelope.

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Lesson learned. I avoided that mistake with the following envelopes.

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For the legendary trio I ried for a cute little design, I don’t think the brush pen was the best choice to convey such small little figures.

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I drew this Moltres envelope while waiting for lunch. The biro was much less scary to work with. I don’t normally do shading/hatching like this but I think it worked out okay.

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Watercolour Splatoon 3DS XL Cover Plates

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Apparently I haven’t yet posted about these here!

I painted these cover plates as a personal project after a commission fell through. I had been wanting to create a Splatoon themed cover plate for a long time but it took a while to come up with an idea and composition that I liked.

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Here’s the initial concept sketch. As always when I create cover plate designs I try to ensure the top and bottom plates are appealing designs in their own right, as well as working together to create a scene.

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After getting the lineart worked out, I put in some basic colours. I had an idea of a rainbow of ink lines. I then had the idea to add some fireworks in the top panel. Don’t worry, they’re not exploding squids!

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I then print out the lines and transfer them to the cover plates. Here’s the various steps of the process.

Top left: blank cover plate
Top right: printed lineart. I scribble over the back of the piece of paper with pencil so that the graphite can be transferred
Bottom left: lineart which has been traced over while stuck in place on the cover plate
Bottom right: the transferred image, traced over with pencil a second time to better define the linework.

Now onto painting!

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Starting to apply the washes of colour. The yellow splotches that are visible on the top plate are globs of masking fluid. The masking fluid protects the white of the surface as I paint over it. Masking fluid has also been applied to the fireworks.

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The masking fluid has been removed and the firework colours have been added.

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More work on the fireworks, some white added to the ink trails to define the movement of the jumping squids.

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Putting in colours on the bottom plate. I decided for an eclectic background with lots of ink patches.

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Adding skintones. More white highlighting on the inkling on the top plate.

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Almost done! Just some extra highlights to add.

Here are some glamour shots of the cover plates being modeled on my not-new 3DS XL.

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