I am easily alarmed.

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This morning I was hurrying to my bus stop via a narrow alley when I was quite shocked to realise there was something very big and very black sitting on the fence next to me. A huge, fluffed up crow.

But maybe it wasn’t that huge, maybe it just seemed that way because it was above me, or because it was all fluffed up. At work today I drafted the below two pictures, playing with two different view points.

Crow from above

Gah!

Crow from low angle - sketch

"Oh, hi"

I didn’t have time to finish the second one before my lunch break ended, but I also thought I could handle a lower view better. So I redid it when I finished work.

Crow from below - take 2

Revised and inked.

I think I like the expression in the first one a bit better. I also lost the shape of the bird when I inked it (It was a bit sleeker and I kinda wanted it to hint at the silhouette of a falcon because at one point when I looked at the crow I thought it was a member of the falco family!)

The damn bird was at my bus stop again when I got home this evening. It flew around lazily, taunting me as I scurried to my car…

A Compositional Sketch

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Maybe this will become a fully fledged picture?

The goal here was to have some interesting action with the character but to not lead the viewer’s eye ‘out’ of the image, rather, have their eye land back in the focal points of the image.

Juri Kicks

Ready to inflict some inJURIes. Hurr Hurr.

To be honest, I like the way that outstretched leg looks… even though it leads the eye out of the picture frame. I had experimented with tipping her toes to bring the flow of the image back towards the middle but that made the foot look a little odd. So, forcing the viewer’s eye back onto the image might not be the right approach. What do you think?

Pink

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Character development and design:

EDIT: Very first draft added.

First Draft

The first draft - all I had in mind was the pose

Final Pencil Sketch

"Huh?"

Colour Test

Basic colour decisions - lots of pink!

I wanted to make her a blonde bimbo but apparently being cliche is dull.

As thoughtful as can be

Lots of charm, not so much going on upstairs...

Missing one image here actually, I’ll edit it in later if I can find it.

On Your Shoulders

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A quickish sketch done on my very speccy new toy.

On Your Shoulders

Whee!

Drawing faces from low angles is tricky – in some ways the cartoon style amplifies the trickiness because direct photo reference isn’t as useful. Also I did kind of change gears halfway through so the face styles are different.

I really like her foot on the right… but I ruined it when I connected it to her leg. A few hits and misses throughout this picture – all part of a learning experience.

Resignation

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Despite the title, this is a post to announce I’m going to attempt to update more frequently.

Committing myself to a long pretentious post to blab about my mostly mediocre art often feels too troublesome to feel worth posting at all. So hey, I’ll just stick up WIP stuff and scraps without any explanations! Whoo.

Feel free to comment and ask stuff, readers. I mean, Tom. Maybe now I’ll only blab on about things you want to know about.

Cliffs and Sky

The cliffs and skies - I practise these often

Pokémon? Pokémon!

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Started drawing a few of these last year, have continued at a slower pace this year. As you can see, I’ve started with the obvious: Eeveelutions, a bunch of starters (Cyndaquil and Totodile to come), Pikachu and Meowth, and uh, a duck. I like ducks, okay?

I’m hoping to print these off as fridge magnets. As soon as I can fill a page of them. (For reference, these are currently filling about a third to a half of an A4 page). They’re going to be totally rad and will stick to your fridge.

Pokémon Group 1

The four in the top right were done much less recently than the rest.

Each critter is inked digitally, then the lineart is enlarged by running it through a bitmap-to-vector converter. Some simple colours are thrown on, and voila! It’s done.

Since I’m planning to do more, I’d love to hear suggestions of which other Pokémon I should try. Let me know in the comments!

Light and shade

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Some things I’ve learned about depicting objects using tone:

  • Work from light to dark, covering the whole image with each layer of tone.
  • Use circular movements to apply pencil strokes, so that the direction of the strokes don’t interfere with the shading.
  • The human brain is capable of filling in lots of information. There’s no need to use a line to define an edge when the viewer can imagine it.
  • Squint! Let the shapes blur into each other and then work out what the main tones throughout the piece are.

Here are my last three homework pieces, all focused on practising the correct application of tone:

Tone Homework 1

A polystyrene ball and toilet paper roll. Glamorous stuff.

Quite a light application overall, but the shapes are still readable (though my camera might try to convince you otherwise). It was a bit light in the room when I did this one, but it might have been that I was using an HB pencil that resulted in the lightness.

Tone Homework 2

Katamari, soap and mini-dish

Well, my prototype Katamari was an excellent matte white object to draw. Part of me wishes that I composed this differently, with all the objects stuck to the Katamari, but I think this turned out really well. The Katamari was described as a “mutant tennis ball” during last week’s homework review, and other than the soap appearing to tilt upwards a bit (I wasn’t able to erase the pesky lines in the back corner), I got a good response for this one.

Power!

Powerboards in charcoal

I like the composition in this one. It has a little more narrative than random objects put together. The plug caused me lots of troubles and the sockets were no walk in the park either! After taking this photo I tweaked the far left shadow and the shape of the top power block. Taking a step back from things really helps to point out errors and inconsistencies. I’m eagerly waiting to hear my art teacher’s critique tonight!

Butterflies

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I’m painting butterflies!

The first two butterflies

A Monarch and Ulysses Swallowtail

Inspired by butterflies created by Danielle Corsetto of Girls With Slingshots. Something that I’d always thought would be neat to do but didn’t really twig onto how to manage until I saw her versions.

The last time I attempted to draw a butterfly accurately was in year 7, and I found it pretty hellish then. This time, it’s been a real breeze, and painting them has been heaps of fun. When I did my research for the Ulysses swallowtail I realised that the tops and bottoms of wings could be quite different and interesting, so now I’m attempting to get the top and bottom sides of the wings relatively accurate. I’m not being pedantic, but it’s nice to have a grounding in reality.

Showing off the undersides of the butterflies

Undersides of the butterflies

These don’t take too long to make so I hope to be doing lots more. I’ve found lots of pretty butterfly and moth patterns and I’m hoping to do justice to them all.