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Just Squidding Around

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My last post for Blaugust, after a month of heavily-Splatoon weighted content.

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I drew this picture for a poster I’m planning. It’s the first digital art I’ve done in ages. I think the sketch process of this one was kinda funny, the very initial sketch was way simpler than I normally do but it worked quite well for establishing the feel I wanted.

I inked this in FireAlpaca. I seriously enjoy that program more every time I use it, and not just because it’s called FireAlpaca. Everything else was done in Photoshop.

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Lucas

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After Lucas’ announcement as DLC for Smash 4, everyone wanted to see more art of him! I was asked to draw him in his Grey alt-costume. I used this painting as a chance to experiment with some splatter effects. I put very wet washes of ink down around Lucas, then blew on the patches to make them splatter outwards. It’s tricky to control the results but I really like the effect that it provides. I hope to integrate it a bit more into some of my paintings.

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Zelda and Roy

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The plan for this week is to be posting mostly old art, and although I have been wavering on the idea I think I will go with it anyway just so I don’t end up in some kind of “but it’s old, I shouldn’t post it” mindset where I end up posting nothing at all.

As always with Blaugust, it’s important to keep momentum up, so we’re heading into what I’ll informally call Smash Week.

Tonight’s post is a painting featuring Roy and Zelda. It was requested by a Project M player, hence Zenda appearing in her OoT costume. Actually I guess it’s what she would’ve worn in Melee too, so perhaps they were a Melee player.

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WIP sketch. I think some of the issues with this painting could have been avoided if I worked a bit larger. Some of the detail was hard to tackle.

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Bonus: There’s a Zelda player that goes by the name Cosmo, and a while back I spotted someone asking “Has Cosmo made a Zelda guide?”. My brain said I had to make this! I kinda wanted to do a whole series with magazine articles that used awful vapid headlines that actually covered game mechanics in great depth, but it’s a pretty big time investment for someone who only dabbles occasionally in Smash.

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Judd WIP

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Today’s post is not a complete work, because the new Splatoon update has arrived and I must absolutely prioritise playing it over completing my blog post.

Besides I’ve started to go a bit cold on the art itself so it might get scrapped and started from scratch again.

Anyway it’ll let you get a little bit of insight to the creative process when I prepare files for laser engraving. Here you can see the initial sketch drawn up and my vector lines over the top in red and black. Red areas are for cutting, black are for etching. I took a slightly different approach with this piece as in previous pieces I have done the whole lot in black lines and then cut up the outline borders. I’m not sure which method is faster overall as I’m still a bit slow in the vector world.

Also, I only realised it yesterday but perhaps some of my fondness for Judd stems from his similarities to the wallet I’ve used for the past 10 years or so.

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Inkling Boy and Girl Wii Remotes

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Just a quickie for today’s post. These custom Wii Remote backs are another experiment in using watercolour on not-paper surfaces.

One of the tricks with painting these is taking into account that there’s a larger surface area to paint than is necessarily usable due to the curve of the wiimote.

 

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These guys sold at AVCon so hopefully they’ve gone to a good home! I may open up custom Wii Remote commissions at some point.

Hand-Painted Callie and Marie Brooches

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As promised, here’s my next experiment in laser-cutting + watercolour detailing. I’m really happy with the results!

Here are some extra pictures to show you the process from idea to finished product.

As usual, it all starts with a sketch!

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Once I’m happy with the sketch, I trace over it with vector lines in Illustrator and use these to laser cut my designs. Remember what I said yesterday about priming the MDF and masking it? I do the exact same thing with these!

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The technique for painting these is also the same as in yesterday’s post! I peel the masking off each area that I want to paint, going from darker colours to lighter ones. I then apply colour in careful washes of watercolour paint.

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Once they’re done, I apply a gloss varnish over them. This protects the watercolour paint and gives things a nice smooth feel.

I need to work out a good process for sealing the paint before putting the varnish on, as you can see with the picture below some of the colours bled or faded a bit when I put the varnish on.

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There’s some variation between each piece – even though they have the same lineart they are each hand painted and finished!

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Pins on the back so that I can use them as brooches. I’m also testing to see if they are durable enough to use on keyrings.

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Okay that’s all for today – Stay Fresh!