Wasn’t able to get any drawing done today. In light of yesterday’s post about momentum, I’m making a placeholder post for now, will hopefully be able to do some kind of double post on Monday!
Edit: Here we go, another Piranha plant sketch. I was at a Smash tournament/Splatoon meetup yesterday so Planty seems like a reasonable subject.
Currently working on some stuff I can’t post (taking my own advice and *not* using Blaugust as an excuse to put off major projects) so here are some sketches from my bus ride today.
Piranha Plant is my new Smash Bros main. I was hoping maybe I’d be able to put up some more complete pieces but I’m sure this won’t be the last we see of it this month.
Smashed With Four Aces is one of my old paintings that I still love. Sure it’s a cliche idea but I so enjoyed weaving a lot of easter eggs into the artwork, referencing both the original series of paintings by CM Coolidge and of course, the various titles that the dogs appear from. You can read all about the process of creating this art in an old blog post.
One of the common critiques about the artwork was about Fox’s face. When I’d just completed the artwork I had trouble seeing it, then, over time the issues became really obvious but I didn’t find the time to address them. In some ways I was just so exhausted by the painting still (and the fact that my computer chugged whenever I opened the massive file). Mostly the problems emerged because I drafted Fox’s face after his Melee model, then swapped to his Brawl/Smash 4 partway through, trying hard to hew to the small snout, which didn’t really translate well.
Now that I’ve decided to do a new print run of these posters I’ve been able to find time to fix up Fox’s face. Matching up to the colour sensibilities I had when I first painted this picture was difficult. It’s not perfect but I think it’ll do for now.
This custom Wii Remote cover features Lucina. The technique I used to paint it was the same as the Splatoon covers I shared last week. In my pictures today I show the considerations I make about the inclusion of the sloped sides of the cover. I try to keep detail out of the sides and all of the main features to the middle.
I also painted a cover featuring the Kanto Starters, but it looks like I sold it without taking a photo first! So I’m down one post for the upcoming Pokemon Week. It’ll probably be a mix of Pokemon and miscellany 🙂
Lucario and Little Mac! I think this was meant to be a prep sketch for a larger piece, but I abandoned it for some reason. The file has many layers with Little Mac in a few different punching poses. This is one of the more energetic ones.
I drew this one after some early gameplay footage of Smash Bros for WiiU was seen. In it, people observed Olimar’s Pikmin bringing him items. Someone observed it would be somewhat humorous if the helpful little guys brought dangerous items to Olimar!
I have no idea how I forgot to draw in the bob-omb’s limbs and face. I had them pencilled in but when it came time to ink I just went into “it’s just a bomb” mode I guess.
A pair of Psi-kids!
The background for this one ended up as a happy accident with the green gradient turning into purple by the bottom of the piece.
Also, I had a phone case with the design printed on it, I think it works quite well for the size and shape of the piece.
I almost forgot to post today but I’ll squeeze in a post and backdate by an hour. Since it’s late I can’t really think of much to say along with the art, so enjoy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
