watercolour
Gulp Missile
I’m happy with this sketch but not really very excited by how the colours ended up. Might have to take another crack at it sometime.
Bonus: here’s how things looked while masked up.
Just some squares
They look simple but I tried masking these with sticky tape and cutting the square stencils from that, which was fiddly. Tore the paper a bit on lifting the masking though, which makes me wary of using sticky tape again in the future. Might just need some more practice or to use slightly different tape.
Scenes from ‘A Short Hike’
Two paintings inspired by “A Short Hike” – one from last year, one from more recently. I really love this game and recommend it wholeheartedly! Maybe at some point I’ll draw Claire doing something other than sitting and taking in the sights.
Alola, Starters!
Today’s second post is a painting of the starting Pokémon from Sun/Moon’s new Alola Region. I painted this one shortly after the starters were announced.
Starry Visions
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.
Watercolour Splatoon 3DS XL Cover Plates
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
The masking fluid has been removed and the firework colours have been added.
More work on the fireworks, some white added to the ink trails to define the movement of the jumping squids.
Putting in colours on the bottom plate. I decided for an eclectic background with lots of ink patches.
Adding skintones. More white highlighting on the inkling on the top plate.
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.
Insert Title Here
Today I was going to write a post-mortem of the Splatoon LANs I ran at AVCon this year, but after coming home from work I fell asleep on the floor and have slept almost all evening.
So instead it’s squid art! There’s going to be a lot of Splatoon art this month, as I have portraits that are due for competition winners and old art that I need to scan.
These squids were drawn while I was at the Pokémon Regionals back in May.
I actually inked them after putting down the paint. Here’s a photo from before the inking was done.
