Rough Work

Blog
About

That Tingling Sensation…

December 13, 2008 at 5:02 pm | In Rough Work | Leave a Comment
Tags: digital, finished, marvel, spiderman

My Spidey Sense is Tingling!

I started work on this last night after I finished the elephant. I just thought I’d do a quick spider man sketch and paint it using photoshop instead of illustrator, I’d been reading that it’s far better and I kinda thought it would be.

I tried not to spend too long on it, just wanted to get a feel for the differences. From now on I’ll only be doing my initial sketches in Illustrator and I’ll be moving the colouring to PS. Backgrounds, gradients, colour choosing, effects and hotkeys I’m more used to and it just felt far easier…messing with vector based lines while painting is stupid.

I really like the way this turned out. I was able to learn quite a bit using PS, and I think the background really helps this one pop.

I’m all pumped now…onto the next drawing.

Elephantitis

December 12, 2008 at 11:57 pm | In Finished Drawings, Rough Work | Leave a Comment
Tags: animal, cute, digital, elephant, paint, quick

You don't want to know what suprised him...

Last week I was challenging myself to do something “cute”, it’s tougher than I thought, but I think I got a lot closer to the mark with this one.

I didn’t spend too much time on this, I try to keep some of these projects loose and focus on learning. I tried a lot of approaches using simple geometric shapes:

A Rectangle Elephant
An all round elephant
etc.

In the end I went with something which is more my style, it felt good. I experimented with different ways of painting this, I like how it turned out. I didn’t want to spend too much time on it, so I focused on simple low and highlights to bring out some shape. Also I did a real quick greenery background.

I think I’ll try my hand at some more animals, see how it goes. I had a lot of fun with this one.

Thoughts: Sketchbooks

December 9, 2008 at 3:23 pm | In Opinion Pieces | Leave a Comment
Tags: thoughts

Sketchbooks!! *fist shaking

Love em’ or hate em’ ?

Opening a new sketchbook is simultaneously a wonderful and painful exercise. I love sketchbooks, for a while there it felt like I had 10 sketchbooks on the go. This is because, to me, sketchbooks are synonymous with fresh starts.

I always think that if I get a new sketch book that my work will somehow step up to the occassion, like the fact I own something new a clean and fresh will force me to get better. This feeling of confidence is the wonderful part, the part that makes me feel like I’m actually not too bad at this drawing thing. Then comes the second half.

Opening a new sketch book and having a blank page staring back at you is an incredibly daunting experience. You feel lke there’s nothing you can put there that’s going to look right and so you just stare at it.

This happened to me yesterday, except I forced myself to start, I decided…I’ll draw a picture of my niece Devynn. She’s cute and I’m not good at cute. What better way to challenge myself. I printed off a picture and some samples of Sarah Mensiga’s work (she’s great at cute, wistful, and everything else). I was ready to start.

I tried, I really did. I tried to be more thoughtful in my approach, take my time without being too slow that it becomes ridiculous. I studied my inspriation to try and capture the cuteness…and all I could get was craziness. She looked like Chucky and I ruined the first page of my new sketchbook (that I bought in August and was too intimidated to start filling). However, the plus side of the new sketch book is perferated paper. I simply pulled out the drawing (I scanned it and tried to clean it up…no such luck so far) and I’m ready to start again.

But “The Dark Knight” came out today and I’ll be watching that tonight, so I don’t know if I’ll get around to any drawing. I think if I’m going to try cute again I need to start with animals.

Note: The picture of the sketch book above is acutally the one I opened last night, I grabbed that pic from barnes and noble website. It’s designed by SCAD students and I picked it up while I was down in Savannah getting married this summer.

Blast from the past

December 8, 2008 at 3:13 pm | In Rough Work | Leave a Comment
Tags: alien, allen, digital, invincible, pencil, portrait, sketch

Allen the Alien

I did the sketch for this over a year ago, it’s pretty much a straight copy of an a Ryan Ottley drawing (I can’t remember the source). I scanned it in and did a real quick (5 minute) ink of it just to clean it up a bit. I didn’t bother fixing up lines or anything. I did this mainly to warm up my hands before attempting the first drawing in a new sketch book. More on that later.

I may clean this up and colour it some time, but I think I’d prefer to do my own Allen if I was going to colour it.

The character is Allen the Alien from Invincible, one of my favorite superhero books and well worthing picking up the first 3 ultimate collections.

Self Portrait…Me

December 5, 2008 at 9:45 pm | In Finished Drawings | 2 Comments
Tags: digital, finish, portrait

Me, if I were a cartoon.

Thought I would get around to another self portrait, while I like the Joker one, it’s tad cliché and doesn’t really look like me. This one is a little closer…

This only took me about an hour from start to finish, mainly because I spent about 20 minutes working on the nose. I tend to go for any nose that looks cartoony, this one is more like a cartoony version of my nose.

Got a pretty busy weekend, but I’m thinking I might do a little Altair picture if I can find some time.

Drawing Class: Shoes and Coats

December 3, 2008 at 10:03 pm | In Rough Work | Leave a Comment
Tags: coat, drawing class, pencil, shoe, sketch

Coat on a chair...

Shoe on a box

So tonight was the last of the drawing classes, that was a fast 10 weeks. I had a lot of fun though and got a lot of experience drawing things I’d never have attempted to draw.

I didn’t start posting drawings until I was in the last 3 weeks of class, maybe some day soon (when I run out of things to post) I’ll do some drawing class retrospective.

We did a coat hanging on a chair and my shoe propped up by a box, nothing too fancy but I think you can tell what each of them is, and that’s a win for me. We also played with ink…that was tough, and messy. I didn’t keep the painting (inking?) I did so it’ll never be seen here.

I think Mike and I are going to start doing some life drawing classes, that’ll be new to me, but I think it’ll be interesting.

More Martian Colouring

December 2, 2008 at 11:52 pm | In Rough Work | 1 Comment
Tags: digital, finish, martian, paint

Quack

Took another crack at colouring the martian head tonight, took me a little over an hour and a half. About 45 minutes in I ditched the body cause the hands were bothering but I wanted to be finished with it.

Up to that point I was enjoying what I’d done with the head so I spent some more time on it and decided to cut and run.

I am pretty happy with how it turned out, I rushed a few things, I was hoping to have a more brainy look, but I need to keep moving onto new projects to I try my hands at lots of stuff.

I have a few characters in mind for my next illustration, I think the next one I won’t try and colour and will stick to an ‘inked’ version.

Should’ve started with the robot…

December 1, 2008 at 11:24 pm | In Rough Work | 2 Comments
Tags: digital, martian, paint, rough, wip

Mars Attacks Martian WIP

Got to work on this around 10, I tidied up the sketch and started painting it. I was trying to do a better job at it, but painting is still something fairly new to me so there’s alot of wasted time in picking colors etc.

I started out laying down some light tones and trying to build up sections, but I got distracted and moved onto other parts. I started laying down detail far too early.

I like where it’s headed, but I need to take a step back and take another crack at it. I need to try and be more pragmatic about it, while at the sime time exploring the colors and lines. I could probably finish is real quickly if I just gave it black outline, but I was challenging myself not to do that.

Any way, enjoy the WIP (work in progress) for now, I’ll post the finished one later in the week.

Update: I lost sleep over this damn thing last night. However I came to 2 conclusions.

I’m not yet good enough to be trying this type of painting, I need to get better with drawing first. So I think I may finish this with black outlines.
Layers, Layers, Layers. I was doing all of this on one layer, which is stupid. I could have layered each of the parts (eyes, face, suit, gun, helmet etc.)

Pen Sketches / Previews

December 1, 2008 at 2:21 pm | In Rough Work | Leave a Comment
Tags: pen, rough, sketch

Monster Foreman...

A little Mars Attacks, the hand with the gun will need some work

A rectangular robot...Beep.

I decided I should post something, so I went home at lunch and scanned in the sketches I did yesterday over coffee at my aunts house.

I did these quick with a bic pen, and I was focusing on sketching really loosly and quickly.

My intent is to take the scans and paint/refine them tonight after the gym, so perhaps we’ll see one of these tomorrow. If you have a preference feel free to leave a comment.

No new art today.

December 1, 2008 at 9:59 am | In Rough Work | Leave a Comment

I was trying to get around to drawing something this weekend, but last night was the new episode of Dexter and that ate up my night, Friday night was my Christmas party at work and Saturday I went shopping with my wife.

I did a bunch of sketches at my aunts house yesterday, nothing too fancy, but there are a couple I want to scan in and work with. After the gym tonight I think I’ll do that and get those up.

Hope everyone had a good weekend.

Also, Dexter is an amazing show…

« Previous Page — Next Page »