3/31/15 - More Style Tests

God, I just can't get this right. I did this:

Testing a more stylized version but...eh. I'm going to go back and try another one in a similar style to this piece I keep bringing up:

I guess we'll have to see how that one goes tomorrow or so!

3/30/15 - Basic Color

Not much else to say. I had a lot of catching up to do back here at uni so I didn't have as much time as I would have liked to work on this. That said, the next few projects I have look to be interesting so I hope I'll be able to put up some more fun stuff soon!

Be back again tomorrow!

3/29/15 - More Portrait and Style Practice

Hey, so I took today to do more style exercises and one of the resulting works came out like this:

Again, this was mainly a test of styles to try and find a process and look that I was happy with. Given the time put in to this piece, I'm happy with the style. There's a few proportion and composition issues I will look at but generally I'm happy with the approach to painting. I was beginning to think about what a flight-enabled person might look like - while impossible in reality I will try to create a good looking combination of flying capability and people. This isn't really an anatomy study in that respect - it was just a question I thought about as I was working on this portrait.

Well, that's all for today. I'll be back tomorrow!

3/28/15 - Back to Business

Finally, I had time to sit down and draw something. Not much time, mind you, but some. I got this:

And I felt a bit rusty already. Compare to something like this:

Which I poseted earlier and feel looks a lot better, even though it's far less finished and still has it's own issues. I dunno. It's interesting. I'm still playing with style but I'm leaning toward something like the black and white piece more.

Well, that's it for today; at least I had pretty pictures this time. Be back tomorrow!

3/27/15 - More nothing :/

Break strikes again. Should be the last day; tomorrow and every day going forward should be less busy. I'll be back to posting regularly by Sunday, promise!

Be back with at least an update tomorrow!

2/26/15 - Spring Break Strikes Again

Spring break vacation stuff happened today. I don't have my PC or any work done today to show. Sorry! After this week I'll resume regular programming. Till tomorrow!

3/25/15 - Terrible Cartooning and Slightly Better Painting

So I suck at fast cartooning. But I wanted to try to put a comic together. Put two and two together and you get a couple of days of terrible sketches. I'll put one up when I'm happy with it; because now it looks like I reverted back about two years of artistic experience when I try and do it. I'm hoping I turn around soon because I'm trying to only show recent stuff but until then, have an older piece - a Destiny Warlock concept I did last year:

It's old and it shows, but it's still better than the cartooning so far. Maybe someday I'll go back, touch this up and actually paint out the bottom. Though it's kind of cool to see the process I worked in simply by looking at the various stages of completion within the painting.

Well, that's it for today, and hopefully I'll have some less-than-terrible cartooning tomorrow!

3/24/15 - Zelda Wallpaper

So today I mostly did behind the scenes stuff. I'll be posting the results of it eventually, but I can't show it now. Sorry!

That said, I'm trying to put something up here every dang day so I found a wallpaper I made when I was bored a while back. It's nothing exciting; it's simply a test in Illustrator, but it's something to show and someone might find it cool. A Zelda wallpaper, specifically Wind Waker. Here it is:

That's all for now. I'll be back tomorrow!

3/23/15 - Swords Galore

It's gonna be a quick update today - I didn't get much done. Spring break is in full force.

That said, I have some quick thumbnail sketches of sword profiles that I thought were cool: I might come back to some of these designs and revisit them, possibly making an armor set to match or something. Who knows. Here they are:

Well, that's it for today. Yeah, pretty quick. Sorry. Be back tomorrow!

3/22/15 - Cyber Knight Color Variations

Hey! So I was working on the Cyber Knight a little bit more and thought this was interesting. Figured I'd might as well share! So I added color to the original line drawing, and it looked like this:

 I color picked this image directly from the original - it was a simple palette fitting for a simple exercise. I was pretty happy with it. I took off the line layer out of curiosity and found this:

It looked far better than I expected without the line drawing. Obviously it's rough as the linework was fairly thick, but it produces a different style, one that I'd like to explore a little further. Also, I'd like to compare it to the rendering of the previous knights:

 Big difference if you ask me. The new knight has much more believable (but not perfect!) lighting and the forms are very clear even without the linework. So I worked on the new one a little further and ended up with this for now:

Dunno about anyone else reading this, but I'm much happier with this piece so far. It's a simple aesthetic so far (doesn't really look very cyber anymore, but I'll probably keep it that way as I think it works and looks interesting) but this workflow helped me focus on one part of the process at a time and I believe it helped me produce more accurate and interesting results. I'll keep working on this guy a bit more and see where it takes me. With that, I'll be back tomorrow!

3/21/15 - Cyber Knight Redo Progress

Seeing as it's my first day back, I took the liberty to do next to nothing today. No shame here, I wanted a day off and I took it. It's spring break.

That said, I made some small progress on the cyber knight piece seeing as I felt I should put something up - two days of nothing in a row would be pretty bad. Here it is, compared to the last pic:

Basically, I did a tighter pass on the line, practicing line variation, and I filled in the form to prep for value. I'm fairly happy with the line variation - I think it reads pretty well.

Sadly, that's all I have for now. I'll keep working on this and I also have a few other things I want to try out over this break. I'll be back tomorrow with another update!

3/20/15 - Travel Day

Whew, today was a long day. Lots of travel and some interesting mini adventures along the way back. I'm super tired and had no time in front of my computer today, so I have no pretty pictures to show. I'll try and make it up tomorrow!

3/19/15 - Cyberknight redo

I'm going on break tomorrow! I have a friend visiting now and I've been giving him a tour of the area so I haven't had as much time to draw sadly. This is what I have today:

So I dug up an older drawing I did just about a year ago:

I thought some of the forms were kind of cool but mainly I like the color on the painted knight. I thought it'd be fun to redo something like this as I've changed my process a bit since then (and hopefully improved my technical skill) so this should be an interesting 'before and after' thing with about a year between each piece. Not wanting to redo the same exact piece, I took the guy on the right and started playing with his shape a bit. This is what I got so far:

Again, I haven't put much time into this yet but I think it'll be more interesting than the other line piece I was going to do (I don't like that design as much) so I'll use this one as my line test instead. As you can see, the previous knight was also used as a line test so it's somewhat fitting too.

Well, that's all for now! Be back tomorrow!

3/18/15 - Dual Swords Progress 2

So here's the rest of the Dual Swords progress:

First things first, I went back and finished my character design sketch. I felt this was helpful and I enjoyed finishing it up. Notice the colors though - This version had more detail in the metal trim, pattern instead of metal on the scarf-thing and thinner ribbons. I changed those later for the sake of the composition.

Pass one on the sketch, shown last time. I mostly wanted to bock in colors at this point - there's a lot I would like to do differently with my process now, but I suppose that's not why I'm making this right? This is to look back on and see what I did then. So on that note, I worked under my line at first, put in color, then started working on top of the line.

From there it was mostly refinement - fixing things up, painting over the line as completely as I felt should be done. Do note that I revised the face more times than  I'd care to count - eventually it looked nothing like the concept but I had a hard time matching the stylized face to the body in a way that I liked.

And this is the "final". Quotes because I still would like to go back and fix things up, especially in the wake of a class critique which brought up a few good points about the piece. I may do that at a later date but that's not a priority for me now. I added a foreground element in the brush and added more special effect-y things on top of clarity throughout the form. Other than that it was 'polish', but I still think it looks rougher and more untextured than I'd like. I'll look to fix that when I revise it.

So that's it for today! Hopefully this is interesting to someone besides future me. I'll be back tomorrow with something new!

3/17/15 - Dual Swords possibly done?

So I think I might be done with it - for now at least. I'm gonna turn in what I got, get critique and fix what I can before moving on. I learned a lot about my process by doing this, which will hopefully have a big impact on future pieces. So here's a show of various stages of this piece (or part one of it at least):

I started with thumbnails to pick out a pose and composition that I liked for this piece. I had a couple of ideas for figures/costumes in mind already so those shaped some of the compositions. I also put in some older stuff - see the Seraph and another older figure on the third row - along with revisions of previous pieces like Colossus that I might like. In the end I chose the one on the second row, furthest on the right - I liked the way the swords framed up the composition and the flow in the exaggerated pose.

Before I took that thumb further I decided to establish the outfit of the character. I took a few cues from my sketches and a few designs from a sketchbook and drew them out. Here's the three I took the furthest, including the design that I chose to continue working with.

As I looked back on the pose I realized I needed to flesh out the costume a bit more - establish patterns, textures and color that I would need to use when beginning the full illustration. So here's the first stage of that drawing.

From there I went back to the sketch and fleshed out the composition a bit, clarified my environment and blocked in general forms.

That's a decent chunk of text already, so I'll do the rest tomorrow. Hope it's interesting. Be back then!

3/16/15 - Dual Swords Update

Well, it was a busy day and I think I've made significant enough changes, so here's my progress on Dual Swords:

At the end I think I'll put them all one after the other to show how it progressed over time. That should be pretty neat.

Well, that's all for now, so I'll be back tomorrow!

3/15/15 - Linework Knight

I'm still spending a bulk of my time on the Dual Swords paint, but I'll probably not post anymore updates on that till it's done (should be Wednesday or so) seeing as it's mostly fixes and rendering - I feel like updates each day wouldn't be significant. With that said, I have a little linework/render test I started and worked on a little:

I want to test out this new process I'm using on a lot of smaller works to see if I can streamline it. I'm going through each step like I would with a full piece, but I'm using small sketches as tests. I'll finish this one out at some point - I didn't have a lot of time to spend on it today.

That's all for now, I'll be back tomorrow!

3/14/15 - RSE Wallpaper

Instead of another update to the Dual Swords, here's a wallpaper for Ruby/Sapphire that I made a while back:

I figure this would be more interesting, and someone might like to use it. So that's all for now, I'll be back tomorrow!

3/13/15 - Twin Swords Progress

I don't really have much to show today - so here's a quick progress update on the painting:

Geez the file is getting huge. Well, I'm getting realllly hung up on the face - my reasoning being I felt that if I could render the face to the level that I wanted to achieve, I'd have the ability and convidence to render the rest. That was fine and dandy until I realized I needed to fix the composition, and I still do. So, it doesn't look very different than last time but there actually was a good amount of time spent in there - I just reworked it so many times. I learned a lot though. I also learned not to do this again.

Well, that's all for today, I'll be back tomorrow!

3/12/15 - Twin Swords Progress

We're getting there! I added some color. Still needs some tweaks but it's starting to look alright.

Here it is:

Face needs some fixing now - it looks waaaaay evil and I'm not sure I want it to be evil. Who knows, it might be. We'll see. I'll be playing with it more.

That's all for now. I'm going to try and startup my comic idea soon - I just want to get a good sense of the story and style. I'm running through that now, hopefully I'll have something to show soon!

Till tomorrow!

3/11/15 - Twin Swords Progress and Physical Upload

So as promised, I have the colored pencil physical drawing I did:

My assignment was to take a picture of an athlete, illustrate them and bring a muscle or collection of muscles to the surface to study. Admittedly, I spent far more time and got more involved in rendering the jersey, but I ended up being very happy with the technique and medium, given that it's my second attempt at colored pencil and first with this blending technique. Sadly, the picture seems to have washed up some of the color - the actual piece is quite vibrant.

And on to today:

Just an update to the twin swords pic. Not much else to say - it seems to be coming along. I hope I'll be able to render it well enough - It's quite loose now and I want to tighten it up but I'm hoping to do that after adding color. Who knows, I'll give it a shot and see how it goes.

I'll be back again tomorrow!

3/10/15 - Physical Work

So I don't have anything to show yet. Sorry. Tomorrow I'll be uploading two things, today's post and that day's. So..I guess that makes up for a lack of something today? I'll try and edit back in what would be today's pic when I get the chance, but I have to wait until I get good lighting to take a picture as it's a physical piece and not digital like my usual stuff. I think it came out pretty good so I thought I'd share.

So I guess that's it. I'll be back tomorrow!

So here it is:

3/9/15 Twin Swords Sketch II

So I colored out the sketch and refined a lot of it, and here's what I got:

I must say, I'm pretty happy with it. There's still much more to refine, such as the face and lower half of the body, but I consider this to be good progress! I feel like I learned a lot from trying a new method of working. I might just switch to this for most of my future work!

And with that, I'll be back tomorrow!

3/8/15 - Twin Swords Character Sketch

Hey, I actually did the thing I said I would do in a day! Well, it's not as finished and polished as I'd like it to be and I'll be finishing up the face again along with a color pass, but it's somewhat presentable. Here's a sketch of the character I'll be illustrating in the Twin Swords piece:

So yeah. I'll touch this up tomorrow, fix the face and add some more color and detail and get back here tomorrow!

3/7/15 - Twin Swords Thumbnail

Wow, a post at midnight instead of some ungodly hour in the morning! Well, sadly, I had a really slow, stuffy almost sick day, so there's not much work to show for me. I picked out a thumbnail for one of the other characters I was working on, and am doing a splash for that character as a school project. Here's my composition so far:

Again, sorry but that's all I've got for now. Tomorrow I hope to post more in depth sketches exploring the design for this character. And with that, I'll be back tomorrow!

3/6/15 - Twin Staff Progress

I started something of an underpainting for the Twin Staff pic, so here it is:

Not much else to say at the moment. I'm trying a different technique, so the process is gonna look different than most of the 'sketch' pieces I posted.

Till tomorrow!

3/5/15 - Twin Staff Portrait

So going off of the sketches I did yesterday, I put a face to my middle figure, the lady with twin staffs. Based off of my Warlock in Destiny - I took inspiration for the hair and tattoo thing. I did this to get a sense of the character - I'm going to try and do a more fleshed out painting again, using this figure as a guide and the portrait as reference. I'll update if it goes anywhere!

Until tomorrow!

3/4/15 - Character Sketches

I did these as part of a class assignment to establish a rough character to work with. I tried to give them all pretty distinct silhouettes.

I'll be going back over these sometime to fix them up, get back to the fundamentals and hopefully polish the designs as a self-practice activity.

Till tomorrow!

3/3/15 - Messing with Illustrator

God I need to fix my sleep schedule. Well, here's a little self portrait from when I was playing with Illustrator. I think it came out alright, given the graphic style:

Not much else to report. I've been stuck in a bit of a rut these past weeks. Hoping I find the drive I need to break it this week. In any case, I'll be back tomorrow!

3/2/15 - Portrait as Lobster Thing

Just showing line is probably going to get boring, so I'll pepper it with a lot of other work. Here's a portrait I did a couple weeks back of me as a lobster. Don't ask why. School.

I actually think it came out okay for a 30-40 minute sketch. This was used as a sort of preliminary drawing for the finished piece, done in acrylic.

I plan on doing more studies from life or at least with a focus on good reference imagery soon as I feel like use of reference (or lack thereof) is also a big shortcoming of mine. With that, See you tomorrow!

3/1/15 - Drone and Linework

So I'm thinking I should break down my practice into smaller parts, and practice smaller pieces of the process of painting in more detail, putting them together once I feel more comfortable with all of the parts that go into it. So for this month, or however long it takes, I'm going to put a lot of time towards mastering line and its application by itself. So there's gonna be a lot of linework over the course of this month. I might put basic value on it but I have a couple of professional examples of the quality I want to achieve, and I'm going to dedicate a decent amount of time towards getting close to that level. So, this sketch is to be something of a before picture:

Basically it's just a design for a drone that I doodled up. It's unfinished obviously, and I'll come back to it at the end and either clean this up or redesign.

So that's it for today. See you tomorrow!

2/28/15 - Nomad

I forgot I had this:

I needed to design a character for a project and came up with this. I came up with the cloak and the way it wrapped around by drawing several two-color silhouettes and picking out the interesting ones. That said, I think I can do much better than this, so I'll probably be reusing this design, or parts of it, in the future.

Well, that's all for today. Till tomorrow!