6/29/15 - Breaking the Slump

I've been in a bit of a slump recently (and feeling rather sick), so I doodled a couple of smaller things to try to get back to a good state of mind to draw. I can't really say it was all that successful but I got a couple of little sketches out of it.

Here's one:

Until tomorrow!

6/28/15 - Basic Colors In

Sorry, I missed yesterday again! I sounds like a broken record but my summer is far more hectic than my school season so I apologize if I miss days without warning now and again. Usually its social or family obligations or spur of the moment things.

Anyway, I got around to starting color on the Peg Knight piece, so I'll show that off:

I don't know if I want to keep this color scheme for the background or not...hm...

I'll probably be trying a couple alternatives tomorrow. I do need to figure out the ambient color first as the rest of the palette depends on the ambient light, so that's next I suppose.

Well, I'll be back tomorrow!

6/26/15 - Post Mentorship Update

So I got some sound advice from my mentor (his dA can be found here: http://knockwurst.deviantart.com/) about the piece I was working on in addition to a bit of paintover. I took his advice and paintover, spent about an hour and a half on it and arrived here:

I'm looking forward to how this piece will turn out. Both the advice and paintover were very helpful and I will hopefully take this to completion within the next week or two. I should be done with value in a day or so, and then I can move on to color!

Till tomorrow,

6/23/15 - Family Break

I've got family visiting from we'll out of state and it is my brother's birthday tomorrow, so I've been kept away from as much art. I will return to normal update scedhule (which is to say an art update with pictures every day) on Friday. Sorry!

6/22/15 - Some Actual Progress

I made progress!

Almost done with the line/value stuff! I just gotta finish the hand/lance, work on the pegasus a bit then give it a quick polish coat and I'll move on to bigger and more colorful steps!

The rest of this should come relatively quickly as I don't foresee as many changes and iterations once I've gotten out of this value step.

So I'll be back tomorrow, hopefully with even more progress!

6/21/15 - Fathers Day Mini-Update

As it was Father's Day, I spent the day working and hanging out with my dad, so I didn't really do any arting, nor do I have any reserves to show at the moment. Since the last picture I put up of the Peg Knight, I changed the face AGAIN and then actually moved on to the rest of the drawing, so that's a good sign. I should have significant progress by tomorrow!

So I hope Father's Day was good, and I'll be back tomorrow!

6/20/15 - More Flier Progress

This is a slow slog. My time off really did a number on my arting, even if it was a few days. Either that, or I'm just not happy with my current ability and as such I keep attempting to redo it better.

Whatever the case, I'm somewhat locked in on this right now:

I think I need to reorient the features a bit, but this works, and is a bit more anatomically sound. I just need to get a head that I like, and the rest should come pretty quickly.

Well, that's it for now. I'll be back tomorrow!

6/19/15 - More Fail Days

I'm in a bit of a rut at the moment...I tried for hours to make significant progress on any of the pieces I was working on before but I'm not happy with any of them and hence have nothing significant to show. And it kind of sucks. So sorry, but this little blurb is all I've got for today. Hopefully, I'll have something tomorrow.

6/18/15 - Start of Pegasus Knight piece

So I have the base sketch figured out for the peg knight:

I think I'll need to fix the angle of the head and change a few things, but I think it's a good start. It fell together pretty quickly, except for the spear arm. Initially, I had it in an impossible position. It took a bit of mirror acrobatics and a webcam, but I got it to a largely possible, if not ideal, throwing position.

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

6/17/15 - Color on Rising

I'm starting to go back to the Fiora piece so I don't have as big of an update on Rising today:

I'm spending so much time redoing the same parts over and over again, so I think it's best if I set it aside, work more on the Fiora piece and come back to this later. So that's the plan.

And with that, I'll be back tomorrow!

6/16/15 - Back to "Rising"

I got a face that I was at least somewhat happy with!

The rest wasn't much time. Now that I've got that roughed in, the next bit of progress should come much faster (provided I get the time to work on it tomorrow), so we'll see how it goes.

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

6/15/15 - Enviro Thumbs

I've been rather busy these past couple of days and hadn't had time to sit down and spend a lot of time at the tablet. I'm on vacation, you know?

That said, I have a series of thumbnails I did a while back that I believe are fine to post. It was a test - I took a bunch of images, collaged them together and painted on top of the resulting forms. It was an interesting way to spark creativity.

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

6/13/15 - On Failing to Draw a Face

Damn this stupid face.

I blocked in the armor I want for the figure and then went to do the face and I took a stab at it...and again...and again...and again...

Several hours later and I'm no closer than when I started. So that's fun.

Well, I'll be back tomorrow.

6/12/15 - Thumbnail for Illustration?

Hey! As I mentioned earlier, I'm working on a lot of figure drawing and anatomy stuff, and seeing as a lot of that ends up being NSFW, I'm not gonna post most of it here, in hopes of keeping this more tame. That said, I came up with this figure and, well, it should be passable:

I liked the post and think I might take this one a bit further. Maybe full illustration? It has been a while...

Well, I've got nothing else to show, so that's it for now. Be back again tomorrow!

6/11/15 - Hints at the next big project

In the form of a portrait! Well, really it's more of a bust, but still.

I had problems with my tablet again today...this time the nub wore down and I had to hunt down my replacement nubs. This was both a test for a new type of nub and a test of style/likeness of a character, of whom I will be making a much more interesting and larger piece! So come back for progress on that sometime in the near future.

Till tomorrow!

6/10/15 - Expanded Anatomy Studies

Not much exciting again today; I just have two more sketches to add to the anatomy group:

So yeah. I'm not sure how much of the next couple weeks of study I will be putting up on the blog as I'd like to keep it SFW and I'm going to be doing a lot more anatomy studies so...I'll have to find something interesting to post instead. Which is good news for you guys.

Well, I'll be back again tomorrow!

6/9/15 - Begin Anatomy Studies

As the title says, I started doing some studies. Here's one such sketch:

It started as a simple torso test (you might notice that it got the most attention) but I decided to take a bit of time to sketch out the rest of the figure as well, with major muscle masses indicated.

Well, that's it for today. Be back again tomorrow!

6/8/15 - Portrait Finished!

Well, I think I'm going to call it finished at least. I did what I wanted to do. As always, there are things I might change but this looks pretty good so I'll stay with this for now:

Overall, I'm fairly happy with it!

Tomorrow, I will have something more full bodied (or maybe parts of bodies but not heads).

So I'll be back tomorrow!

6/7/15 - Further Progress on this portrait

Oh I've got a fun and hopefully cool idea in store. But for today, all I have is another update on the portrait:

I started to realize just how badly diminishing returns affects detail in Illustration. I did a lot more work on this, but the level of detail means that each bit I refine adds less value per time spent than it did on the last pass.

Well, that aside, I'll hopefully be done with this piece by tomorrow, and from there I hope to have enough of this "cool idea" to show. If not, it'll be anatomy/figure drawing studies.

So I'll be back tomorrow!

6/6/15 - One Final Portrait Progress

Yep! Quick update again; it's a busy week. Hell, it's a busy summer. So here's the progress I made in an hour or so:

Mostly figuring out where I want all the facial features. I still think I need to adjust proportion a bit more. I'll start on that tomorrow.

Till then!

6/5/15 - One Final Portrait

Yes I'm doing it again. One last time. For now.

So yeah, I'm doing a Cardinal portrait again. Here's the beginnings of the value stage. I redid it as I'm not all that happy with my previous attempt.

So, that's all for now. I got my tablet working again and this was all I could muster for now. More progress on this piece tomorrow!

6/4/15 - Even Further Comparison

So I'm redoing one final portrait here. Okay? One more. I'm redoing Cardinal again. For the mentorship! It's worth!

Well, I would be, but my tablet's being temperamental today. So sadly I don't have anything digital to show.

So I'm going to show another comparison. I found a similar portrait that I did one year (well, two days shy of a year; it was done on 6/6/14) ago. And I'll compare with that last portrait again:

Haha. Just about the same amount of time too.

Well, that's my daily motivation. I'll be back again (with something new this time) tomorrow!

6/3/15 - Still Portraiting

I'll be mixing it up soon, as I'll be moving on to anatomy at large. Almost done with the faces! Till then, enjoy four more rough ones:

Yeah. These updates have been getting somewhat monotonous and I apologize. I'm devoting more of my art time to this mentorship which means that I'm sticking to one subject and concentrating my time on this. Recently, that means practicing working in line, through repeated portrait sketches. I'm trying to ensure that I can handle a wide variety of faces and expressions. In addition, I found that my art time of late is actually more limited over the summer than it was during the schoolyear. So sorry for the repeated use of a single topic. But again, I'm going to be moving on this week, so there's that.

And I'll be back with the beginnings of these new studies...tomorrow!

6/2/15 - Coloring Yesterday's

All I've got today are rough color versions of yesterday's and the beginning of a Cardinal redo alongside them:

Not much else to say. I've got to fix my sleep and work schedule. That's on the agenda for this week.

Till tomorrow!

6/1/15 - Royal Sibling Portrait Exploration 1

Hey! Back to portraits, I'm afraid. I've got two more today:

The two are siblings in a story I'm working on. I tried to get a similar likeness yet still obviously the appearance of two different people, one older, one younger. As with most of the stuff here, not finished, and I'll likely be revisiting it, as well as more portraits, tomorrow.

So be back then!