Self Portrait: Ink (Brush)

Haven't done much personal work recently, but I had been started this self portrait last week with the intention of going old school and ink it with a brush. unfortunately I needed new inks and didn't get round to buying some more till today.

The image is one of those common sights of how I look in the later hours of most nights.

I've made the the odd mistake here and there but I forgot how much I love inking with a brush (its been over 6 months).

Everything has been done by brush, even the signing and date, and it just feels really nice to work with.

Hope you enjoyed it, more to come later.

Digital: Photoshop DVD Cover

So as promised here is the second half of my DVD project, now showing the Photoshop cover.

Its not bad really, and I got to use some of CS5's new features like realistic brushes(which I used for the title).

I wanted to see what effect I could get from mainly painting compared with the sharp crispness of Illustrator, which is also the reason I didn't scan in an inked drawing and coloured it digitally like a comic book.

Also I updated the back of the Illustrator cover, so the back of the cover looks more pro now.

And as always the sketches that I did before hand.

Digital: Illustrator DVD Cover

So I finished my first week of uni doing real work on Friday, and I thought I'll show the product of that work.

My current project is to my two DVD video game covers, one in Illustrator, the other in Photoshop and both must have a car and character in them.

This is the Illustrator cover. It came out better than I hoped, since everything you make is a path or shape. Its kind of  like a over complicated paper collage at times, which is why I normally only use it for logos and graphics.

Anyhow next week is the Photoshop cover and we've got wacoms so it should be a bit more epic(...ish).

Below are the sketchs I did for the design above.



Portrait: Jenny

(AKA the sequel)

So why is this also called 'the sequel'?

To make a long story short, I used the reference that I used when first metting her during our first drawing class in college, 2 years ago.

I wanted to see how much I had improved and was paranoid that I was going to make the same mistakes, which I nearly did all too often.

Any way like last time here are the stages of the drawing.

NOTE: Blogger has a new of viewing images where if you click on one you can scroll through the ones in the post in fullsceen.

Portrait: Katie

 So this is a portrait of the only person to take my offer up of me drawing them.

Its not perfect but I feel at least I'm getting better with the shading and hair techniques and I'm getting close to doing a solid photorealistic drawing if a can get the proportions right.

Anyhow I thought I would give so insight to how i draw it.

 In a 2H I sketch out the guidelines and try to get an idea of what goes where.

 Next I fade the lines with a rubber and using a 2B pencil to do the skin tones, I use stumps to help with blending.

 Still using a 2B I start the first layer of hair, I usea brush to help with this.

I then use a 4B and a putty rubber to add depth to the hair and a 2H to add stray hairs.

I then focus on a few final details like the eyes before getting the result a the top.

Digital Painting: Uruk-Hai Berserker

So If you saw my last post you would have got a glimpse of a crappy low res preview of my then work-in-progress painting.

A week later I can now show the higher quality (and hopefully not so crappy) finished piece.

The story behind this was simply I watched LOTR: The Two Towers little over a week ago and felt like painting one of the slightly angrier variants of Saruman's uruk-hai horde.

This is also the first digital painting I've done from start to finish. Quite happy with that.

I'm also quite happy with the details around the face.

Click on the close-up above to get a better look.

Important Messages

Right I've got a couple of messages to send out along with a work-in-progress I've got going, so I'll make this short.

First I would like to offer drawing a FREE portrait of anyone who is interested.

I've currently got 12 sheets of Bristol board left and instead of doing 12 self-portraits I would like to some of other people.

The conditions are:

1. I need to know you
2. I can work from photograph or life, whatever suits you best
3. If I'm working from a photo, it's best that it is of high quality and if possible gray scale (but I can do that part)
4. I will make a digital copy if you want the original

So if you are interested please contact me which why is best for you.

So before the second message here is a preview on a current piece I'm working on, of a uruk-hai berserker.

More info will be posted when its finished.

Finally I know that it's mainly friends and family that are currently reading this but I would like to thank you for your support. Last month I got over 100 hits in just a few days, and I hope that this becomes a increasing trend as more people pop around here.

Another Self Portrait and New Background

So I've done another self portrait, but this time I also tried something different and digitally added colour.

It was a technique inspired by and artical by Adam Hughes in Imagine FX issue 67, I know other artists also use a simular technique of adding colour over a greyscale image but AH rocks so I followed his guiding example.

You may also notice that I've used the coloured version for my background, my monitor is one of those old square-ish one from before we went all wide screen and HD back in 2004-ish, so it doesn't quite fit my screen but if someone has something more up to date, please give me a shout if it looks ok (or not).

Till next time.

Building Classic Iron Man Head

Yesterday my little brother went to a adventure holiday camp for the week like he has for the last 2-3 years. Each years has a theme and this years was superheroes where he had to dress as a superhero.

He decided to go as with the original Iron man design from about 60 years ago and I got to build the helmet, so here are some photos of each stage.

Basic model made from a plastic bowl, paper, a lot of masking tape and a bit of wire.

First layer of paper mashe with newspaper.

Second layer with tissue paper.

The final product sprayed gold and taking a total of 3 days to make.

Another Portrait

Another portrait (I'm on a roll for once), this time of my younger brother.

Self Portrait

Recently got some blenders for drawing (there is a technical name which currently escapes me) and this is the outcome from after playing about with them in a couple of sketches.

My Big Break ....Almost

 So about this last year me and a few others from my course were told through our tutor that a local business wanted us to design something for a very long wall they had to adversities themselves as metal stockiest and DIY store.

We of course took it up with the possible taste of local fame and glory dribbling down our fronts

Fast forward to a week ago, I was the last of that group still working on this and about to present the final installment of my design (I came in 3 parts), when I was told with great regret that the project had to be cancelled due to projected expenses tripling the original budget just with the first two parts of my design I had handed in.

Fortunately they gave me a bit of money for my work, but the real treat (and shame in some ways) was that they had made a  1:10 scale model of my first design (shown left) .

This design was based on a image of the founder of the company from a hundred years ago. It was split up in to different layers made from metal which are placed together to create an image as well as a 3D piece with depth.

I've written a lot here so I will do a couple more posts in the future with the other designs that I had and more details what was planed. Here is some photos of it for a better idea of the layers and scale.

Walking Cell

So I got a distinction for my 'Final Major Project' which was an animation short, and having got it back i thought I'll post some of it on here.

The GIF below was a bit hidden in the piece so I made this just to show it off a bit better, unfortunately I did after in was marked so the paint has starded to peel and there is a bit of dirt on it but apart from that its still pretty smooth.



(You need to click on it to start it.)

I 'll upload the final animation once I work out what is the best way to display it.

Sketch Book

Few drawings from my personal sketch book

These are sketches where based on some work I did on emotion and expressions.

Life drawing based on some stock images I got free on a DVD

Trying to use the life drawings for reference.

Got to have some drawings of hands some where.

At the moment I love inking over drawing with just a brush, you've gotta love it when you get a nice perfect striaght line.

Sticky Notes

For those times when the computer decideds it doesn't want to live or when I've got nothing better to do, a sticky note doodle is born.

I'm not going to pretent these are masterpieces but some of are quite fun doing and can lead to cool ideas later on.