A Sign of Things to Come

I did this some time in July before we moved.  I wanted a new art piece to hang on my wall in our new home.  Just playing with chalk pastels on a 14x17 illustration board.

July Gone By

This month is crazy, enough said.  Animation and Modeling projects are on hold. I'm moving this weekend to a new location. I'm also getting a kitten. YAY!

On the sidelines I've done a piece in chalk pastel, I hope to get that made digital after the move when I have my camera back.  This was the first time I'd done any art for art's sake in a very long time. It will be going on the wall in my new Art Room at my new house.

I owe this blog a lot of art.  Trust me, there will be a night where I upload all the wonderful things I have in my sketchbook and in other places.  You won't be disappointed I promise.  Even with the setbacks in my life right now, art has still found a way to emerge from my time, and that's what's important.  It's when the pen runs dry that I should be worried, not when projects are set aside for more projects.  :)

Love you guys and look forward to showing you all things new very soon!

Addendum

There's been a change in plans, I'm going to make the 3D characters of said illustrations that I've made for my once hoped traditional animation.  For one I shall have character models, and secondly rigs, and thirdly animation if that time comes and I still feel the fire of motivation to give them life.  It will be a while from now surely.

But yes, I'm going to model and rig the main character in low poly for now, and soon following will be the rest if I'm going to design the cast.  Or at least their models.  It will be delicious.

New Projects

Well it's been a very busy few weeks with a new job at Quicken Loans.  I'd forgotten the demands of full-time reality and I've been able to invest very little along the lines of creativity.  SO!  Here are some updates on the plans I have for future projects and commissions:

I have 2 clients in line waiting for some quotes on some really neat commissions.  I'm liking the ideas people have in mind.  :)

I have 3 free commissions on the backburner as they're low priority.

Now I have 2 very large projects that will be taking some presidence in my free time, if and when I have some...  The first is modeling and animating some very simple concept characters for a new demo reel.  Right now I'm not that anxious to dive in, not just yet, because I just started a new job.

So prequel to this endevour is my latest project that I just started yesterday.  I plan to do a traditional animation to "The Mariner's Revenge" which is a 9 minute song by The Decemberists.  Come to find out the song doesn't have an official video, but there are a lot of fan made ones and I would like to aim at something more professional.  :)  I totally understand the scale of what I would "like" to do, so it may turn into an art series or perhaps a motion comic.  We'll see what the future holds and/or allows.

That's everything!!  I do have sketches started which I will share soon.  I'm very excited about the style and some of the key frames I want to do.  So sit tight!

Redwall

As a friendly update to say hello and let you know what's been happening on my side of the road.  I've been working 2 jobs and they have been rigorous!!  So I took a vacation to go camping, got hired for a job on the way there, gave my two jobs their notice of my soon departure, and am starting this new job on monday.  I will be working a few weekends still at the greenhouse for the remainder of the month, but come July I'm moving and will have to discontinue my service there as well.

So there is much happening and much to look forward to.  When I acquire my new job and residence I will be back to my art and exercise, it is already overdue.  But I'm having a wonderful time and I had a wonderful time camping as well.  My good friend was reading aloud around the campfire from Redwall.  And so I give to you this little illustration.  I'll be painting it soon.

Mother's Day

This holiday I didn't actually celebrate on sunday with the world, I worked 22 hours that weekend instead, but being the planner that I am I was able to visit with my mom the friday prior and spent the evening at home.  I took her out to dinner and we caught up on things.  I also showed her the images of the canvas I had coming late in the mail that I had made for her.  I am curious what space it will occupy.  I did another for my sister.

The little girl is Avianna, my niece, my sister's little girl, my mom's first grandchild.  We all love her to death.  <3

The one on the top was for my sister, the one below for my mother.  Both have captured her features really well.  I was inspired to do this for them thanks to my great drive towards art these days.  It's been on and off, but always strong.  Work hours are really the only thing slowing me down.  But I need to do what I need to do to keep my boat afloat while I continue to make these wonderful pieces.

So as long as the time continues to permit, I will keep making wonderful art for everyone to enjoy.  :)

Commissions

I'll be able to post these a little more easily now that their "gift" dates are approaching.  Here is my most recent, completed last month.  Mike and Donna.  I will have a few more to post after this weekend.  :)

Akuri

My first free commission is complete. Now to move on to more!!! I'm not tired yet! :D

April Continues

This month has been busy!! Not only have I started a second job, but I also have started several other commissions promised to several fans of mine on Deviant Art. I plan to tackle them all at the same time to keep the canvas fresh. Once they're done I'll be adding them to my small storefront page on Facebook as sample works.



Here we have Zee the electronically enhanced human, Akuri the fennec fox, and Isdes in 2 forms (human and dragon). They're all very creative characters and deciding on poses has been very difficult. I used reference for the first two images and the last is still in the concept stage.

I'm hoping to finish the first two before the end of next month and the third by the end of June. The last will be a full-render color painting. It'll be challenging. But I'm really looking forward to it. :)

2004 and 2012

It's really fun to look at. I had the HARDEST time with his right arm!! I'm satisfied with it though, for sure. It was a great project to work on to see how I've evolved in the last 8 years. I'm thinking I might pursue it again a little later to embellish the color. I might have to completely paint it if I go in that direction. But we'll see. I currently have robots to draw instead.

Enjoy!

Current Projects

Well everyone. My first commission portrait is done and I will be sharing that next month after it's gifted. In the meantime I haven't gone stagnant. I've continued to doodle and browse art and write with my friends.

While looking for a new desktop:
...a nice Mushishi one...

...I was browsing a lot of Final Fantasy galleries and was surprised how buried it's gotten beneath newer FF titles. It made me kinda sad that the classics might be forgotten by future generations. It reminded me of an old fanart I submitted to DeviantArt of Cloud and Aeris. This inspired the idea to revisit my old art piece and redo it. This will compare my abilities from 2004 to my abilities now in 2012.

The process has already begun.



This will be my current project for a little while. Following that will be more commissions for friends while I wait for more paid commissions.

OTHER GOOD NEWS! I'm picking up a second job at a garden center to double my income for the summer. It will mean I have less free time, but I have a feeling if I keep up this momentum, I will feel carried by it. :) I might also have new specimens to base some art on. We'll see!

Sincerest Apologies for my Absence!!

But there's good reason!! So many things to tell all of you! Oh, and here, have these cats as proof I have not abandoned you.

So where to begin. I suppose it would be best to start where I left off. :)



Since the funeral for my mom's cousin in January the sketchbook has filled 12 pages or so with doodles, ideas, sketches and drawings to express my thoughts and imaginations. Most recent were these cats whom I've lovingly named after Devil May Cry characters. I also did these two birds shown exclusively here on my blog :3 All of these were done as my fiance and I discussed pets and names.






THAT'S RIGHT!! I'M ENGAGED!!
Andrew proposed to me on February 11th of this year. We will be planning the ceremony for next year some time.

Since then I have been working on a Digital Painting commission for Andrew's Uncle that is due the end of this month. SO! That's where all my free time has been invested. I'll be putting up a WIP of the work when it's complete as it's supposed to be a surprise present for his wife-to-be in August.

I'm very pleased with it's progress so far and can't wait to show you all :)

In the meantime, enjoy my little doodles and I will have lots more to share in a week or so!! Love you guys!

How do I want to be remembered?

This question was on my mind the other day while I debated on going to a family funeral in a few days. What is my passion that people will talk about? Who do they remember me as and did I have a positive influence?

My career was on my mind, and if it's the right one. The aptitude test brought up the same path I'm on with a mix of construction work. But why don't I do it every day?

My answer came in the least likely of places. A Miyazaki movie, Kiki's Delivery Service, has an artist character in it who talked about her childhood painting and one day she couldn't anymore. She started to make copies of art, but they weren't that good. She needed to figure out what and why she wanted to paint.

I see it as she didn't need what and why as a child, but as we grow and need purpose in life, what and why we do things becomes our passion. I need to discover this for myself. I need to discover my own style, my message, my medium, my content. And I need to find my inspiration. Without it I can't do anything.

I need to discover what and why I want to create art. If I don't do that now, so many more years of comfort in the average will pass when it could have been so much more! I want to feel something from my work. The sketchbook has begun to fill. Let us find out what and why I will draw. Wish me luck.

Back on the Job

So as promised here I am, at last. However I haven't made any further progress on the late Naephos drawing. However I did get a few swings in on the mentioned Fraggle doodles. So I'm going to treat you to Boober and Mokey.

I enjoyed doodling these up. I hadn't gotten further with the rest of the cast due to distraction and busyness. I've been very active lately in readjusting some priorities in my life so the string of art might remain sporadic for a while until I'm more well equipped to manage my time better. Shouldn't take too long. :)

Longer Postpone

Still settling down, hoping next month will offer the free time for art that I'm currently lacking. See you soon!

Short Postpone

Just wanted to let my viewers know I'm in the middle of uprooting and moving, so my current WIP projects are on hold for about another week. I'll be back soon!

It's Not Always What You Think

So from the initial sketch to where it's at currently, you can really tell how much of the original is mostly concept where the details are left to be fleshed out digitally. Had I done the original drawing to completion you can see how different it might have been, and what improvements are possible when you give it more time to bloom.

More attention was given to the dragon on this pass, making adjustments to horns for better contour, adding larger eyes, and pushing the front leg back (even though it might not stay there either). All of the horns are on their own layers which is how we get the overlapping on the human figure. This adds dimension which was otherwise not present.

I do have a confession to make with this image. Nothing progressed from the last blog image until I addressed the human face. Once I did the first pass, it was "alright" and I cleaned the line further for the garments and his hand. But later I felt here was something skewed about his face that I couldn't figure out. First of all it was far more "pose" and less "emotion" than the original sketch. It was missing that angle, the sharp lines. So staying true to the line work, which I liked, I warped each individual feature until it made more physical sense.

You can see from this image my first and second attempts at his face. Though they don't seem that much different, the most subtle curve of a line can suggest radically different angles of a shape. This can be seen easier if you click on the image for a larger version. At first he's looking nearly straight on, the 3/4 perspective a little forced by the shape of the nose, and the mouth feels borderline too big, same with the forehead. It would drive me crazy if I had not tried to fix it first even though I did try to move on and completed the dragon eyes, but promptly after that the annoying human face had to be addressed. The curve of the lines on the left side of his face had to be sharper as they were wrapping around the head and curling up. Foreshortening can be tricky, even on something like faces.

Once that was done I was able to take on the horns and shorten and reshape them as I saw fit. The main horns still aren't quite 100% of my intended twist and turn, but it's close enough where I could either leave them alone or take another pass at them and either way I would be happy.

So far the dragon is really starting to take on more of the oriental feel with its larger eyes and the like. Once more attention is given to the snout and other tendrils I think it will all fall together nicely.

It may be a length of time before my next entry as I'll be going on 4th of July vacation and job hunting soon after, so I will do my best to keep up with Naephos! I hope everyone is learning a little something or is inspired in some way. I can only hope. :)

The Line Begins

So this last week between several drawing projects I was able to make some progress on cleaning up the line. I began with the face and have been spreading out from there. Once I brush up on the robes and boots I will be tackling the dragon. Then following that will be adding detail and editing problem spots. Already his head needs work as I think it's too large for his body, and his hand might have to scale down and adjust to the surface of the snout... small things, but important things that if I spend too much time on initially have the potential to really slow down the project. So I'm trying to ignore these for now and will get back to it once more has been initially cleaned.

For a little inside info on my next series to be released, I have two ideas that will be tackled, maybe even at the same time. One is a group of a dozen sketches or so for potential fighting game characters. This is in collaboration with a good friend of mine who is doing all the creating and writing. Thus I shall illustrate.

The other project is a little unique and certainly not the average task I tend to gravitate toward. It will be a set of portraits in a variation of anime style to humanize the Fraggles. Yes, that's right. Gobo, Mokey, Wembley, Boober, and Red. I've already done a test run and it's captured my interests enough that the whole cast is due for interpretation. There may even be room for a few others, including Gypsy Boober. It'll be fun to say the least :)

Lovely Gesture

Sometimes gesture is necessary. Most often I find myself stuck in fine line mode where I have to draw the perfect line and won't stop erasing and retrying until I do. I find there's always an angle or weight issue that just doesn't make physical sense and it's difficult to understand why by looking at line. When drawing objects in space there is always guess work at what you actually see when something loops back and then turns in another direction. You have to imagine what you can actually see and how to translate it on paper to make others believe in what they're looking at.

After a quick mirror for the dragon's symmetry, the first real challenge with compositing these two together was completing the dragon horns. I drew a million lines trying to discover how to perceive a curve twisting back in space. These main horns are spiral in shape but I wanted a specific silhouette. It wasn't until I started scribbling and rotating the scribbles to get the distinct outline and shape that I wanted. Now that I understand the volume I can easily clean it up later.

Scaling his human body down to the scale I understood the dragon to be was the easiest part. Then came legs. At first he was off balance as his weight was not properly distributed to his feet, they were too far forward or their position made a weak pose overall. The best way to accomplish my goal was to first get his back leg positioned correctly beneath his weight. Then zooming out a great deal i based his front leg entirely on strong silhouette which put his foot in the correct place on the ground.

At length I decided I wanted to fill the space and not just have a central floating framed image which I tend to have ALL the time. So with some trial and error I got a body and legs and lots of neck in there with a wisp of tail. I have a feeling I will use his scroll "prop" as a border for the bottom right corner.

Please please click on the image to see better detail. I hope this helps explain some more methods of beginning a work and the options you have when drawing. It's good to remember there's more than one way to get a desired result. Gesture is a fabulous way to conclude proper volume and shape changes in depth and direction. It helps your understanding of the 3D nature of 2D and how lines can do more than just outline a figure. Those horns have full volume and when they're outlined and cleaned and colored this will be reflected just the same.

From this point on it will be cleaning of the lines and polishing up features and details. This no doubt will take the longest to do. That is of course until we come to color. IF we come to color, we'll see how much energy I have by then, and if my fans insist.

Humble Beginnings

As with all things there is a starting point that looks nothing like the finished product. This may not be true for some people, but for most including myself, if time is wasted on a talent, when you start up after long stagnation a sudden anxiety strikes you as you take your first test to see how your skills have degraded. This is not to say it has deteriorated, but just like warming up before a race, skill will ease back into stride with coaxing.

For me drawing never slips off the pencil or pen in perfection. Never. Actually, when I first begin my drawing after an extended vacation it's difficult to even enjoy as nothing turns out the way I would like. A page gets a minimal line drawing before it's erased or the page turned over or smaller posture poses spring up for instructive purposes. In my minds eye I see exactly what I want, but my hand and my plans are nothing but disappointment and more often than not it scares me away from drawing at all, at least until some other time when I have a solid and likely driven plan of what I want.

This newest endeavor is an example of that. I have an Original Character whom has been in dire need of some fanart to show friends what this individual looks like. He is called Naephos and is a dark necromancer of sorts. The fun fantasy aspect of this individual is his race. He is a dragon with human counterpart made possible by an enchanted scroll.

Task one was to put pencil to paper no matter what it looked like. I was already frustrated with multiple attempts and I believe you can even see where I erased at times. Ebony pencil was meant to just get graphite to paper at this point despite what I thought of it. This was my sheet of paper. After a crude sketch I began to draw little posture poses on the side to start narrowing down the image I should strive for. As you can see it took a few swings and misses until I got something I liked.

Also let me be clear at this point there are not many artists who let you see anything this early in the game. Not by a long shot. This is part of the "process" you never really hear about. There's a lot of mental decision making as well as drawing testing. Obviously my first sketch of Naephos looks like it might have been done in 6th grade. But I was happy enough to get something on paper I couldn't erase. I had defining characteristics: black hair, wears a robe, teardrop mark on the forehead, furry boots. That was about it and there it all is. Now comes the refining process.

With the pose chosen I had concluded that he would be hugging some dark grimy tree in the swamp he lived in. That was my original concept when I set to work. His hand took the most time as I held my own up to look at for reference. I decided to leave his back hand out altogether as it was becoming far too problematic. His face was younger than I anticipated and the details on the robe an afterthought. Once this version was complete I knew it would be no use making corrections to anatomy since all editing will be done in photoshop. Already I've taken the liberties of darkening the lines so that you can see the roughness and detail of just how messy this process actually is.

Then came the dragon face of which I had references of what I wanted from several images but must determine how I want to combine certain attributes as this type of dragon is very similar to the oriental style being long of body and without wings. I have a very hard time drawing symmetrically and thus only drew half the face knowing I would mirror it in photoshop later. This took a lot of layers and patience until I was getting the form and design that I wanted. By layers I mean drawing/erasing and repeating. Also I want to point out here that I am showing you the full 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper uncropped. This is about as much of the paper as I ever fill, I never get something perfect in the middle framed neatly on all sides. Most of the time I squish something or something gets cropped off. Sometimes this is fixed by using larger paper in the beginning, but what I tend to find with that is I just draw bigger and the same things happens anyway, haha!


It was only after I had this finished, or as finished as it was going to get, image that I considered the idea to have Naephos' human form hugging his dragon form head. As you can tell I clearly ran out of room for the large horns on top and considered taping it to an 11"x17" piece of paper just to complete the drawing. But here again I stopped myself and knew I would be taking this project into the digital realm, and so I left it alone (painstakingly knowing it's much more difficult for me to draw with my tablet). I would complete the horns and overlay Naephos in one final document before making corrections and beginning on cleaning up the line work.

As you can tell I haven't gotten that far yet. But as I foretold that is the plan, to present to you these steps and reveal my process for a fresh bit of work after a long spell away. Next time I hope so show you the beginning of a composition prior to line cleaning. Then the long tedious process of line cleaning and finessing the drawing. Then, if we're lucky, color.

Hope everyone is having a great summer so far! I know I am!