BoS Drawing Challenge - #34 Stars - prelim work

Well - school is back in session, and about to get SUPER freaking busy as we wind up to the seniors leaving. Things have been busy looking after Lorenzo - so I'm feeling bad I'm slipping a little with the BoS drawings. In an effort to remove some of the guilt - here is what I've done so far on number 34 :

That is Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, S.T.A.R.S agents from Raccoon City, as they appear in the first 'Resident Evil' video game. Jill is mostly done, while Chris is mostly a sketch at the moment. Still - it shows I'm still going ! 

BoS Drawing Challenge - #33 Expectations - finished

Done now :

Expecting to fly.

Took a little longer than I thought it would. Not a bad effort in the end. The body shape / proportions aren't great, and neither is the face - but I like the wings.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #33 Expectations - development

Something a bit different for today. I decided to try doing number 33 exclusively with digital media - which is a fancy way of saying I was going to so it ALL on the computer, rather than do the 'sketch and scan' thing I usually do.

I started out by doing a rough drawing in blue :

This is so I could do a slightly more refined outline sketch in black over it on another layer :

Then I could remove the early blue outlines and add in a gray background :

Then - I went over the lines with the vector tool :

Not bad so far. I need to refine some of the lines a bit more, and add a bit of colour. But I'm kinda tired now, so I'll leave that till tomorrow !

BoS Drawing Challenge - #32 Night

It's been a busy week. I think I'm mostly recovered from the virus I had, though most nights over the last week I've been REALLY tired, and I've tried to get early nights.

Anyway - I've just finished a rough colour job on number 32, so here it is :

It took a little bit to think of something to link to the theme word of 'night' - and I did think of doing Batman ( the dark knight ) again. Here we have a Night Elf - from the 'World of Warcraft' game. I've never played it - mainly because I know how addicted I'd become to it, and I also abhor the idea of a monthly fee to play a game. I like to think I;ve given this archer slightly more sensible armor than the Night Elves usually seem to have ( it mostly seems like they wear the armored bikini's you see a lot on fantasy art ). I made some errors in the original line work that I was able to fix up easily enough in Photoshop - though I'm not happy with the face. It's well wrong. Other than that it's not too bad.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #31 Flowers

I had some trouble thinking of an appropriate thing ( for me ) on the idea of 'flowers'. Eventually this idea hit me :

This is supposed to be Lord Soth, Knight of the Black Rose - a Death Knight from the 'Dragonlance' novels. He was a character I really liked. Well, as much as you can like a villain, anyway.

A bit of a stretch perhaps - but I like the finished image !

BoS Drawing Challenge - #30 Under the Rain

I did this a couple of days ago - but I haven't had a chance to get on the computer and photoshop it :

I was going to add a dementor in the background - but I never got round to it.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #29 Happiness

The Cheshire Cat! He seems like a happy kind of fellow.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #28 Sorrow

This was the first and best idea I had for this theme :

'With your long blonde hair and your eyes of blue,
the only thing I ever got from you was sorrow,
sorrow'

One of my favourite Bowie songs.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #27 Foreign

This is my attempt at drawing Ulrich Popoca. Who is he ? I'll let Josh Reynolds, his creator, explain :

'Ulrich Popoca is the junior ambassador from the court of Hueyi Tlatoani Ahuitzotl V, Lord of the Horizons, Scion of the Sun, emperor of the Ameriquetzlan Empire and its Expanses  to the court of Victoria Gloriana Regina, queen of Greater Britain, Alba and Eire. The son of an Ameriquetzlan nobleman and a woman from Vinland, Popoca has a fascination for European culture that serves him in good stead as he attempts to navigate the Byzantine political web that is the Court of St. James.  He’s also something of an amateur sleuth, prone to sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong.'

He's a character in a number of cool stories. I like the way this one turned out.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #26 Tears

A simple one today, and another video game based one.

This is Isaac and his murderous mother from the game 'The Binding of Isaac' - which is a pretty damn good game. Hard though - really hard. And it gets harder the better you get at it.

I should have put in a trap-door in front of Isaac, and maybe a door frame around Mom. I think I made the butcher's knife a little too big as well.

Working Holiday - Finished

One benefit to being horrendously ill is that there's little you can do except sit still and not do much. The 'not much' I have been able to do is move the pen on my drawing tablet and FINALLY get this piece of cover art done !

Here's the base art :

And here's the final piece with the added text : 

Not bad. I think the gun turned out well - though I made some mistakes with the colours going on the wrong layers which made shading really difficult. I like the Tharronian case sticker on the right of the case too. The leaflet was going to be some tourist thing - Interesting Things to do on Tharronia ! - but in the end it made a better assassination floor plan thing.

I don't know about the text placement - but I think it's in the best place it can be. It makes the whole thing a bit 'busier' than I would like, but them's the breaks.

Time to get this sent in to the editors.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #25 Trouble Lurking

I have been really REALLY sick today. I mean REALLY sick. I think I picked up the virus that my eldest son had a few days ago. Man - the poor little guy ! This thing has really knocked me on my arse, I can't imagine how he coped with it !

Anyway - I've been working on this since Friday :

I would have linked to add some colour - but it was hard enough to get this much done ( my head is really aching ! ). The door and adventurer are scanned directly from paper, and the goblins are computer 'inked' from rough scans.

Now - to try and sleep.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #24 No Time

No time to talk this morning ! Not finished - I'll try and update the colour a little later :

BoS Drawing Challenge - #23 Cat

Okay - this one took me longer to get here than I would have liked. Busy weekend and I wanted to do this one to a decent standard - I tried a few times to get the basic body shape right, and in the end I had to copy from a figure from a picture online :

Catwoman - probably my favourite comic book character after Batman. Not quite a canon Catwoman - but I think she turned out ok.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #22 Nature

I didn't get to the computer last night, so no colour with this today :

I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out. I'd like to go back and add some colour later - I think it would look pretty special then !

BoS Drawing Challenge - #21 Vacation

A reasonably quick one today :

If I had more time I would have done more with the snowboard, the snow and the glow of the lens flare and the jawa's eyes.

Still - I like this one. It's fun.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #20 Fortitude

It took me a little while to make a link to the 'Fortitude' theme word. Eventually I came up with this :

Not the best. But it fits.

Rish Outcast - 3D Text v.2.1

On getting some good constructive feedback from a friend of mine ( thanks Will ! ), I've darkened the extrusion material a bit to get more contrast with the text facing - so 'outcast' doesn't look like 'outlast' ! :

I was going to mess around with the point light a little - but I didn't have time this morning !

Rish Outcast - 3D Text v.2

One good thing of not being able to sleep is that you can sometimes use that extra time construcively. I had another play around with text for 'The Rish Outcast' :

I was trying to make the letters look metallic - though they turned out to look more like ice. I kinda like it. Has a 'Fortress of Solitude' feel.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #19 Gray

This drawing is, to me anyway, the first real disappointment - and I very nearly didn't share it here, and that's AFTER I fixed it up a bit in Photoshop !  :

Ugh. In my head this was going to be much cooler. This just didn't turn out right. The foreshortening of the gun arm doesn't look right, the legs are WAY wonky, and I really messed up the other hand ( to the point where I put in some weird alien technology in it to cover it up ! The face is wrong looking too. The best bit is the gun - and even that is pretty naff.

Sigh. The can't all be good I guess. Or even average !

I think I'm going to re-try this one at some stage, and see if I can get it looking more like the image I had in my head.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #18 Rainbow

The guardian of the Bifrost Bridge, Heimdallr :

A very quick colouring job - but not too bad. I kinda like this one.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #17 Blood

Macbeth for number 17. I think the link to blood is strong !

"I am in blood stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er."

And now for something completely different ... 3D text !

I'm doing some cover art for the all-round swell guy Rish Outfield, and his solo podcasting project.

I started experimenting with 3D text tonight - nothing too fancy, just trying to learn the ropes a bit. Here's what I came up with :

So - in doing this I learnt about extruding 3d objects from a layer selection, rotating objects, changing the alignment of the 3D plane, changing aspects of 'infinite lighting' , adding a new lighting source, changing the extrusion depth of 3D objects, how to render a 3D image, and dynamic lighting as a filter effect. Not too bad for a couple of hours. I also was playing around with mesh texture wraps - but all the default ones looked pretty bad on this - so I didn't use one. I'll have to search for some cool ones on line. A decent metal texture might be cool.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #16 Questioning

I had most of this done last night - but I quickly did some finishing touches with Photoshop :

The shading isn't great - but the colour helps establish that the eye is computer generated ( at least a little bit ). If I had more time / talent I would have made it look pixilated. The speech bubble was very much inspired by the very-talented-indeed MISTER HIPP.

As for the theme - well, you can't get more questioning than the ultimate question !

BoS Drawing Challenge - #15 Silence

A quick one tonight :

That, if you didn't know, is one of the Boys of Silence - an enemy from the game 'Bioshock Infinite'. Genuinely creepy guys - and responsible for a truly great jump scare in that game - which totally got me ! It's a great game - well worth playing if you haven't done so.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #14 Smile

Just a quick one I did before staff briefing this morning :

BoS Drawing Challenge - #13 Misfortune

I really struggled to come up with an idea for 'Misfortune' for some reason. I just couldn't get a connection to anything for ages. Then I latched on to the idea of 'Miss Fortune' - and had a few ideas on what I could do there - ranging from an inverse of the 'Lady Luck' images, to a super villain, and then I settled on the idea of a plane pin-up girl. You know - the ones painted on the side of WW2 bombers :

Meh - not great. I struggled to get the pose / proportions right ( eventually having to look at some actual pin-up paintings and steal a pose from them ), and I messed up the face / hair. I still tried to get an aspect of the original 'misfortune' theme by having the pin-up girl look a bit like a black-cat. I'm not sure that really worked. Ah well - it's all practice !

BoS Drawing Challenge - #12 Insanity

I should have posted this yesterday - but I went out yesterday night. So I didn't.

I did have it penciled out on Friday though - so we're still within mission parameters :

That's a video game character who is well and truly insane. A serial killer - in fact. Major props if you can tell me who it is. Clue - despite appearances, it ISN'T Guile from Street Fighter 2.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #11 Memory

Here's number 11 - not much to say right now as I'm in a rush and will be late to work :

Second Batman related drawing - and I'm sure it won't be the last !

BoS Drawing Challenge - #10 Breathe Again

I struggled for awhile to think of something fitting the theme for this one. I considered Aslan on the stone table, Frodo Baggins, T2, Run Lola Run, but in the end I went back to the first idea I had :

I'm not so great at caricature, but I did an vaguely okay effort here of Beric Dondarrion being revived by Thoros of Myr in 'Game of Thrones'.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #9 Drive

A kinda silly one tonight - a 'rat-fink' version of an X-Wing :

I know x-wings don't have gear-sticks. It's in keeping with the style, okay ? :-)

BoS Drawing Challenge - #8 Innocence

A comparatively quick sketch for number eight :

This one makes me smile. I think it's because it's something either one of my boys might do.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #7 Heaven

I know that Eden wasn't in Heaven - but there are forces of Heaven there - so I figure that's good enough.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #6 Break Away

Fully had to copy a 'guy swinging' body pose for this one - tried a couple of times but couldn't get it right. I don't know if that's against the spirit of the challenge - but whatever.

Sad Batman though, all my own work !

Drawings done during swimming sports - 2013

Today was swimming sports for out school. I tend to find it a pretty stressful day - and I try to get some drawing done while chaos ensues around me.

I was partly trying to come up with a new BoS drawing for the 'Break Away' - and I DID come up with an idea for that - but I'll finish that later.

So, two this year.

Mage adventurer :

Kaiju :

This one was supposed to be a take on 'Break Away' - as in 'Break stuff - like large buildings'. I think my other idea is better though.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #5 Seeking Solace

I did do this last night, but didn't get a chance to get on the computer.

The 'seeking solace' theme had me stumped for a little bit. Then it hit me - Roland of Gilead, from the 'Dark Tower' series :

The proportions are a bit out, and the pose was tricky to do, and the less said about the feet the better - but it's not too bad.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #4 Dark

It took me a while to think of something for the keyword "Dark", but I'm pleased with the idea I finally got :

In case you're not versed in Dungeons and Dragons monsters, it's a Drow warrior ( though I think she's more a ranger ), a dark-elf. For a sketch - I like the proportions and pose I've managed to put together. Got to figure out a way to isolate the scanned lines without a bunch of other crap from the scan turning up. Took me WAY longer to quickly colour than it rightly should have. Worth it though.

I like this one.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #3 Light

Third drawing - touched up a little with Photoshop - this time based on the word 'light' :

Proportions aren't great - but not bad for a sketch.

BoS Drawing Challenge - #2 Love

'Love' was the challenge word for number 2.

I had a few ideas about where I was going to go with this. I kinda had a fleeting idea to do something with Lara Croft and Nathan Drake in it - meeting over some artifact they'd both grabbed at the same time.

In the end - I was thinking about what love meant to me, and I had the idea to to this :

And now it's time to sleep.

Balls of Steel Drawing Challenge - #1 - Introduction

I read about this drawing challenge called the 'Balls of Steel' where you draw 100 drawings all based on different one word starters. Inspired my my friend Kirstin, I thought I would try my hand at it.

I think you're supposed to do a drawing a day - I'm going to give myself two days to get one done.

So here's the first, based on the word 'Introduction' :

I messed up the girl-vampire's nose somewhat - and if I were photoshopping this that would be the first thing I'd fix !

Still - not bad for a start.

Working Holiday - Shading

Shading has been a slow process. I've had to delete a number of attempts that weren't working. I've made some progress tonight.

Working Holiday - Gun details + some case shading

For the holidays - I'm really freaking stressed right now. Largely due to my sleep patterns being well out of it. I keep waking up in the middle of the night and then am unable to get back to sleep again. Fourth day in a row. Ugh.

Anyway - you don't want to know
about that ! Here's some more on the Working Holiday cover art :

It's largely small tweaks to the gun, but there's the start of some shading present in the inner case. I was playing around with brush opacity to see if I could build up more of a gentle shading gradient. We'll see how that works.

Working Holiday - Gun shade development

Another abysmal night for sleeping at Casa Seraph last night. I've done more on the gun :

I fixed up the magazine somewhat too - which is good.

I am now going to collapse in front of the tv and probably pass out.

Working Holiday - Starting Shade

Ugh - long day. The kids were up during the night - keeping me up from 4am to about 7. At least I was able to sleep from just after 7 to 9. That helped - but I'm still pretty tired now.

Still - I have spent some time on the art. I've started adding in some shade on the gun :

Oh - and added some of the base colour for the case contents.