Sketch-a-week #1 ( + 1B )

One of my goals this year is to draw more. To this end I will publish at least one sketch here a week. This is starting from the first school term ( though I'll try and get a few extra up so I catch up with the weeks I missed in Jan. ) They'll probably be pretty rough - but if it's encouraging me to actually draw something on a regular basis, then it's gotta be good for me, right ?

Here are the first :

I think I did this during the first staff meeting on Tuesday. It's some kind of future riot cop I guess ? The body is MESSED up though ! Look at that left leg ! The arms aren't too bad though.

And then #1B :

Better. Not great - but I'm at least improving doing faces on this angle.

'Pretty Ugly' - Vectors 3

A little time to work on the art this evening :

Not much, but I was having some real trouble getting the curves right. Many attempts - and I'm still not completely happy with the way they are now. Sigh. More tomorrow !

'Pretty Ugly' - Vectors 2

Did a little more this evening :

The hair is pretty rough - but I'll tidy it up later.

Always found hair tough.

'Pretty Ugly' - Vectors 1

Started getting in the base vectors :

Doesn't look like much at the moment, I know.

'Pretty Ugly' - Layout Revision 1

A quick rehash of the layout :

Changed the scale a bit, added in the new reflection and poster reflections.

'Pretty Ugly' - Beautiful reflection

I had a go last night at the 'beautiful' reflection of the girl in the mirror :

I tried to make her look similar - so there will be light freckling around the nose, and her hair done up in a pony tail. I'll need to swap the other reflection in the mockup out with this image and see how it looks.

'Pretty Ugly' - Rough Layout Mockup

I've been arranging bits from the rough sketches I've done so far to put together a rough mockup of a potential layout of the cover image :

Not perfect - but it's coming along.

'Pretty Ugy' - Plain Teen Refinement

Played around a little with the 'Plain Teen' image last night :

It's getting there - though the head looks slightly too big for the body I think. I should try resizing it with Photoshop.

'Pretty ugly' - Room poster ideas

I figure a teen girl has posters on her wall, so I'll need to draw those too. Here are a few sketches of potential band / music posters.

I think this particular girl is into 'cooler' music than One Direction or the Beiber.

I'm thinking of sneaking a 'NZ Music Month' logo in there somewhere.

'Pretty Ugly' - Developing Layout Mk 2

Okay - this one is more in keeping with the client's likings ! This would be the 'ugly' girl - who really is not very ugly at all. Maybe 'plain' is a better word - though still, I don't know. If I wasn't a married man, and there wasn't a thirty year or so age gap between us, and she wasn't completely fictional ...

'Pretty Ugly' Cover - Devloping Layout

A couple of developing ideas of the basic layout :

Coming along.

UPDATE - I've just realized that this is more in line with the 1st rough idea, rather than the 2nd. Argh. 

'Pretty Ugly' cover - Rough layout / development sketches

The first step was to get a few rough ideas of how I could do this image.

Remember the brief :

My idea--our idea--for the art was of an ugly girl (teen?) standing in front of a mirror, and inside the mirror there's a beautiful girl.

My youngest got a bit of Christmas decoration stuck up his nose, and we had to take him to the after-hours medical centre. I took a sketch book - and in between trying to wrangle an more and more manic 21 month old I managed to do a get a few very rough ideas down :

The client ( I'm not going to get tired of saying that ! ) said that they liked all of them, but the second one appealed to them more. He wasn't keen on the idea of the glasses on the 'ugly' girl though - which was no problem for me ! Glasses gone. I kinda liked where the face on the third one was going - so I'm going to run with that some more.

My first professional art work !

Very exciting news, loyal readers ( yup - all three of you ) ! I was comissioned last week to do the art for a book cover - for real money no less !

Now - before you LOSE YOUR MIND with excitement for me, just a couple of context details. It is for a short story collection written by the guys at The Dunesteef Podcast - it's not going to be an international bestseller I think ( though it hopefully will do well ! ), and it's not going to be for much money. I don't know exactly how little - but y'know, that's not important.

Here's what IS important. The Dunesteef Podcast guys liked my art enough that they were willing to ask me to do it in a professional sense. I like those guys a lot - and it's really cool to get that kind of affirmation.

Right - so the collection is going to be called 'Pretty Ugly'. Here's the brief I was given :

My idea--our idea--for the art was of an ugly girl (teen?) standing in front of a mirror, and inside the mirror there's a beautiful girl.

Alright.

I can do that.

I'm going to do everything I can to make this the best I can !

Drabblecast Cover #3 - Provisional final

I think it might be done now. I just added a little grass texture to the ground :

Tim to send a copy to the art director and see what he thinks !

Drabblecast Cover #3 - Webs

First attempt at doing the webs properly :

I think it's almost done now.

Drabblecast Cover #3 - Boy detail, spider shadow, test web

 Some more small developments :

I've been trying to work out how I was going to do the spider webs which are supposed to be covering the trees. I finally thought that I could do a bunch of stands with a white / grey coloured brush, and then go over the web areas with a white brush with the layer opacity set low ( 15-20% ). I could them have a number of other layers following the same format to get a sense of web density. I had a go at a very rough test to see what it looked like : 

Not bad ! I figure I'll get the web strands done with vectors - it'll look tidier !

Drabblecast Cover #3 - Abdomen patterns, thorax shading, girl detail

Nap time for Lorenzo again - so some time to work on the cover project :

The new is reasonably subtle - but it's making a difference. The next big challenge will be figuring out how to make large webs between the trees.

Drabblecast Cover #3 - Head / mandibles shade and highlights - more abdomen markings

Got some more done after Lorenzo went to sleep :

Time for a break !

Drabblecast Cover #3 - Highlings / shading on legs & eyes

Had a little time to work on this while Lorenzo was having a nap :

The head, thorax and abdomen need more attention now.

Drabblecast Cover #3 - First colour application

So - I woke up at 2am this morning for no good reason and couldn't get back to sleep. At half three I decided that if I was going to be awake I might as well do something constructive. I've added base colour for all the areas of the image ( I think ), and there is some initial shading of the abdomen :

Not sure about the green colour for the abdomen markings - I might see how they look in a red / orange hue.

Almost 5am now - I don't think I'll be heading back to sleep now. Might be time to get a walk in or something.

Drabblecast Cover #3 - Children

Lorenzo having a nap - which allowed me to add in the two children. I found a picture on line that looked good and used them as a sketch base :

Might be time to start colouring this now !

Drabblecast Cover #3 - Trees and hills

Had a little time last night, and the kids are with their visiting grandparents, so I've had some time to do a little more :

Drabblecast Cover #3 - More legs, some abdomen markings

Able to spend a little more time after the kids were asleep :

Also have the sketch layer disabled here.

Drabblecast Cover #3 - Thorax and half the legs

Some more vectoring done :

Drabblecast Cover #3 - sketch and starting vectors

Happy new year to you all ! Hope 2013 has started well for you.

I have had some time to make some progress on the current cover work. I managed to get a rough sketch with Photoshop, and have now started vectoring out the lines I need :

The drawing is in that awkward beginning stage where I'm worried it looks terrible and won't get any better. It always improves at least a bit ! I just have to work though it.

More as it happens.

New Cover art project - Drabblecast #3

I got an e-mail on Friday from the art director of the Drabblecast asking if I'd like to do another piece of cover art for them. I am TOTALLY on board for that !

The episode is another Trifecta episode ( number 23 in fact ), which has three stories by different authors on a common theme. I was initially drawn to doing something based on a story about moths, but then I read the last story - in which giant alien spiders play a central role.

Here's the starting sketch :

Early days - but I'm feeling good about this one !

Dunesteef Cover Art - 'Linger' - Finished ( I think )

... and it's done. At least provisionally. I might tweek the text a little more, but I'm fairly happy with it.

Dunesteef Cover Art - 'Linger' - More colour

Had some time today to work on the cover art. Mostly I've been adding colour to the 'man' :

I've been trying to overlay a image of a skull over the face of the guy ( it makes sense in the context of the story ) with limited success. I'll carry on working on that.

Dunesteef Cover Art - 'Linger'

I'm currently producing a piece of audio fiction for the Dunesteef podcast. It only just occured to me that part of that production would be sourcing some cover art for it. I considered asking a friend of mine to have a try at it, but in the end I had a decent idea - so I've decided to do it myself.

First - I vectored out a bit of a cityscape :

 Next - I coloured it :

Then - I outlined a 'man in a hoodie' pic I found online : 

Then I added it into the city scene, and got rid of the outline / colour behind it with a layer mask : 

 Then - some snowfall :

That's it so far. I still have to colour in the man figure, give him a face ( of sorts ), and add in the title / author text and the podcast logo.

Shouldn't take me too long !

TiK contest - Entry #2 - Final composite

Just finished now :

Not bad - though I think entry #1 was actually a better idea for a t-shirt !

TiK - Contest - KG - colour

I think the outlines are finished now ( or as finished as they're going to get ) and the application of colour has started :

TiK Contest - KG - scales and other details

Been putting in some work on the other entry before hitting the sack this week. It's getting there now :

Only got a couple of days left though !

TiK Contest - Entry 2

I had another idea for The Indoor Kids contest - a much simpler one. I'll still try and finish the Angry Birds image - but I have this one almost done now.

Can you guess the video game it's from ? I'm guessing if you've played it you'll recognize those eyes in a second !

TiK Contest - Ghidorah - 3 heads

Got the outlines mostly done for the three heads 

TiK Contest - Ghidorah - Wings / 1 & 1/2 heads

Got this done while Lorenzo was having a nap :

TiK Contest - Phase 2 - King Ghidorah - Sketch

Even though I have Pigzilla to be getting on with, I wanted to make a start on the 'Angry Ghidorah' side of things. Here's a slightly cleaned up sketch :

TiK Contest - Pigzilla - Outline and base colour

Had some time to mess around with the Pigzilla drawing today :

Not bad. It'll be better with some shading.

The Indoor Kids - Project 2 - Stage 1 - Pigzilla

Suddenly I seem to have a lot of creative projects online.I have volunteered to do quite a lot for the Dunesteef guys ( because they're great ) - the biggest of which is producing a audio story for them. That should be challenging and fun. I have also asked to do two more pieces of cover art - and I'll probably end up doing some cover art for my production too. 

But, in typical fashion, The Indoor Kids podcast is running another competition to do a video game themed piece of art suitable for a t-shirt, iPhone case or sticker - and I just can;t resist that ! 

So I'm going to throw together something as quickly as I can for that - and seeing as Angelo is staying with my folks for a couple of days, this is the perfect place to start. 

I did a bit of brainstorming / mind-mapping to begin ( in true teacher fashion ) and I had a few good ideas ( I was tempted to do something based on Frogger, Smash TV, Asteroids and Boulderdash ), but finally settled on doing something based on Angry Birds. 

They suggested doing something which wasn't EXACTLY things from the game - but based on ( so they couldn't get stung for copyright infringement ). 

The idea that hit me was to do a Godzilla battle, with a more pig like Godzilla and a Angry Bird looking Rodan. But THEN, while I was doing research into Rodan, I discovered the great Godzilla enemy Ghidorah, this triple headed dragon thing - and now I'm doing an Angry Bird version of that. 

First stage is to vector out my initial Pigzilla sketch :

So far I have this :

It's a start !

Drawing for Angelo - Scary Coconut Tree

Angelo is currently OBSESSED with the 'scary coconut tree'. What's that ? It's from this interactive touchscreen game at the museum 'Survival'. You play this alien coming to earth who has to choose four different alien species to take with you to your new home - some choices are good for you ( but mess up the environment ) and some are bad for you ( for some reason you can't eat them when they're here ) . The 'Croakernut' tree is a bad one - it's too cold in NZ for it to survive, and it turns blue and dies.

Angelo has been talking about the 'scary coconut tree' for two days solid now. He's genuinely concerned for it - and thinks it's both scary and cute. The 'croakernuts' have faces which are a little creepy. I've told him that the scary coconut tree got taken home and that it's warm again now - and he seemed very happy that that was the case.

Anyway - I thought I'd try and draw a scary coconut tree for him.

From what I could remember I did an initial sketch :

The real Croakernut tree has more and bigger fronds - but I thought that was good enough. I showed Angelo and he was SO excited by it. He kept wanting to see it in the sketch book. When I told him I was making it better on the computer - he instantly wanted to see that too. 

Not quite finished yet - but it's well on the way. I'll print him out a copy or two when it's done - he might like colouring them in. 

The really cool thing was that Angelo was quite keen to draw a scary coconut tree himself. He was a little concerned that he couldn't do one, but he gave it a try in the end which was neat. I'll try and get a scan of that later ( not enough time this morning ! ). 

Monster - 2 - base colour and some shading.

I have a new computer rig. After some teething troubles - I now have my Wacom tablet fully functional, and I have Photoshop CS6 extended running. It's a step up from the CS2 software I was using !

I've had a bit of a play - but most of the new features are lost on me right now.

I've been doing a bit more of that monster drawing. There's the latest stage :

I'm calling it 'Hillary' at the moment. Some of you might get that little joke - but not too many.

More as it happens ! I'm loving the new tech !

Swimming Sports 2012 - Drawing

Swimming sports was more bearable this year. Having a real job ( time-keeping ) for awhile helped. Still - I was able to sketch away for awhile and produced this :

Not bad. I've been getting down about my drawing recently - too much time spent seeing amazingly great things on DeviantArt and thinking 'I can NEVER be as good as these guys...'. But I'm happy with this. There's hope yet. :-)