Titania and Oberon - Vectors 4

As you might expect - more development of the outlining :

I'm not altogether happy with the state of Titania's hands.

Hands are REALLY hard to draw.

In case you didn't know.

Titania and Oberon - Vectors 3

And Titania makes an appearance :

I had to redo her arms - the first time they were way too thick. Then I had to re-size the bracelets. It's nice to start seeing the balance in the piece now though.

Titania and Oberon - Vectors 2

More progress :

It was fun doing the detail on the breastplate / bracers.

Titania and Oberon - Vectors 1

Able to spend some time today drawing the 'real' outlines for the T&O art :

I reworked the face and the ear - I think they look better now. The hands are going to be a pain.

New Project - Titania and Oberon - Sketch 2

Developing the potential detail some :

I was wondering what to do to balance up the heads of the two. With the horns Oberon makes things a little lopsided. It just occurred to me now what if I lengthen the crown 'spikes' for Titania I might get the desired balance. Worth a try. 
The faces aren't great - but I'll work on that !

New Project - Titania and Oberon - Sketch 1

Ooookay - so I'm dragging the chain on this one, but I've got to produce a piece of art based on the production we're doing at  school - which is a hack of "a Midsummer Night's Dream'. I decided to do something with Titania and Oberon. Here's the first official sketch :

Not much to look at now. More on development will be incoming !

Sketch-a-week #11 - Illithid

Another classic D&D monster - the illithid ( or mind-flayer ) :

The legs aren't quite right - but I really like where the rest of this was going.

I think I might do some more D&D stuff. Got a hankering to do some of the demon princes. Orcus is top of the list !

Sketch-a-week #10 - Beholder

Here's the second of three sketches I did in one night. I'm really pleased with how this one went :

The AD&D 1st ed. Monster Manual ( my mum got me one while we were in California when I was 11 - I didn't have the faintest idea how to play AD&D - but I LOVED all the monster pictures ) describes the beholder as 'hateful, aggressive and avaricious. They will usually attack immediately'.
I never had a character run into one - thankfully ! They're insanely dangerous. Each of those eye-stalks can produce a spell like effect - the worst three effects being flesh to stone, death ray and disintegrate.

Like I said - insanely dangerous.

One of the best monsters ever !

Sketch-a-week #9 - Dynamic Pose

I managed to get a few drawings done while at my parents' place last night. I'm very pleased with how all three went - and it gets me caught up a bit with my quota !

Here's the first :

It's not perfect - but I REALLY like the pose I managed to do here - with NO reference to other photos or images - all from my mind baby !

Sketch-a-week #7 - A sign of things to come

The production we're doing at work this year is called 'We Found Love' - it's a reworking on Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' ( probably my favourite comedy by Shakespeare, though I'm very fond of 'Much Ado About Nothing' as well ), which I was also on the writing team for ( from memory I rewrote a lot of Act 4 and some other bits and pieces ). One of the students had a great idea - that we get a collection of art that was student abd teacher created which illustrated something about the play we liked - or something like that. I was really keen on taking apart right away. I sketched out this loose plan :

Very rough at present - but there are the seeds of something special there.

More as it happens.

'Pretty Ugly' - I think it's done.

I've done what I think are the final touch-ups ( at least for now ) and I think it's done :

I'm pretty happy with it. I hope the clients are too. We'll see !

And because I can't leave well enough alone - I had to experiment with potential title and by-line text. 

I had a lot of fun doing this - and continued to learn arcane secrets of Photoshop. I'm almost a little sad that it's done - but not really ! Happy happy happy ! And I've got at least a couple of other projects that I need to get moving on - one of them being a return to REAL painting ( like, with a brush and REAL paint, on a canvas even ! ). 

Thanks for the opportunity Big and Rish ! 

'Pretty Ugly' - Even more small improvements !

Okay okay - I KNOW it doesn't like I've done anything - but there's about an hour of work here :

- More skin shade on the Plain Girl. Particularly in the eyebrow region.
- Added a 'worry line' to the mouth of the Plain Girl.
- Skin shade on the 'Johnny Red' poster.
- Shade and highlights to the eyes of the girl and the reflection.
- More eyeshadow to the Sexy Reflection, and refinement of what was there ( opacity levels, small adjustments to the shapes ).

Discovered the 'blur' tool too. Gosh - why didn't I find this earlier ? Beats using the Gaussian blur filter so much !

I think now I just have to do some shading on the desk 'stuff', and a bit more development of the Sexy Reflection's skin colour - and it'll be done.

Yay ! I'm pretty pleased with how it's looking now. I hope the clients like it as well !

'Pretty Ugly' - More small improvements

Got to spend some time on the art this evening :

Most of the things are quite small / subtle ( shade in the desk, copied highlight / shade layers from the posters to the mirror reflection, more shade / highlights here and there in the posters, slight gradient shift in the wall colour ).
It's almost done I think. A little more work on the faces of the girls, a little more shading - and it'll be finished.

'Pretty Ugly' - Small improvements

I have to go and bake something soon - but I've done some small improvements here and there :

- Skin shade on Neon Shuriken.
- Changed text colour on Johnny Red.
- Halftone effect on Johnny Red text.
- Shade on bed.
- More eye shadow on the Sexy Reflection.

Sketch-a-week #6

Attack dog :

Not bad.

'Pretty Ugly' - More shading and stuff

It's getting to that exciting stage where things are actually starting to come together and look pretty good. Today I had some time while Lorenzo was asleep and out with Viva and got this done :

Shading and layer effects on the posters to a greater or lesser degree ( Neon Shuriken got the most, Johnny Red the least ), changed the colour of the guitar ( red was too jarring and pulled focus ) and more shading / highlights on the Sexy Reflection.

'Pretty Ugly' - Freckle combo / Skin shading / Hair shade and detail

It's late - and I've not got time to banter much. I've been hard at work on this tonight ( even though it won't look much like I have ) :

The Plain Girl's hair is looking pretty good now - and I've merged the two collections of 'freckles' I had - and it looks pretty good. There's some subtle shading in the skin and shirt too. The skin of the Sexy Reflection is coming along - but it's not really to my liking so far.

'Pretty Ugly' - Freckles Mk 2

Okay - so I didn't like the way the first set of freckles was looking. It was a good first attempt - but it wasn't good enough. Here's the second attempt :

These ones look a good deal better. There are five layers of freckles there - with the tones getting steadily darker.

'Pretty Ugly' - Freckles and some skin shade

DISCLAIMER : I think freckles are quite attractive. Some people find the freckles / red hair combo disturbing though, so :

There's also some development of the skin of the Sexy Reflection. I need to add freckles to the arms now.

'Pretty Ugly' - Base colour complete !

All the base colour is in :

Onto shade and highlights.