New Commission! Ghia Mercado draws Tyler
A few months back, I funded the Get Ghia to Oakland campaign to help a young artist whose work I admire get to Oakland to start working in her dream job.
As a reward, Ghia offered to do digital sketches for her supporters, and I chipped it for a sketch of Tyler from Divide the Sky (yep, Rebel Against Heaven has had a title change).
It's a super cool, action-packed sketch, and I'm happy to share it here.
I absolutely love the details -- the pose, the feathers around the edges, the crosshatching and the sketchy construction lines you can see behind it.
I was experimenting when I started getting commissioned art for this story, and I wasn't quite sure if it would be as much fun as it seemed it my head... it has! I've really been loving seeing how every artist does their own spin on the character while keeping true to the reference images I provide.
Sketchbook: Tyler — Influence
I planned to upload some scans from my sketchbook last month, but got sidetracked. Here we go!
A sketch of Tyler holding some mysterious object, and then generally looking angry.
Commissioned Art by Fishiebug
I commissioned artist Fishiebug to do a bust painting of Tyler from REBEL AGAINST HEAVEN, and oh man did she deliver some awesome work:
It is so good. So very very good, and stunningly true to the reference images I gave her. I'm hoping to commission some more work from her on the future, but before I can do that I'll need some half-decent references from my other characters.
Fishiebug also recorded an hour of working on this piece, which is super useful for aspiring artists to pick up new skills. I've already found it very helpfull!
Using this as a desktop background to keep me motivated through these revisions!
Revisions are going pretty well today. My system wasn't working but I sorted it out, and now instead of overwhelming myself I can take it all one thing at a time.
Art: Show Your Colours
Tonight wasn't supposed to be an art night, but I was in that kind of mood. On a whim, I took a sketch that turned out quite nicely...
And I polished it up a bit:
This is Tyler from REBEL AGAINST HEAVEN. Wings are from the Slater Museum, which is a mind-blowing reference that I wish I'd had much earlier. Might do a few portrait shots like this for all the REBEL main characters, as an exercise/reference. This image is an updated version of this older reference which was thrown together in May.
I have a question for you, blog friends: does it bother you when two book characters have similar-ish names? I'm wondering if Tyler and Toni are too similar and need changing...
Art: Simplification
I tried to watch Supernatural tonight, but it was Season 1's episode "Bugs" and it made my skin crawl so much I had to disappear onto the computer and distract myself with some messing around on an old sketch.
My last attempt at this picture had been bugging me a little because I overcomplicated the wing design. Adding grey keeps it truer to the bird design it's based on (Northern Mockingbird), but it loses a lot of the simplicity I liked about my other digital illustrations. So I decided to strip it down and bring it back to black and white.
The brush settings I've been using (Alias Sketchbook Pro's ink brush) have been giving me 'blobbier' lines than I like. I'm going to have to go hunting for a different brush and hopefully my next piece will have much cleaner, sharper lines.
But for now, I'm gonna go back to watching Sam and Dean and a bunch of creepy crawlies.
Art: Worth Fighting For (Rebel Against Heaven)
Spent a sunny Saturday doing some digital illustration.
Comments and Blethering: I've been trying to work out a simplified version of Tyler's Northern Mockingbird wing design (a more detailed rough is on the art page), think I might have cracked it here. This started out with the intention to show his balled-up fists, then meandered into trying some Andrew Loomis-style anatomy skeletons because I've been reading through his reference books, before turning into basically a big picture of wings and smugface Ty. Materials used: My beat-up old Wacom tablet, Alias Sketchbook Pro with the medium ink brush.
The rough base sketch.
And of course, in my typical style, this has all been a complex way of procrastinating from editing this gentleman's story. So I suppose I should get back to that.
Hailing from the wet and windy Scottish Highlands, Emma is an avid reader and writer of YA novels. She works in IT and drinks too much tea.
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