Art

22 October, 2012

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…

21 October, 2012

Art and a Writing Update

I’ve been trying out the free Paint Tool SAI over the weekend, a fun and powerful little package with a wealth of brush options. I haven’t used all the features to their full potential yet, but I’ve been having fun.

Just finished the REBEL AGAINST HEAVEN image on the left, a shot of Tyler flying. This was just a messing around doodle to try out the brushes on wings, and it was fun to do. I can’t get his face right, though — I tried about five different expressions before calling it a night. So right now the face looks annoyingly lifeless.

I’ll come back and fix it another day, I think, and I’ll probably work on the anatomy while I’m at it.

(The background is a Deviantart stock image.)

———

Work on the GIANT ROBOTS WIP is going well, though I’m at the sticky middle now (30k words). I’ve also been asked to do a revision on REBEL AGAINST HEAVEN, which I’ll be tackling shortly once I’ve got a handle on all the changes ahead. And did I mention the day job’s gotten a lot busier, on top of all of this?

The blog might go quiet for a little bit during the next month or two while I get my head down and get things done, but I’ll still be hanging around on Twitter.

Good luck to all the blog friends who’re gearing up for NaNoWriMo. I won’t be taking part, but I’ll be working away alongside you!

26 August, 2012

Art: Short-Haired Girls and Long-Haired Boys

It’s a long weekend, and with Rebel Against Heaven out in submission I’m in that nice easy-going stage of messing around with first drafts of stories, watching TV and stretching my art muscles a bit more. Fun times!

Here’s Anna, the main character from the ‘Girls Who Fix Giant Robots’ story-in-progress. This is a work-in-progress rather than a finished piece, but I’m having trouble getting it ‘right’ so I’m setting it free into the Internet wilds for now.

And a ‘chibi’ (simplified) Tyler in one of his alternative outfits.

Also from the Rebel Against Heaven universe, one of the Carrion Children: young kids given warped, winged bodies in Purgatory. Very few people seem to know why anyone so young would end up in Purgatory…

3 August, 2012

Art: Gerard Way

A digital painting practice image of Gerard Way in his “Danger Days” album red hair, using the photo reference below as a guideline.

This year, I’d quietly resolved to try and learn digital painting. But try as I might, I couldn’t work out how to do hair — I was trying to avoid using the smudge tool, which I’ve heard called ‘cheating’ and a dangerous technique to get in to. Then I watched this tutorial for drawing hair. Now life is beautiful and wonderful and also good.

And screw it. Using the smudge tool for hair is easy, works well, and it’s freakin’ fun. I still avoid using smudge for my other shading, but oh man am I pleased I started using it on hair.

Time taken is roughly two hours. I also switched from Sketchbook Pro to Photoshop for this one, because I think I’m finally comfortable enough with my tablets and the tools to be comfortable with Photoshop.

Oh, and if anyone’s curious why Gerard Way… while some artists pick hot girls, as their go-to ‘nice thing to paint’ I pick effeminate rock stars. I bet nobody is surprised, heh.

11 July, 2012

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.

17 June, 2012

Art: Above It All

Had some free time on my hands again this weekend, so I sketched out a Rebel Against Heaven image I’ve had stuck in my head. It’s still a bit rough around the edges but I had fun with the colours. The cityscape used comes from this blogger.

I’m pleased with how it came out, though I wish I could’ve figured out a way to make the mark on his neck (a noose) more visible. I might come back to this once I work that out.

And now, I’m off to do Father’s Day things!