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EmmaMaree.com

Scottish Writer of Fantasy & Sci-Fi

photoshop

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…

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.