Dodgy painting

I was feeling lazy and opened photoshop... not a good combination for me i've found, because i end up doing *something* but it's not inspired or fresh or anything.

anyway, listened to a song saying "hiding inside the horrible weather" and found a photo of rain. Painted this just using colors from the image which i like in principle, again, not necessarily good here but ok.
If i were doing it again, i would do a fun illustration for it because the one here is a little depressing in its look and just 'eh' overall.

nevertheless, here it is because that's what this blog is for :)

Next time : do something that isn't just a sketch... refine something to a point where i need to claim that it's a finished thing. It's too easy to hide behind the 'sketch' tag to avoid doing any real work!

Illustration

I was doing some sketchies and developed this one a bit more. I was initially thinking of a nice streamlined, smooth kind of illustration but couldn't be bothered being disciplined so just threw lines wherever! Tried to be anatomically decent though, and i think it's not too bad (for me). The poses were a bit tricky on purpose, i am pleased to have gotten the left one semi-right. I was going to make him wet (since he's climbing out of water maybe?) but couldn't really work out how.

I like the kindof sun-bleached look with mostly white. Hoipefully gives an impression of a hot, bright day.

EDIT: Oops! forgot to do the shadows on the ground! I had it in mind to do all throughout and then got interrupted right near the end and left them. will go back into that if i can be bothered later :)

CD cover

There was a cool challenge on www.typophile.com a while ago which i just saw yesterday... basically, design a cover for a fictitious band but with some big restrictions:
1. the name of the band is the first article that comes up on wikipedia under random.
2. the album title is the last 4 words of a page of quotes
3. the main imagery used is the third image in flickr's "interesting photos"

so it's good because you're forced to work with the restrictions and make the best you can. Some of the entries people gave were really great!

I had a go today, and though i tried a few refreshes to get an image that was CC (so i could use it without having to seek permission) and big resolution, i gave up after a few tries and just used one that came up with high-res but was copyright. Since i'm not using this design for ANYTHING apart from my own exploration I don't feel too concerned about that, but i do try to treat other people's contributions the same way i'd like people to respect stuff that I worked hard at and put online.

So here's the cover I came up with, after a lot of cropping and grading of the photo. Not anything too detailed, just a quick little fun exercise. I reckon i'll do more similar little projects with some restrictions to stretch me... could involve anything!

A bit of coloring

I felt like doing some coloring so i grabbed one of my recent sketchbook scans and played around briefly with some texture and making a feral Paris-style girl, then a clay/porcelain style skintones a bit. But i got bored and didn't really refine any of them.

T-shirt design

I just finished up with a T-shirt design for Threadless. The contest theme which I entered was "big ideas" and i was playing with a few concepts when I thought of the illustration Devie did for uni last year... it fit really well and so I emailed her to ask if i could basically steal the idea and just make new art for it. I didn't hear back from her so I've done it anyway and if I win I'll just chuck her a pile of hush money or something :P

Should be approved for voting soon, so check it out here. I also had another idea but I won't have time to do it because the theme contest finishes tonight. ah well.

Sketchbook

More sketchbooking. For some reason I've managed for the moment to get a bit of momentum going with drawing... it's not as if this stuff is suddenly amazing (though I am improving which is what matters) but it seems that I have more motivation to draw regularly... and I'm quite enjoying it :)



Trying to do a few different approaches/styles for a face... I usually start with the eyes but I'm not sure that's the best for me. Sometimes i do the general head shape which can work but sometimes i end up having to squish features into a misshaped head (particularly when I'm trying to achieve a likeness). This is a problem with forgetting to focus on the solid shapes rather than just eyeballing and working from what i think. Anyway, i want to get into exaggeration and different stylising/simplification more.
And efficiency with lines. My pencil stuff turns out better but as I improve I hope to be able to do more confident, accurate strokes to describe things simply.


The pink is a scan of the diagram from Anatomy for the Artist, the grey is my drawing... not too far off :) (well, it's a bit off, part of it is just the way i rotated/positioned the pink incorrectly but there are some bits i need to work on). I'll keep doing this exercise occasionally to remind me of the proportions, where things meet/line up. Theres one that has muscle and skeleton which would be a good one to do.

More Sketchbook

Some more images.
Don't know how often I will update... it doesn't take that long but it's just a bit of a hassle :P Now I understand why others don't, particularly when they are doing a LOT of stuff (i'm looking at you Adrian).

Sketchbook stuff

I've started my sketchbook and have been doing a mix of studying stuff (i.e anatomy, techniques) and experimenting a bit, trying to do stuff in different ways and stop getting stuck in one mode of thinking. At the moment it's pretty much all copying from books or images and trying to understand what is going on, learning as i do it. It takes quite a while for me to sink this stuff in but i think it does work longterm, i guess it just requires lots of repetition and focus when i'm doing it.

i won't comment on each bit, it's just various things.