More Tentacles.

So, I pretty much spent my entire Sunday afternoon drawing tentacles, sounds kind of bad, but I feel I learned quite a lot. About drawing tentacles. These have just been b&w'd for clarity maybe I'll colour them in.

I am pretty pleased, I promise I will move on to the rest of the beast, eventually.

Kraken.

So I recently bought ImagineFX Comic Artist magazine, and it has a great tutorial in it for drawing a huge sea monster and the surrounding water.

Although I didn't follow all the steps as I didn't have much time to, I thought I would have a go at a sketch or two. I drew it in one of six boxes as I wanted to make several attempts at it. This is the first.

This is the sheet with all the different sketches, drawn on super cheap printer paper, with Rotring mechanichal pencils and Staedtler Fine Liners.

This is the final "retro" sheet with used textured pulp paper and using Jack Kirby's colour palette as I wanted it to look more "Golden Era" comic. I really like the look and feel of it, despite the art not being so great. I would really like to repeat the entire process again and spend a lot more time on it, especially focusing on the the water splashing.

Trees, yup trees.

So I have been pretty pleased with my character drawings, steadily improving and I think I have certainly developed a style for them. That said I really feel that my backgrounds could really do with improving so I have decided to heavily focus on backgrounds, starting with trees.

Below is the first tree I drew, and yes it is heavily influenced by Skottie Young's amazing X-Men cover as I do believe it really helps you explore a subject when you are enjoying what you're looking at and his work has always inspired me to pick up a pencil.

It is the first one I drew but the second one I coloured, I think the shading on the branches under the foliage is a lot better on this one.

This is the second tree I drew but the first one I coloured, based on the elements for the first. I think it is a more rounded tree. I built it on two layers of paper; tree and leaves, colouring it in photoshop.

It has been great fun so far, and I thing I will now move on to looking at some other style trees I like from of my favourite artists.

Added later.

So I decided to have a look at "Adventure Time" trees, which I also love. They are very strange and like most things in that cartoon very suggestive. I haven't added the leaves that will come later if I want to. I like them and even though I used the exact same colours, they have come out completely different. There are some rocks too. Things are getting exciting.

Sketchbook Pro for iPad

Just a quick post to show of the first quick sketch I have done with the a Sketchbook Pro iPad App, it is good, really good, especially for a mobile app. 

The only thing I couldn't find was a colour picker? You know to select a colour you have already used. Anyway this is a brilliant app, and will definitely be using this a lot more.

Sketchbook Pro 6

So I have managed to pick up Sketchbook Pro 6 really cheap £30 in fact an absolute bargain, with the full Copic Marker set built in. I wanted after seeing a few youtube videos of some really good artists using it. Mostly for colouring and for doing rough sketches to load into Adobe Illustrator.

First Sketch.

 It has taken me a little while to get used to the "order" and location of of the tools, so many different types of brushes I have only really begun to get a grip, there is lots to learn but it is a really nice package. One of the only flaws is that is goes all blurry or "anti-aliases" when you zoom in.

The first sketch is a bit rough and ready some of the bucket fills didn't work out to great, but the second one came out better.

Second Sketch.

Overall I am really pleased. I think I will draw the rough sketches in Sketchbook Pro, do line work in Illustrator and colour it in Sketchbook.

(Added later)

So here is a hand drawn, digitally lined in Illustrator and coloured in Sketchbook Pro, I think it's quite nice.

5 Minute Studies of Illustrators (Part 1)

First up is a Hedgehog by Marion Lindsay in Elizabeth Baguley's "Ready Steady Ghost". In the original the scene take place ay night so it is all in shades of blue, but I mostly like it as the hedgehog had no real defined lines, just spikes. I also really liked the wiry bark on the trees. So here is my version.

Next up is the boy and penguin from Oliver Jeffers' "Up and Down". I really really love the style of artwork I hate drawing feet and hands as the often come out wrong so Il liked this simplistic approach to it, or avoiding it if you like. Here is my version of the cover.

Both images took about 5 minutes to make and both books are highly recommended so be sure to check them out. I checked out quite a few books from the library so I am sure I will do some more studies.

Compilation of Monsters

So as you may have noticed I have stopped drawing bots and moved over to "monsters" albeit fluffy and cute-ish monsters.

Slowly building up a library of them much in the same way I did with the robots.

Making variations on a theme,

 

generally just having fun with the idea of little creatures.

 Making both "furry" and "reptilian-style" monsters.

Until I had a nice "family" of creatures.

The originals were hand drawn and inked, then scanned, digitally inked, and coloured. Eventually they will be texture coloured like I have done in the previous blog post to get them the right colours, but for now I am happy.