Demon on a Rock

Well, I got bored the other night and decided to have some fun with my Wacom tablet and this was the result. A lot of it is based heavily on options available for characters in the City of Heroes game. Like many of my drawings, this idea (the one of a demon type character standing on a rock with flames behind him) has been running through my head just waiting for me to draw or paint it.

This piece took me about two hours to complete. I spent about 30 minutes on the actual sketch and then about an hour and a hlaf painting it. I was not trying for perfection with this, but rather I was trying to gague what I was able to do in a limited amount of time. This had it's roots in my 30 minute sketches, but trying to take it up a notch. I wanted to work fast, have fun, and get a decent, semi completed look to it. I think it was successful on all accounts and I am very happy with the results.

I did not use any referrences for this, but rather tried to just make it up as I went along.

PhotoShop CS2 and a Wacom tablet.

30 Minute Quick Sketches

In an attempt to try and work on my figure structure and gesture drawing I decided to try a new approach. This is what I call the "30 Minute Quick Sketch". The five drawings above were all drawn and colored in about 30 minutes.

My goal with this exercide was to visualize a pose for thses characters and then draw it quickly and with very little care for fine detail or extras. I was specifically looking for dynamic poses that worked well with the individual character. I felt that this would help me visualize the pose and be better able to draw it.

So far I have really like the results. I have made some glaring errors in some of the anatomy, but overall I feel that it helping me to better understand the character's structure. As I get time, here and there, I figure that I will continue to do these. They are fun for me, and it seems that people always like to get free drawings of their characters.

All the characters above are from the game City of Heroes, and so I do not own any rights to them. All rights belong their respective owners. All the drawings were done using Adobe PhotoShop CS2 and a Wacom Intuos3 Tablet.

Tundara - Art Trade

I did an art trade with a person on the City of Heroes forums. I offered to draw a picture of their character and they offered to write a short story about one of mine. Anyway, the image above was my half of the art trade. This is her character, Tundara.

This was done entierly in Adobe Illustrator CS2. It was drawn with only a mouse. I have trouble using Illustrator and a tablet. My goal here was to create an image that had no gradiants but still had a sort of cell shaded look. I am actually very happy with this piece.

Self Portrait - School Project

Well, school is back in and I have decided to take a Digital Painting class. I felt that this would help me round out my abilities and help me improve in some areas I need help in. As the first project we were asked to do a self portrait. Part of the assignment was to somehow mix our image with something that we really like, enjoy, or that makes us, us. I chose the beach as my subject, since I love the beach, and tried to add my face into the clouds.

I think the attempt so far works pretty well. I still want to make some changes based on feedback received from my teacher, and so this piece is still a work in progress.

So far I have spent around 8 hours working on it. It was done using PhotoShop CS2 and a Wacom Tablet. The reference photo was taken by myself using a Olympus Digital camera, but there was no tracing of the photo. I only used the photo as a referrence and painted the image while looking at it.

I have also been working on some other stuff that I may be posting pretty soon. I have a digital painting that I am working on (not school related) that is based off a story that a person wrote for me. As I get closer to completing it I will post it. I have also been drawing people's characetrs from the game City of Heroes because it is good practice for my figure structure class. One of my new ideas to help me get better is what I call a 30 minute sketch. I will post more on this later, with images that I have done.

So, even though I have not been posting much recently I have been busy with projects, probably not as many as I would like, but I keep letting other stuff get in the way...