What's this? Why it's TJ and his good friend Haku, who hails from another dimension! This is just a bit of Pseudo fan-art I did featuring TJ and Deviantart friend's character Haku. At this point, I was really starting to get conceptual with the illustrations I made and made an active effort to place what I drew in some kind of context. Don't ask me why TJ has his face painted like that, but what I do know is that the design he has also doubles as a clue to one of the many aspects of the FuZioN U. Yes, that aspect does involve cute little monsters.
And speaking of Fan art:
Yeah! I did some Batman fan art. Mainly because... Well, why not? I hadn't ever really drawn Batman before but I quickly came to some understanding of why so many other people had. Weezy is awesome to draw!
Yeah, It wasn't long before I was on to the next one. Aside from the "weird-factor" of a single billionaire spending all his time with a thirteen-year-old, there was always something very cute about The Batman and Robin dynamic, especially when it came to Bruce and Dick. And the Batman Universe in general (an aspect which, as much as Nolan and other fanboys may vehemently deny, is intrinsic to the character). Anyway, I tried to bear that in mind when pencilling these images and for the most part, I think they reflect that.
This next piece of fan art (which, in case you hadn't already guessed, is the theme for my latest entry) was just a sketch I had lying around that I decided to colour one afternoon (or was it evening?). Very few can match the badassery that this man exudes. I hope I did him justice.
And one last one before I go. I know I JUST said that the theme was fan art, but I think I'll make an exception for this piece (think it ties up with the emphasis on context thing I was talking about earlier, anyway). I had a little fun with creating a faux-pulp comic cover for a a random picture of a few characters I had lying around (hence: "Randomites". How do I come up with this stuff?!) Not only was this a challenge to push my drawing style (you may not be able to tell, but there's a lot of "perspective-y" stuff I tried out), but it also posed compositional and palette challenges (design lingo out the window!) that got me into expanding the scope of my images beyond just character design.
If there's an overarching theme to this blog post (apart from fan art), it would be growth. I suppose you could say the same for my entire blog, but I just feel that this selection of images particularly represent turning points for me as an artist, which line up quite nicely with where I am right now. Sometimes, as you improve, what follows your sense of accomplishment, is an overwhelming feeling of self-doubt and it almost starts to feel as if you get worse. As you move on to a higher tier of expertise and clarity, the expectations you have for yourself move doubly so. I have reached so many lows this year that I sometimes think giving up might be the wise thing to do. There's nothing worse than being average among excellence, if that makes any sense. But then occasionally, one stumbles onto a development- be it a better understanding of anatomy, or a clever design, or a solution to a plot hole, or whatever- that reinvigorates that impetus to the point that it near consumes you, and letting go essentially means death...
Or something like that.
