Better Than Never

"Who's the dude writing blogs with so much emphasis?
Dirty Harry!
Who most liberally makes use of parenthesis?
Dirty Harry!"

Wow. I haven't posted in a mad minute!  So long I felt I needed a little theme song to usher me back in...Truth is, I ran out of cap like a day after I promised the pencil updates!  That's what you get when your eyes are bigger than your stomach... or in this case data bundle, I suppose.

Anyway I got a lot to get through so let's get into it before the analogies get any more painful:

 

I originally intended this guy to be a Spanish swordsman (hence the curly hair and the SWORD), but then that hat happened, and he was from then on dubbed the Creepy Magician. It kinda works, methinks.  Yes, I did another same-picture-but-with-variations thing, except this time I thought the variations could be a little more exploratory than a f*king line! Don't get me wrong, I love the line,but it's time to move on to bigger, better and more colourful things now... Hopefully those magic dust balls (or whatever) didn't completely ruin the picture... I seriouslsy worked hard on them... Sort of...

Next we have the super badass Blue Dude! I don't know what it is, but there's something about red sneakers... Anyway, I tried to give the character a little bit more of a dynamic pose than the previous one because... well because i got bored! But I learned that it doesn't always work as I find it's better to familiarise yourself with a character first before diving into poses. This image marks the first drawing where I was at ease around the gradient tool, so much so that In used it on EVERYTHING! And now I love using gradients! You can't pay me enough to stop using them (Well you probably could, but I think you get what I'm shaying (sic))!  Also, I started playing around with filters a bit. You can't really tell right away, but if you where to look closer you'll notice I used a canvas filter on it, with the intension of adding a little more depth and tightness to the image. Hopefully you can pick up a little of that in there...

And this would be a... zombie... Pirate-clown...?? I dunno! But I do know that it's probably my favourite pic so far.  I find I'm finally settling into a colouring style that I'm comfortable with.  Speaking of colouring, though, is it just me , or is purple quite a difficult colour to compliment.  By that, I mean that there's relatively very little you can do with it.  Sure, there's yellow (complementary colour. subtle difference), and green and orange kinda work sometimes, but overall it feels very restricting to me as everything I end up colouring  with purple as a key colour inevitably ends up reminding me of the Joker or the Green Goblin! Ironically, my frustration  hasn't prevented me from using it so often (perhaps I use it because it's so restricting, instead of in spite of the fact, in an effort to conquer it).

Lastly (No! Say it ain't so!), I have this unremarkable hulk.  Y'know, I really wanted to colour all these characters in chronological order, but due to all sorts of scanner mishaps (I don't care how desperate I get, there's no way I'm paying R5 a scan!), different sketchbooks were sent at different times and so now I just colour the ones I'm in the mood for. Hopefully, there isn't too big a gap in quality between the older and newer sketches. I know I cut a few corners in the beginning as I was settling into a style.  At any rate, about the image: As I said before I've gotten quite comfortable with muh colouring(justifiably so, I hope). And with comfort comes an ease in exploration (at least, that's the case with me).  As a result, a lot of the shadows and cloth folds were added in Photoshop, something I wouldn't have been comfortable with doing a few weeks ago. It's not exactly a gravity-defying leap, but... Progress. Yay.

Anyway, since I originally intended this to be a Christmas special, or whatever (I obviously missed that deadline!), I thought I should  at least attempt to tie some sort of festive message in at the end. So to anyone  who still reads this blog, thank you for sticking with it, I hope ya'll enjoyed it so far 'cause there's plenty more to come (in the near-ish  future) and I hope you had a Merry Christmas... There. That wasn't at all contrived.

Obsessed

I swear I'm not a Survivor fan!  But there's something about that Brenda, I tell you! Or rather there was something bout her, since she got voted out two weeks ago (at least Marty got the boot before her). Not so surprisingly, though, I haven't been nearly as enthusiastic about keeping up with the show since then(and by that I mean I haven't at all been enthusiastic about keeping up with the show since then!)...

However, breaking my Survivor fever did remind me that I was behind on posting all those those Mini Portraits I did of her (and a couple of other cast members) a while back, and so here we are:

At least she went out like the boss she is! No grovelling for this Queen Bee...
Drawing sill don't do her no justice!

This was a quick sketch I did from a still of the lovely Miss Lowe (How is a woman that fine still single??), sporting her trademark lower lip-licking face.  I actually drew this out of my frustration over not  being able to accurately capture her features while keeping her looking cartoony (Yeah I've become quite obsessed with nailing her... Her likeness, that is!), so instead I went in almost the complete opposite direction! Go figure. I tried to keep the colouring as basic as possible to try and bring that cartoony element back in. Maybe I should add a few more "facets" to it just to see where I can take it... Watch this space for more Brenda!

Next we have Naonka:

Never a dull moment with her. From kicking over disabled people ("Screw yo' leg!") to flippin' da bird at Tribal Council, Nay KEEPS IT REAL (and gets her ass voted out)!  I just cracked up so hard at this "Say wha-??" look she pulls so often that I had to do a drawing of her! Ironically, even though I drew this almost thoughtlessly, during the colouring process it became one of the closest examples of the style I've been trying to achieve. Hope the attitude's all there...

And Unfortunately that's all I got for now!  It's not much... but it's December goddamnit! Also, I'm out sketchbooks for now, so the character drawing thing is on hold for a while.  But at  112+ characters drawn, I think I can find a somewhat productive way to fill up all that free time (Clue: It rhymes with Shmotoshop). Now,can somebody point me in the direction of a goddamn scanner THAT WORKS! 

A Certain Romance

Where is the love?? I seem to have been gone for a minute and I've been awfully cold towards my dear blog, but now I'm back.  Evidently.  And I'll have you know that my time hasn't been spent idly. (Is that correct English? I'm not sure! Good thing I'm not getting graded  on this, I suppose!) No, sir.

I have recently committed muhself (finally!) to drawing at least 4 characters a day. I know that doesn't seem like much but lemme tell you: 3 weeks and (84 drawings) later, the demands for consistency (the magic word here) and variations that come with this task start to seem more absurd by the minute!  And these are just pencils I'm talkin'bout! I'v only recently began to factor in Photoshop time! Now I'm not complaining. (who would I even complain to? I brought this on myself!) I'm just painting the whole picture so the irregularity of my posts seem a lot more reasonable... I'd like to think that's a perfectly acceptable thing to do.

So what do I have to present this time (other than mouthful of whining)?  Just these:

     

Well, not just these.  I've still got more! But I'd like to say a few words first. Firstly, I didn't post the same picture twice. If you look closely you'll notice the second one has a distinct white... shadow-line... thing. I couldn't decide if the picture looked better with or without it so... I know it's a very subtle difference. But I guess I'm just indecisive like that. Secondly, I should say that I've started Photoshopping (seriously, WTF?) straight from my pencils, as opposed to to tracing them on Illustrator first.  I'm still planning on using Illustrator for some of my more simplistic stuff but I feel like a lot of the personality and life of the image is lost when you vectorise drawings like these...and it takes way too F*%KING LONG!

Then we have these:

Once again, I have slight variations of the same thing.  This time though I happened to stumble into (onto?) the variation when I accidentally deleted my pencil lines. I thought it looked cool anyway so, why not show both?

Aaaand:

Yeah. the white-line-shadow thing again. And no. This wasn't even remotely inspired by Rihanna's new do!  Now. I should probably mention that none of these characters have anything  to do with anything. They're not for a story and they're not somehow related. Other than through the fact that they were all drawn by me. All this character design merely serves the purpose of honing them grossly underdeveloped skills of mine.

Not to get all sentimental (which is exactly what people who say that sort of thing end up doing! ), but recently, I've come to realise that I've been treating this art thing like far too much of a burden.  It's weird that  these 3 weeks of drawing have let me appreciate the concept of working hard at something and getting better at it because it's something you want to do and not just because some f*king curriculum requires it! I'd almost completely forgotten  how much I love this sh%t!  It's truly an exciting time to be doing what you love. And everyone should get to do that.  After all: If there ain't no romance,  then why bother?

From now on I'll try to post the pictures as I complete them so it's not all at once like this and over long intervals. And maybe, if the internet cap allows  for it (not everyone has an unlimited ADSL line!), I'll post the pencil scans at the end of every week  so the blog doesn't get stale. I gotta keep all 5 of you loyal fans entertained.  As for now : Giggidy! Giggidy! That's all folks!