We In There

Hey, it feels like its been a while since I last posted. Maybe not really as long as I think but it feels like it, still been working on random art pieces trying to find something that's right. Lately been helping out www.cantnerfskill.com a gaming t-shirt site that just launched. Trying to bring dope ass shirts to dope ass people.

I'm trying my hand at the character of the week over at conceptart.org. First time I've ever entered so I'm somewhat nervous about it but still having a blast with it. The theme of this week is to create a super hero and his alter ego. For some reason djinn's have been on my mind, so the character I'm creating is sort of on the 'SHAZAM' side of super heroes. A regular kid who finds an ancient relic (Lamp) that when he activates it (Rubs lol) bestows the power of the djinn on him. Still a work in progress but I'm having a lot of fun with it.

Skullgirls

This weekend I've been bouncing around to various pieces here and there. Sunday morning I wanted to do a portrait of someone, I thought it was going to be a dota 2 piece of someone's head, turned out that when I started drawing it was going to be Fillia from Skullgirls.

This was a very tough piece for me because I haven't ever made a female before outside of a life drawing class, and even those weren't very good. I've always have trouble with females maybe due to lack of experience (well definitely that reason) as well as what the 'trick' is to drawing them. I'm pretty proud with how this turned out. I didn't want to spend a million years on it because I figure if I try and make it perfect I'll never finish it. I need to finish this, be happy with it and then take the lessons that I learn from it and take those to the next piece.

I used an Adam Hughes illustration of catwoman for the pose of the face and help with the color range and values in the face. Hopefully in the future i'll be able to make pieces without having to copy most of the information from someone's else and can use a variety of references and create work that will be mostly all from my own skill. But it was good practice to study and borrow from someone who is amazing at drawing females.

Anyways here is Fillia. I'm happy with it, so far about half the month has gone by in my month of art. I'm not really having any problems with wanting to play games, I just watch videos and draw while I watch them. I really hope I can make it the rest of November without gaming and then move on from there.

And I hope that through this month I can level up my art game and then keep it going from there.

Morning Mallow

This morning I wanted to take a break from the voodoo guy and draw one of my all time favorite characters mallow. I've loved him ever since I first played Super mario RPG back in the day. Also when I looked there weren't very many good fan art pictures of him, and I needed to fix that. I want to do a better illustration of him, but this is my interpretation of him.

Geno is overrated.

Voodoo a doo doo. . . . Render

So I've been working on the rendering part of this piece. It's really coming together and I am chipping away at it bit by bit. For this update I've started work on the mask and headpiece. I'm not trying to stress too much about it because I know that this isn't going to be the piece to land me a job. Not to say I don't care about this. But I'm going to do my best and take whatever lessons I can learn from this piece and use it on the next one. I need to work on it though, I've been reading the book 'art and fear' (finally) and it has kept me motivated and helped me move past whatever walls have been holding me back in my art.

It only gets better from here.

Voodoo boo doo

More updates. Just making him more and more voodoo.

Once more, with finesse

So after adding the skulls to the collar, I've really decided to head into a more voodoo feel with this character. Doing so I've decided to change the head of him from just a regular skull to an ornate voodoo skull mask. At first I had smaller horns and more timid feather, but with some great advice I tore away from trying to just draw over the under-drawing and not letting it confine me. I want to add more voodoo elements and really push the character and create his gimmick. Here is where I decided to stop today.

I had also tried to completely stop playing any sort of games and try to focus entirely on art. After a day of that I feel worn out and worried that if I continue to almost force art on myself, I won't learn anything and my art might become sloppy. I think that I need to continue to sharpen my overall skills, but I can't force art. I need to do everything as good as I can and put my heart on the canvas, but I can't force it. I can't force it but I can't neglect the art process either. I have to respect the art and hope to gain as much respect back.

Skull progression

Did more work on the skeleton guy. Added more detail to some of his design, trying to still keep it a bit simple and not over saturate him with detail. I think he is slowly coming together, there are still some things I want to flesh out design waise with him before I try to really get down to rendering. Just trying to make sure that it stays fun while I work on him.

Color test.

Here is a color test for the skeleton dude. I rendered it a bit more making it tighter and tighter as I go. Not sure if I like the palette choice for him, but that can all cahnge and nothing is final.

Skull duuuuuuuuuuuuuuude.

I'm not dead. In fact im actually in LA right now. Got a chance to paint while Le was at work and holy shit I guess I went kinda hard. Haven't updated in forever so it felt good to just sit and paint.
This was an hour of painting. I want to take this to completion and a full render (hopefully)

Still alive

So I've been working and trying to continue my love of art. I really enjoy that if I go a day without drawing, hell, even if I did draw yesterday, I still feel like I haven't drawn anything in forever.

I really wanted to have something up every weekend. Although times change and the amount of time I have to draw has changed, I still won't stop.

I've tried to really set a deadline for myself and just throw something out.

Now that I've really started to delve into art and am learning more and more each time I put black on white I want to pull back the reigns slightly and turn it back a little. I want to take my time with each piece and unless it is something that should be done quickly like a sketch or concept I want to put as much time as I can into a piece and really put my all into the art.

This is veigar, the tiny master of evil. Another League of Legends champion, I don't play him too much but I really enjoy his 'Black Mage' design. This is my current progress on the work. Trying to utilize each and every piece of information I've learned and been taught and add that to my next piece. Right now, it feels like it leans a little too much to one side. I'll do what I can and adjust that as I go.

This one will have a background, I will make it sharp and really spend time rendering and in post production.

I got this.

No art stuff this weekend ;_________;

My grandma is sick in the hospital and that kinda put me out of the art mood. Maybe I can work hard this week and put something out.

I was able to get 2 new sketchbooks (Buy one get one free!) so I have been doing some work in that, I also picked up a black marker that has a thin tip and a more calligraphy/paintbrush tip which is amazing to do and work with thumbnails and spill my brain on the page.

I also picked up a white paint maker so when I do the silhouettes I can add detail to them over the black.

Art soon.

Rumble Remix

So it seems like every time I start some sort of piece, I end up scrapping it midway through and almost as an apology to myself, work on something else to make up for doing bad work lol.

The last post showed a w.i.p. of my interpretation of the character Rumble from League of Legends. I really liked how it was coming out, however when I sketched it out it was far too loose. There wasn't enough structure at all and it ended up falling flat. ;__;

However, I loved my rendition of rumble too much to give it up and decided to paint him outside of his robot just getting ready for a smoke break.

I'm really happy with how this turned out and can only hope that my skill is improving as I create these pieces.

Below is the timeline of the work. The initial sketch, The painting with the color's over it and lastly the final piece.

Rumble W.I.P

Due to a bunch of stuff I've had to do today, I wasn't able to sit and draw for as long as I would have liked to. I did in fact get something started at least. I do want to finish it sometime this week and hopefully I can post it up next weekend. My own take on one of my favorite characters from the game League of Legends.

This (W.I.P) is my interpretation of the champion 'Rumble'

Goblin Redux

I was actually really disappointed with how that last 'Goblin' guy came out, I feel this is a much better representative to the goblin race.

It feels very much more like im finding my style, or at least heading in the right direction of it.

This guy's name is 3 arm, he plays in a band and is way cooler than either you or I could ever hope to be.

He has groupies of every magical race flock to him at every show. He's the bee's knees.

Below is the work timeline for him. It was my first time working with color and I think it came out pretty swell.

Goblin man man

The inspiration bug has been hiding lately, this week felt incredibly long at work so I've felt pretty tired and drained whenever it came to trying to paint. Saturday's allow me the ability to just forget most things and just paint for a bit. Nothing too special today, just a Goblin who's life has been rather long and he's lost an arm and his lower leg in the process. Now he just wants to live peacefully (as much as a goblin can) tinkering in his workshop and staying away from any kind of adventure.

Is he come long forgotten hero who once fought dragons alongside other mythical champions? Did he slay evil? Why does he use a rope to hold his pants up?

To most of those answers he will just grunt and dismiss the question. About the belt? "Why use leather for a belt when I can use that leather for a bomb instead?"

Son, I need a friend

Watched breakfast at tiffany's earlier this week, something about the look on doc's face when he talks to Paul in the park about Holly not being who she said she was really stood out to me, maybe it was just the look of an old man, tired of searching everywhere for the wife that had left him, tired of the journey and sadness it has brought upon him.

Just a quick drawing this morning, wanted to see what I could do quickly by not spending too much time rendering him and still try to capture just the feelings and emotions in the painting that I saw on the screen.

Came out better than I thought it would, still having a hard time making him look old and weathered but I did my best, learned some stuff that I can apply to the next piece I do.

Value study

Just a value study I did today of one of the necromancers I sketched the other day. Wanted to work on some value and was glad with how this came out.

Sketchbookings

So after that kennen piece I have been rather apprehensive to do any digital art, I would start something, it wouldn't turn out anywhere near what I had in my mind and I would just alt+f4 that bitch. So while I haven't done too much digital art I have been trying to keep up in my sketchbook, here are a couple of pages from my sketchbook, I think i've progressed somewhat throughout it.

Playing a ton of league of legends, I just started drawing some champions. Nothing special.

Saw some UMVC3 videos and it got me thinking of taskmaster who I tend to use on my team. Random sketches of him (and a note from my gf :D )

Ryze and some more random sketches. Copied a face from bob kato as I was watching it (bottom left) and tried to shadow it myself.

Watched the dota 2 stream while I drew most of this, Morphling at the bottom.

Guild wars 2 got me thinking about necromancers

More Necromancer stuff, kinda hard to see because of the blue pencil.

That's one for JJ! (or Le actually)

Well I suppose as my first post I should start out with something decent. For a while I was without a wacom tablet. It sucked but it didn't hold me back in art as much as I let myself. I made too many excuses for myself that 'Once I get my tablet I'll be godlike'. But art doesn't work that way. Once I was able to get past that I started to pick up the pencil and just put it to paper again, I even tried to do some stuff with my mouse, not letting myself be held back and trying to just use the tools I have to make art and not let the tools make the artist.

Then my good friend Le felt my cry, his spider sense tingled (or his message box on skype made a noise, not sure which exactly) and I told him about how i've been, how art has been and how I had somehow ended up without a wacom tablet.

The next night I got a text from him saying he was shipping me his old wacom tablet. One of the nicest things anyone has done for me, without his help I would still be scrub a dub dubbing with my mouse and dreams of artistic grandeur.

So this first (second) post is for him. This art piece is dedicated to Le, for liking ninja's and hooking a Nega up. Not only did he help me throughout this whole piece, he helped motivate me and let me know when I was bad at drawing so I could make the proper adjustments to fix it.

This is the first part I did of it, when I thought I was the shit and had inked it.

Then he told me it was bad lol. So to spare you lots of different revisions, I'll just show you that with his help throughout and many emails back and forth, I was able to create my very first finished piece of digital art (well mostly finished at least). A ninja (Kennen from league of legends) for Le.

And so it begins.

This is going to be my own personal art blog. Just something to keep track of my journey through art and hopefully the progression I make throughout it.