odd yet symmetrical dragon

I was playing with the new symmetry feature in Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 and this dragon was the result.  I posted a video with screen-grabs of the process on Instagram.  @MarcusHadlock

revisiting an old robot friend

In 2010 I posted this robot after I first drew it-  today I saw it and thought I could make it pop a bit more with a few things ive learned.  I didnt spend much time on it- just messed with it while I was on a conference call.  It was kind of fun to re-visit something from so long ago.  I think I could have improved it further but the conference call ended and I needed to move on

work doodles

Mountains

Ive been doing a lot of client work lately which has prevented me from posting here.  Some illustration and video work- so thats been nice.  For today here is some mountains I did messing around in Alchemy trying some of the other draw options.  Didnt think it was worth posting but since I dont have anything better and have client work to do this evening... its all you get suckers!

2 More because these are fun!

Last two.  I messed up the second one a little and accidentally merged layers and painted past the history mark where i merged them s I couldn't go back and fix it.  The result is really dark under the skin- gave him an odd zombie look.

I was pretty pleased with the first guy though! Except when I finished my son asked if it was me...  Haha I didnt think I was that overweight... but I guess he thinks it looks just like me.  I have a little more hair than he does as well...

More great practice- Im getting excited about what the future holds!

here are the final 6 together with their initial sketch

2 More Character Concepts

As a continuation of fleshing out the sketches I did yesterday, here are 2 more rendered into drooling monstrosities.  The first one was not intended to be a black guy until I started playing with colors.  I then thought it would be a good challenge as I dont normally draw black guys.  All of the skin pigments are different.  I think he turned out ok... but I could probably use some improvement.  I gave him cornrolls to make his race a little more obvious.

The next one is a witch doctor type.  Hes got a skull on his head and chicken foot around his neck, with some interesting face / body paint.  I like how his teeth turned out.  I feel like I get a little better with each one I do.  Excited to see how the last 2 turn out tomorrow. 

2 Character Concepts

Today I sketched out a couple of faces.  These are the first 2 I painted.  The first one is a little Piratey but not...  his mustache and gotee were a bit of a poorly rendered afterthought  but i like the warmth of him.  He looks more like a teddy bear- gentle soul than a typical mean ol' boy.  Ive been playing a little "Sea of Thieves" so Im sure that was a little of an inspiration for him.  Hes got that stereotypical eye-slash scar.

The next guy is a drooling fool... red mohawk... looks a little post-apocalyptic or maybe just a fantasy type character.  I like how he turned out... except his eyes ended up a little small and too sunken into his head.  

I spent about an hour on each of these.  Ill be posting 2 more tomorrow 

Robot Concepts

My little brother got married last Saturday.  I traveled out to Atlanta to be there for the event, and didnt do much art.  I got home last night and am now back at trying to post daily.  Today I did a couple of quick rough robot character concepts in Alchemy.

can you tell I watched the new Pacific Rim film recently?

Value Painting

Tonight I did another Alchemy drawing- very crude with just some initial values.  I used some randomizing elements to help create something unique and interesting.  I came up with a character I wanted to explore further, so I exported him and brought him into photoshop.  From there I decided to just do a black and white value painting and work on a few things I have been learning more about,  perspective, composition, depth, and value.  

It was a fun little project.

More work doodles

Last night I went and saw "Ready Player One" - I liked the book 10 times better... Im not a big Spielberg fan... I feel like he dumbed down and modernized a lot of the nostalgic bits of the show to make it appeal to a younger audience than I think the book was intended for.  The visuals were cool and all but the story in the book was a lot stronger, and the puzzles were a lot more involved.  All in all though it was still entertaining.

Because I went and saw the movie I got home at 11:30 and crashed, so here are a couple of work doodles I did for today's post.

Capitalist Goblin

I put a few more hours into this guy and am going to call him done.

I still might throw him in a quick environment to finish it up- but i think I have learned from it and am ready to move on.  I think I put way too much detail in- I spent 3 whole hours just working on one leg for example... and the only way you would ever notice is if you zoomed up into it like I was... and MOST people are not going to do that.  As long as it looks good at the main view point it is going to look good-  over-detailing Im learning is just a taxing thing on the artist and often times can deter from the main focal point of the piece.

My main focal points are the face of the bull character, and the goblin.  Everything else just needs to support them.

Overall this was a fun character to do and I am pleased with it.  My favorite elements ended up being the armor, belt, and sword on the bull characters chest.  

drawception day

It was my sons birthday- and with all the running around, throwing the birthday party and taking all the kids to and from places... I am worn out and dont feel like doing too much more tonight.

Days like this I will resort to playing a couple of games on drawception.com - fun way to get in some drawing practice.  You have limited pallets, limited time (10 minute max per drawing) and you get very odd phrases to draw... which often times puts you out of your comfort zone.  This can be good and bad-  :)

Here are the ones I did tonight- 

"Blue Peter Griffin approves of arrows to face"

"Fuzzy Hedgehog enjoying the sun"

"Legolas Greenleaf (pass it on)"

"Obi Wan Kenobi Doesnt Like Sand"

"Ballerina dancing in space"

Skateboarding Dragon

Today I remembered an old tool I liked to mess around in... Alchemy

Alchemy has a lot of fun tools to throw down random shapes and lines.  Once I did this a little I started to see a dragon, much like you would make sense of a shape in the clouds.  Once I saw the dragon I started to flesh it out with more controlled shapes and once I was happy with it and saw something with potential I brought it into photoshop.

The goal here was to do something relatively quick, so I drew line art and just colored within it.  I didnt have time to do a full paint.  I experimented a bit and the results are above.  I think it turned out pretty cool- 

here are the steps I took in a gif.  Enjoy-

The park tree

Today I drew a tree at the park while my kids played.  I was away from home all day so nothing digital, only traditional pen and ink in the moleskin.

focus bouncing between the two...

Sci-Fi escapee

Today I dont have much time so I did a quick speed-paint character study with just a few values and threw him in a quick room.  This was a lot of fun to do-  started from a little doodle I did at work on a conference call. 

and here is the original sketch

I want to finish the other piece soon but tomorrow I dont know how much time Ill have either.  We will see what happens!

Goblin Doodle

Today I put a few more hours into that "Pack Mule" character-  it is close but I dont wanna show it again until it is finished.  Maybe 3-4 more hours of clean up and last minute details

Here is a sketch I did today in my sketchbook-  Another goblin

capitalist Goblin sneak peek

Today I continued working on the same illustration... focusing on the goblin character riding on top.  Here is my progress on the greedy little critter! Starting to all come together-  hopefully I finish in another day or two!

Todays progress on the pack-mule mercenary

A lot of progress today... I go from loving it to hating it to not sure if I wanna finish...

But its good practice! I hope I can tie it all together at the end and make it look like a nice finished piece.  

Pack Mule Bull-Man head Paint

Coloring the whole drawing from yesterday was pretty optimistic...  at least at the rate I am going...

This is several hours of work... but hey, its something!  All I was able to do today was the Bull characters head... and even thats not finished.  Still need to touch up his hair and clean up a few other spots... like his lip looks like the same color as his teeth etc.  But not bad for a days work!

pack mule character

today at work I scribbled a couple of rough character sketches.  This one caught my attention and I thought it would be a fun character to draw out.  The character has a long snout, longhorn bull head with a ring in its nose.  A very strong and heavy upper body, but then small goat-like legs.  I then gave it a tail to help support its heavy upper body.  

I brought the rough sketch into Photoshop and dimmed the layer and started drawing some line art on top of it.  After drawing out the full sketch with the weapon in its hand above its head... it looked odd to me.  At this point I felt the weapon looked goofy just holding it above his head for no apparent reason...  A weapon is heavy and not something you would typically hold above your head.  I then thought it might be fun to make him like a "pack mule" carrying a heavy load.  I sketched it out and liked it... but then felt it needed a reason to be carrying such a load... and then thought up the idea that he was a mercenary / pack mule employee of a wealthy merchant.  My mind naturally went to a goblin... and I threw one on top.

I then finished up the line art and am pleased with the results... I would love to throw some color onto this thing and really bring it to life.  Im thinking tomorrow I will spend some time ding that.

Happy Friday

Re-Draw of an old friend

I drew this dragon a few years back and really liked the personality of him.  When thinking of something new to re-draw with the new methods ive been learning I decided to do a re-draw of him.  The wise old dragon with a broken horn-  very cartoony and whimsical.  Im pretty pleased with how he turned out! Thinking about drawing a body for the old chap-

Scary Hell Hound creature

Today I bought the "Creature Painting" course from digitalpaintingstudio.com and wanted to apply what I was learning.  This is what I came up with for my first attempt.  Im pretty satisfied with my progress and the way it turned out.  I do see some issues with the structure of the head and coloring, but overall It turned out a lot better than I had expected.  I do have an issue with my monitor though- it must be too bright because when i finish and then post the picture online and look at it on another machine or myphone it looks way too dark.  Ill have to look into that... so I tried to lighten this up a bit.

Im excited to refine my digital painting and do more of these!

Post Apoc Car

Todays doodle... a post apocalyptic car with all sorts of metal bits welded onto it to make it scurry... or you know... protect the driver.

Just doodled on top of a car image.  Ive never been super good at drawing vehicles.  Something I could improve on!

Dragon Doodle at work

Today I doodled at work.  I stayed a little late because my wife was watching extra kids... its usually a zoo at home on Mondays until around 7.  I took advantage of the quite time at work and doodled with headphones on.  Pen and Ink on paper is still my very favorite... 

I used a couple of highlighters as well for coloring...  when you are at the office you use whats available... 

Post Apocalyptic Driver

Ok... I took a break on the jewel practice and went to my comfort zone- 

Just doodling and this is what I ended up with an hour later.

I have a busy night tonight so I just stayed up late... its 2:30 am Saturday morning... I better get some sleep.

Crystal Letters 2

Wow - some time has flown by! I got super sick... I randomly got a Kidney Infection... what the heck is that?  But man it kicked my butt.  Im on the up and up now and want to keep this jewel theme up.  For today I just put in an hour detailing the M from my previous post.  I wanted to finish it but I got a little distracted...   I like how its looking though!

Crystal Letters 1

I wanted to do some cool gem-stone or crystal like lettering.  I put a few hours in but didnt come close to finishing-  a lot of trial and error for me.  I like the direction though! I was thinking for a game title or something this would look pretty awesome.

I decided to do my initials signature.  Since its just 2 letters...

Looking like something...

Crude Blue Gemstone

Tried something a little different. More cartoon style  / thick lines like I normally do.  Interesting results, different style.

Cold Gem

This is a quick one- trying to make it less cut- and cold feeling.  I think with another hour or two it could have been a lot more polished but I didnt have much time today

Rubies

More gemstones,  I think Ill do these for a week.  

Fire Gem

Starting this up again! Want to get better and need more practice.  I improved a lot doing ADailyDoodle and think its about time I dedicate at least a few minutes every day to practicing what I love- drawing!

Today is a gem / jewel practice.