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.