just for fun (isn't it always?)

My friend is building another company and he needed a logo, of course.  So he came to me and another mutual friend and asked us to come up with something.  My first design mockup was too dark.  it would have made a cool illustration, but I guess it wouldn't have been real family friendly.  So I began to brainstorm and then got carried away and came up with this.  I actually didn't finish it, because I realized that I got carried away and needed to quit and work on the other numerous projects that I had.

This was fun however because I did a series of very interesting and dynamic poses for paper.

so here we have a paper gun fight old west style.  no guns in it yet, didn't plan on putting any in.  just kept it plain and simple.  If i were to finish it i would put in a back ground and add some textures and such.

good times.

Yeehaw

I'm finally buckling down now that I lost my job.  Im doing more drawing from life.  I have to say there are a few hurdles that I have found.  1- I don't see really well, so things are a bit blurry.  2- sometimes I sit there and think to myself, "gosh, none of this stuff is interesting enough to sit and draw" (i hate still life)  3- interesting things don't sit still, and I have a hard time remembering just how that person looked as they in ____ pose.  oh and 4- my excuse for never doing life drawing is that I hate carrying my big sketchbook around.  so I got a small journal and now Im going to be using that wherever I go.

anyway, these are just some sketches I did of a cowboy hat.  I have always been terrible at drawing them so I found some reference and went at it.  I think some of them have quite good character!  It was fun anyway.

Death Knight character Gingg

Updated 25 Sept.  

Aaaaaand DONE.  phew!  I think it's a success!  Certainly took me long enough!

I flipped it because the sword was in the wrong hand.  is that cheating?!

nah! :P

My Buddy plays a DK.  well sorta.  Every month or so we log in to see what is new.  I hadn't seen his character in months as I too haven't been playing either.  So this is his character Gingg.

A couple of process shots, and then the final will come at some point in the future.

I decided to try b/w and then apply color over the top.  So far im not really super pleased with the lack of vibrant colors when I do a color overlay, but maybe im doing it wrong?

Also not a lot of process shots because I didn't think about it when i started...

<--Minion RAWR!

 one of the things that vexes me greatly is how to properly draw/paint shoulder armor.  It never looks right and I can't seem to wrap my head around it.  or the armor around the shoulder/body ;)

 

updated 7 aug 2011

small changes.  Im putting off doing the sword and back ground because I'm scared!  

There I said it!

updated 15 aug 2011

Playing around with blurring the hand in the front.

I added the sword (finally) and then made the arm and sword lighter so that it appeared to be more behind him.  We will see how the end result...ends.  im dreading tackling the back ground.  that is such a bad attitude!

updated 26 Aug 2011

Well this is getting drawn out huh?!  sooo many process shots.

I broke down and tackled the back ground.  I really like the gritty feel

which I accomplished by using a slab of concrete on an overlay layer over the top.  

Still agonizing over getting the character colors right!  I like how the back ground turned out tho.

updated 17 sept.

Colored version (so far)  once I get it all done I'll put a greenish overlay so it pulls it all together.

yay.  Haven't worked on it forever because of school and trying to do other stuff.  plus I got stuck on the colors.

Practice painting in progress

So the above is the finished one (updated 27 june from the image below)  I had fun with the light rays, and then wanted to make the image all around darker.  always something more to do, but Im going to move on methinks.

I am taking a self taught class from Andrew Hou from Schoolism.com

I haven't tried his methods, so this was a fun process.  I usually draw on paper then scan, then color, etc.  This way was completely from the tablet.

Lots of things that need to be fixed and worked over, obviously, but this is a start.  Just realizing some of my textures are backwards...oops.

It'll be fun to do the gold reflecting on the scales.  Im going to try to actually finish this one.  

One eye, Two eyes, Three eyes

Well, here is the finished piece!  Im really please with it.  It was a really darn fun process to work out.  working on wood, at least the way i did it, was challenging, especially not prepping it.

it is acrylic on an oak plywood and graphite.  I think I will play around with this technique some more.

click here for a link to the story

1, 2, 3 eyes character sketches

This is a character "sketch"  for the aforementioned "dark fairy tales"  project.  I chose a story called "one eye, two eyes, three eyes".  Im not completely happy with the characters still, but this was more a practice of acrylic / watercolor / pencil /pen on a piece of board.  It's pretty crappy wood, but it served its purpose!

I think they turned out nicely.  hopefully better board will look even better!

House on a hill

I'm starting to play around more with watercolor.  This time I mixed in a bit of acrylic with some of the colors.   Two of my illustration professors, Bill Carmen and Ben Wilson, both water their acrylics down quite a bit, so I thought I might try it out.

I can't leave my zebra ball point pen alone, so I sketched on top of the painting again after putting the paint down.  I rather like much of the things that happened in the painting process.  

This is a practice for our next project dealing with "dark fairytales".  I bought the Marvel Comics version of "wonderful world of Oz"  graphic novel, and really enjoyed the style.  Some of it is similar to my own, but much more confident.  This painting is greatly inspired by that book.  

nope, not doing wizard of oz for my dark fairy tale tho!  Im going to find a much more obscure title!