Art In Progress: Part 1

Here is the first priliminary sketches of a piece I'm working on. Usually, this is how a concept is first played out: priliminary sketches are done of a character design first before moving onto finalize designs and color scheme work.

This character also already gone through some changes in regards to costume mainly, since this was done during April 2011. Offer your thoughts.

Working with Colors

One of the basic problems in trying to create a picture is a color scheme to pull it together. Not many people realize this, and it comes as no surprise that color practice or using a limited color scheme may be a good exercise for anyone looking into illustration.

As of December of last year, I have been trying to do that on my own, with using color schemes monthly palettes as well as their wonderfully helpful color memes to force me into creating design around a limited palette.

Using a very limited palette of colors, such as a number of five can force you to think out the design and the character/landscape/illustration overall.

Green Day

Today is St. Patrick's Day, and since I haven't been doing a lot lately, nor have I been at work for at least a day now, I'll be posting up my latest work, which appropriately has a lot of green in it.

It took me a while to create this, and it's a large file so I'm sorry if this is overwhelming to some.

The character here is called Leafdance, and she may be appearing in more pieces by me in the future. This piece is also avaliable as a print on DA, and I'll send a link: http://fav.me/d3birjy

Have a happy and safe St. Patrick's Day!

2011: Year of the Rabbit

Starting Febuary 3rd, 2011, we will enter the Year of the Rabbit. According to traditional beliefs, this will be the Year of the Metal Rabbit. The next Year of the Rabbit will occur in 2023.

Oddly enough, in Vietnam, due to the similar sounding word used for rabbit, it's also known as the Year of the Cat.

For this piece, I used an Amami Rabbit, since this was done for an endangered species club. I didn't use a gel pen for this, like I've used for other pieces.

Traditional Art: Pterodactylus Kochi

I have always liked prehistoric creatures, ever since I was a kid playing with plastic dinosaurs. The one creature I seemed to like above all was the pterodactyl. For many a year, I had in my procession a toy pterodactyl from the Jurrasic Park toyline that I literally loved to pieces. When I graduated high school, many of my old toys, the dinosaurs and the ponies included, where given away to other people. As a designer, I have now looked for dinosaur toys on Amazon to once again fill my shelves.

A few months ago, I decided to purchase a dinosaur book in order to get drawing on some dinosaur anthros. I wanted to draw some, since I hadn't drawn a lot beforehand, and it was an interesting challenge for one. For a while, I tried doing perliminary sketches of the dinosaurs beforehand. I had a busy summer, with internships and what not, so I wasn't entirely free to do much art inbetween learning poser and other stuff.

The idea for doing a pterodactyl anthro came when I was going through a section on pterodactyl species. The words "pterodactylus kochi" came up, and for some reason I decided that this species of pterodactyl was the one I would draw. However, unlike a majority of other anthros I had drawn before, I wanted to do something different with my pterosaur. I would give her wings for arms.

The actual design process for my Pterodactylus Kochi came through that a) it would be female, b) it would have some markings, and c) it was to have clothing that would not impede her ability to fly. The body design was to create a body that wasn't too heavy or too thin, more like an athele. The idea came to mind that she was a aerial acrobat, flying through the clouds, only coming to ground to rest and recharge. The character idea came through that she would need clothing that wouldn't be too cumbersome or fly up when she was flying. So I decided that she would wear a strap top, something that was like a halter top but would also free her arms so she could fly. I came up with the design, after a consideration. The clothing itself is made from animal skin, with bone and rawhide string to keep it together.

The entire picture was assembled in parts, from a sketch to an inked line art to finished marker art. The materials used for this includes copic markers, white gel pen, and Aquabee manga marker paper, which was possibly the best paper I have used with markers ever.

Well, that's the story of how this piece came to be. Thanks and I'll be back before the end of this month with a few more pieces in store.

Digital Art: Nights of Winter Snow

Some time ago, I decided to ask about a title prompt, and one of them was "Nights of Winter Snow". It quickly became the favorite, however, it took me about a year to get an idea about what to draw.

Music tends to be a big inspiration aside from movies and comic books on my art. This picture was a product of music and imagry. The idea came to me while listening to Rush's "Bytor and the Snow Dog." The thought was that I was going to make a picture of Bytor (a concept I never drew up unforcunately), fighting the Snow Dog, who in my head came in the form of a strange elf-werewolf hybrid. Eventually, she would loose the tail and the wolf ears and become a plain elf, albeit with a Frazetta touch to it.

This was perhaps one of the longest and best projects in digital art I have ever done since school. It challenge me to create a good background and a character with good shadows. Backgrounds still tend to be my weakness, but I don't like detailing them too much. This also brought me back to the pen tool in Photoshop. I was introduced to the pen tool during college, and even though it is a tedious process, it has a great look. I decided to use a pressure sensitive pen tool to this, to mimic the look of brush pen work. The overall color palette was to envoke night and darkness in general, since the character herself was traveling during the night. The finished product, as seen here, is perhaps my favorite so far this year.

A Word on Basic Sets: A Little Rant

I love using markers, they're one of my favorite mediums besides watercolors and Photoshop. But when it comes to buying them, I find myself stopping and looking through the various premade sets online or in the store only to find myself asking myself, were they serious with this set of colors. Case in point: the Prismacolor Basic Set of markers, with it's six colors of purple, green, black, red, blue, and yellow. While expense is always an issue, it's not really a starter set, since mixing and blending colors is something left out (no colorless blender). There is one of each basic shade, and when it comes down to it, it's not a particulary great starter kit, unless you add in two more markers of each shade with a colorless blender, and a pad of paper suitable for markers and ink (I found out about that the hard way).

If it's something I find irritating it's the lack of intermediate colors in "basic" sets of 8 or less. It may seem like a good idea to present someone with a "basic" set of four colors, but when it comes to it, you're better off getting at least three markers/pencils/pastels of differing shades of the same color, in addition to the set in question. This deliema of sorts is a minor one, unless you are used to using at least three to four colors in creating shade/tone/highlights in their art. It's nice for a kid just starting out, but overall, basic sets need to have more variety in them if they're to be handed out to the older artist. This is probably the reason for various 12 piece sets, especially regarding the new basic sets for manga artists, like the new double-ended Manga Set for Prismacolor, or the established Copic 12 piece basic sets.

It's good to see how basic sets are changing with the times, especially with the influence of manga styled work. The good basic set now comes with two different greys and two seperate shades of each primary color. Although not all basic sets come with blenders, it's always a good piece of mind to supply one with a basic set. Even then, the new basic set is a far cry from the simple set of four you got for Christmas.