Sketchblog: Yinyang Women & Adventure Time

I bought Terry Moore's How To Draw Women, and it arrived a couple of days ago. I read it cover to cover three times. He's the creator of the amazingly good Strangers In Paradise graphic novels and one of my favourite artists.

It's only part one, but it's good, and it's actually useful. And it's already affecting my drawing - this is a sketch I was doing to explore that. The face of the woman on the right is very Moore-ish. Sketched in ArtRage 2.6 because it is still better to sketch with, and tweaked slightly and will be painted in ArtRage Studio Pro.

The floating genie woman on the left was actually inspired by the flying vampire Marceline - floating people are actually amazing boons to artists as you can put them anywhere in any position.

 This is Marceline. I doodled her in the DeviantART Muro program (which is eh. I WANT MY PRESSURE SENSITIVITY). Sadly, there is very little of Adventure Time on YouTube, and even less of Marceline, who is by far my favourite character.

And in inverse order, the warm up fan art. This pairing has taken over the internet briefly since the next clip of the show leaked, showing Marceline singing to Princess Bubblegum in a very... lovelorn manner. The fantastically Awesome Tom Siddell of Gunnerkrigg Court painted them as his very first Tumblr Post, so how could I not follow suit?

I really like the lighting patterns on Bubblegum's skirt. Actually, all the legs are my favourite bits. I should probably tidy it up and finish it sometime...

...and the original sketch, which I drew this morning. I had no eraser on me, as you can probably tell. I like Marceline's face - must try and tweak the painted version so her expression shows properly.

Sketchblog: Wonderwoman

Random sketch of her old crown and her new costume and lots of hair. Testing stuff.

Sketchblog: Death and the Discworld

A portrait of Terry Pratchett and his Discworld.

See Death and the Discworld on DeviantART

If you don't know about Pratchett:

He's the creator of the Discworld, that little planet being carried away into space by the turtle Great A'Tuin, with the sun setting on it.

Death, the walking skeleton with an awful lot of character appears in all his books (however briefly) and spends a lot of time trying to figure people out.

The lilacs were worn in memory of a revolution in Night Watch and are now the symbol of Wear the Lilac Day on May 25th - Discworld Day, and now dedicated to Alzheimer's Awareness.

Because - oh yes, Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer's Disease. And I started painting this while listening to his documentary on assisted dying:  'Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die'.

So this was a painting about him facing death, a celebration of what he's brought us... and that it's leaving.

Time: 4 hours
ArtRage Studio Pro

References used for Terry Pratchett and the Skull.

Sketchblog: Discworld Sketches

Another sketchdump, to be updated when I can reach a scanner. All drawn while lying around with bronchitis.

Gaspode the Wonder Dog

Possibly the first dog I've ever drawn. He's meant to be a mangy, flea-ridden 'sort of terrier'

Alright, this isn't Discworld ;D This is Toothless, the Night Fury dragon from How to Train Your Dragon 

(I was coveting the plushie before). This is probably going to my dad, if he wants it, because he really loved the film.

Charcoal - the eyes are Photoshop, cause I didn't have anything other than pencils or charcoal with me. Sadly, when I sprayed fixative, the force of the aerosol blew off a lot of the charcoal, so the actual version doesn't look right anymore. So I'll have to recolour it.

AAAARRRGH. This is why I hate traditional. YOU RUN OUT OF PAPER. I ended up getting very inspired and tearing pages out of my sketchbook. And having to go look up lots of pictures of startled horses, and horse ears and eyes and teeth.

This is Granny Weatherwax in Lords and Ladies. The scenes where here silver hair snakes down to her waist, when she undoes her bun, has always stuck with me, and I was in a Discworld mood.

I wanted to try capturing the stillness of Esme, and the frail strand of silver hair, with the thrashing, screaming unicorn.

And there are bees.

It'll all be black and silver, of course ^_^

BAH. Need to scan nicely. And finish painting in ArtRage.

A random attempt at drawing a Discworld troll

Random elf girl. The pose is actually from an anime figure (upskirt, school girl pose), while hanging around in the GNC waiting for a friend.

My drawing is much more realistic, though ;P

Random practice sketching

Random sketch of an acrobat girl, hanging upside down

The Best Mother Gothel Fan Art

(so far)

DeviantART is one of my favourite places to go to when illustrating a lens - there's a wide range of images (usually!), some of it tends to be awesome, and I get to promote artists. So, naturally, that's what I did for the Mother Gothel page. So I got to see a lot of good art emerging. Enough that it's time to list my favourites.

I'll be entirely biased and list mine up first, out of the way,

Mother Gothel 

Rapunzel's So Mature Now 

Sketches

This is a beautiful colouring of one of the official concept sketches

Tangled painting practice 

by ~Dewii on deviantART

Sometimes sketches look better than coloured works - these all capture Mother Gothel wonderfully.

Gothel

by ~CenturyHaze on deviantART

Tangled - Character Portraits by ~ItoMaki on deviantART

Gothel and Rapunzel by ~kra on deviantART

Finished paintings

What I like about these three paintings is that not only are they 'good' art - recognisable characters, suitable colour choices, etcetera, but they all add an extra spin - Mother Gothel is doing something. They aren't just 'yet another character study/screenshot'

Tangled: Mother Knows Best 

by ~g0N3Morganna on deviantART

I can't hear you 

by *NorthernBanshee on deviantART

Mother knows best 

by ~LordAlphie on deviantART

And by FAR my favourite is this custom OOAK doll (the only really good Mother Gothel doll so far!) that I talked about previously

Mother Gothel OOAK Doll 

by ~ShannonCraven on deviantART

Lady Gaga: Sketchblog

I succumbed, months after the rest of the internet, and drew Lady Gaga. Half hour sketch in ArtRage 2 (much nicer I've decided for pencil sketching). Used a screencap from her Telephone video for a reference.


I've been wanting to draw her for a while - she has such a lovely, distinctive face. And of course the costume combinations are both fun and bewildering.


And a bit more work... (all sort of pretending to myself that I was just going to 'darken this bit here and erase these messy bits there' instead of a systematic redrawing of the neat version)

FFTactics Fan Art: Sketchblog

Today's painting was of two characters I don't know - Princess Ovelia from FFTactics and her bodyguard, Agrias Oaks. In a compromising position, naturally, straight fan art is no fun. Uh. Pun not intended there, but appreciated :D Apparently an awesome game but can't be shipped to New Zealand, and even if it could it's in the wrong format.

I was able to choose any of the girls, and picked these two because 1) I could get a good idea of their roles, 2) there were a lot of reference pictures, 3) they actually interact and this picture is slightly believable in canon-context (how believable I don't know, not knowing the game, only the plotline).



I like the original sketch better in some respects (Ovelia's face) and the final painting better in others (Agrias' face!) - should have remembered to compare but too sleepy to risk editing now.

I have decided that I'm better sketching things like people, where you have to draw them right, with traditional pencil first, then scanning and painting - besides, it gives me something to do in my lunchbreak, now that it's not a dash for lunch/solitary leisure period of the day.

And I've learnt how to draw fan art - draw roughly similar characters for the sketch, then tweak and redraw and paint in ArtRage with reference pictures, adding all the 'fan' bits to the art.

And the problem with bright primary colours of red and blue and yellow, is picking a background colour is really hard. And anime hair is super annoying to translate into something resembling reality. And it was interesting to draw two such completely different women.

Anyway, here's a close-up (I like the eyes >.> ) - click to go to DeviantART for the full picture.

Felicia Day: Sketchblog

Watched Dr. Horrible at last, and gave up and drew Felicia Day. And by 'gave up' I mean seized an excuse to keep drawing. I am art-starved.

This is the reference - and it's from Google Images, so I don't know if it's an official photo, or a screenshot, or what. From the quality, it's probably an official photo... and half a second with TinEye shows it's actual the main page photo on her website.

And the sketch (ArtRage 3) Not perfect, but was just doing quick practice sketch-painting.

Aaaand the final quick painting on DeviantART (click through for a larger view):

Vulcans are Space Elves

The first day of Armageddon, ThePlanPony cosplayed as Spock and I came to two conclusions. Firstly, that I must hunt down and watch Star Trek and secondly that Spock is rather elvish. Pale and pointy-eared and plays the half-human role, between humans and Vulcans, who are telepathic ('magical/other ability'), honourable, generally rigid in culture due to superiority/long-livedness. Which means Vulcans are basically elves. In space. Spock is in fact a Space Elf

I will allow you a moment to absorb the awesome.

And now I present the evidence. Look at the space elf picture.



Now look at the picture of Spock. Now back to the pointy elf ears. Now look at the pointy Spock ears. Now back to the space elf picture. Sadly, it isn't Spock. But she does have boobs and is on a spaceship, so that's even better. Also I got to abuse the Old Spice meme and you now look like a bobblehead.

An Illyria Sketch-Painting

Illyria is probably my favourite character from Angel, and I wrote an entire page about her and cosplaying her (oh, side note for Squidooer's, I used the Page Break Module there and the second page is ranking well above the first).

So of course, I had to paint her. Started in the evening on my laptop, between Armageddon days, but it was uncomfortable lying on the floor. And then I was bored (I have to paint three or four pictures most days, before I settle into one) and moved onto Drusilla.

Anyway, figured I'd stick the half-finished portrait up, because I can't musn't really can't absolutely not doing any painting or leisure things until after my assignments and exams for the next week are over.

She's nowhere near finished, and I'd like to finish her. The reference I used was the picture below and she was painted in Artrage Studio Pro.


You can find more of my Buffy and Angel fan art here.

Auckland Armageddon Convention 2010: Day 2

Sunday was my best day for sales - it wasn't quite as busy as Saturday, but the wrestling announcements were slightly quieter. Slightly. Also, I guess people were coming back through after running around making sure they saw everything. It was also the day I really got into making tiny paper people. I ended up with a small army of faces and fan art poking out of signs and lined up in the (very limited) space around the front.  I drew two Buffys, using my painting as a reference (on left) - the first I was very proud of, and gave away to Asgard, and the second wasn't nearly as good. Sadly, I forgot to photograph Asgard's, so will stalk her site and see if a photo goes up >.>

Also finished off the leather-wrapped, winged girl I started at Doujin Overload (my report here) and stood her up. Interestingly, she was the only drawing from DO that I actually liked when I went through my book - all the ones I did to sort of 'do what was expected' and that I tried to ink neatly (she was just a messy sketch that I got into at the end) were really, truly awful. So, "giving up trying to do what other artists do even though it looks awesome when they do it, and accepting that I have to draw my own way" lesson learnt? Check :D

Photo image dump at the end of the post! (for now)

I also drew a fan art of Drake's awesome ninja cat, Ninjet. She's a white cat, in a black ninja bodysuit. It's actually a clever design - it's simple and easy to draw and very much 'cat'. I remembered him from last year - I told him to join DeviantART so that people could stalk him, as far as I know he hasn't yet - I don't think he remembered me (I'd have been very surprised if he had!), but he recognised my t-shirt (I was wearing the YinYang one) bcause he'd asked about it when I'd wandered off and missed him, while setting up. His site is down and has been for a while - apparently he's moving domains or something - which is annoying, because I wanted to add it to my Ninja Cats page. There's a listing for the comic here, for some kind of linkage. Bought a couple of small prints off him (actually, that was the first day - I used them as references for the fan art)... and he bought two cat stickers off me (both the Yinyang ones; colour and black and white; the other kitties weren't out and I picked them up from home later).

I bought candy floss for the second day in a row. It was fun, especially the way it vanishes as soon as you eat it, although the attack of sugar starts burning my mouth by the end.

I found one of the Star Wars collectors' booths, with a variety of R2D2's, Star Wars suits of armour, and a Han Solo in Carbonite, as well as a large collection of Slave Leias in a large bubble display. I took a couple of photos, for drawing references, but most of them looked pretty tacky (and it was a bad idea, at least for a few of them, as the proportions were way off and I ended up sulking about the drawing a lot. Somewhat loudly at my stall-mates :D Turned it into a stand-up.)

More R2's than I've ever seen in one place before, plus Darth Vader and Stormtrooper armour, Han Solo in carbonite and... a random droid (edit: apparently that's a droid bounty hunter called IG-88)

R2D2 from Jabba's barge, serving drinks that look suspiciously human-blood-coloured

The Slave Leias, trapped in their bubble/force field.

A close-up on the Slave Leia statues and dolls; the two largest in the front, half-sitting, you can look at on Amazon below, the two tall ones at the back are just customised dolls, there's a Lego Leia just to the below-right of the centre, hidden behind the right-hand Leia, and the one standing up, holding onto the rope/pole is the one I tried to draw from.

Some of the more expensive statues looked nice, though, and it turns out that there are some impressive version out there! (I had to look. And now I have to show! Not my photos, just showing off from Amazon - I don't think any of these were the ones on display)



Funniest moment of the day: watching Bria & Vader's heads swivel as they watched a guy in a Stormtrooper outfit walk past as they tried to work out a) who he was, b) if he was one of their guys from the 501st stall, c) why he wasn't wearing it properly (the belt was loose, and ... well, that's all my uninitiated eye could spot ;D ). So Vader (not his real name. Oh, you guessed that?) follows him to the nerf gun stall, and it turns out it's the guy who organises Armageddon, who just bought his shiny new costume and wasn't too happy about having it corrected within five minutes of putting it on.

But they cheered him up with four people shooting him at once with nerf guns (which are awesome, if a rather lurid orange, and shoot a very loooong way... into the rafters in the ceiling *looks idly at very interesting object on far side of room to avoid meeting any eyes*. It wouldn't have happened if I'd been allowed to shoot AT someone!) and having all the foam pellets bounce off his armour spectacularly. It looked fun :D

Bria-Silivren in a fight to the death with one of the Nerf guns. Behind her is the Dr. Who stall (Weeping Angel on right, Dalek on left) and I believe she's cosplaying Marion from the Indiana Jones movie (re-using the Anna Valerious shirt, anyway ;D )

Apparently there were a lot of Dr. Who cosplayers, unsurprisingly, as the Dr. Who speaker had a panel and was signing stuff. There was a nice lady with a little stall tucked against a wall near us with Dr. Who -inspired jewellery - all cogs and wheels and things, in bronze and silver. The site's here - Whovian Jewellery. I haven't seen much of Dr. Who (no telly) so I didn't recognise any.

Day 3 had mimes, skeletal t-shirts, left over posters, fizzy tablets, less money, Buffy comic artist George Jeanty, live rick-rolling, cosplayers, and energy crashing. Also a final tally of my haul. Plus will mention the (awesome) Drawfest stall, posters, t-shirts and earnings, and any other things I forgot.  It's late, and I'm on a crappy computer at my parent's house, so not tonight.


But for now... PICTURES!

My Tui t-shirt, and the back of the stall. And the charming model, of course.

My tiny Willow drawing. I like this one! She stuck out the top of one of my displays for a day and a half.

The second Buffy-head. With the traditional 'what would Buffy do?' caption 

(there's even a book!

)

Complete view of the stand-up gladiator/bondage Angel. Someone (forget who) said she was Slave Leia inspired, to which I say she actually wasn't - the red was more of the memory of an old drawing I did, which had a girl all in red and white.

A first attempt at Dark Willow (failed, but helped me remember what she actually looked like), a headless Leia (because the head was terrible and nobody is looking there anyway), tiny Tara head to go with the nice Willow, and a teeny little 2cm tall tui bird that I gave to my mother.

Tall figure-referenced fail-Slave Leia standing up, with tiny-Slave Leia next to her for reference.

The paper army scouts! Seductive tiny-Slave Leia distracts and seduces; the all-seeing Eye (referenced from my Buffy painting again) sees all; and tiny-Dark Willow floats in a spooky way wherever she chooses.

My Ninjet fan art - copic to fill,

black brush pen lines and shiny silver pen for the sword.

And finally, the posters I bought on the Saturday; Unicorn from Kotorigaro and random-painting-chaos-guy from Murk (a.k.a. Cannibal-Cartoonist)

Also, two awesome guys turned up and came and said hello - actually knowing people at Armageddon makes it 5 times better, and having people attending actually come find you triples the awesomeness again. This guy who I pimped earlier dropped by and inflicted me on his friend who was very nice about it, and bought art (and I gave him a discount, of course ;D ), and the person I skipped out on at Saturday and left to cope with students on his own (I'm sorry! No, wait. I'm not. Here, have this as a token of my forgiveness.) dropped by with his friend (I didn't know I gave him permission to have friends...). Huh. I never did go to the Laserstrike tunnel.

....and the rest must come later.
Click for Day one update.