Sweetums plays LJ Silver

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas – mine was just gorgeous, although it rained rather than snowed which always makes me sad.  Now it is time to crack the knuckles and get back to work.  I am nearing the end of my website building but only approaching the beginning of my goals.  2013 is going to be the year of art.   I have recently been approached to work freelance for a games studio, so that will take up a lot of my time for the next few weeks (and unfortunately I can’t share any of the work yet) – but it has been very exciting indeed!

Continuing with the Muppet Pirates project. Naturally, the scariest Muppet gets the role of the bad guy.  I am still slightly scared by him.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The Girl with the Textured Hair

Just a quickie from last night – I was painting late at night and ended up becoming mesmerised by the film “Melancholia” that my other half was watching, so finished her this morning.  I highly recommend the film – but warning; it isn’t happy!

And even better, today I am off to see the Hobbit, have coffee and cake.  Perfection, even though it is bucketing with rain.  Then the rest of the day will be spent drawing… dun dun dun…. muppets!

Muppets Pirates – Rizzo and Robin

Numbers 3 and 4 – The hero, Robin! (asides from his Uncle, of course) and his sidekick, Rizzo.  Rizzo is one of my favourite Muppets, if only because he is a rat and I have a soft spot for them.  Plus, he has a great voice.  I can’t wait until Christmas, because I can watch the Muppet Christmas Carol, one of the best things ever made.

Is it possible to say the word Muppet too often?

  

Muppet Pirates – Floyd Pepper

Hey Man…. It’s Floyd!

On to no 3!

Muppets - Beaker

...needs no words!

Game of Thrones – Eddard Stark

I have found something I love more than Lord of the Rings, a rather unbelievable confession! However, after hearing a few people talk about Game of Thrones, and seeing a few images (and realising there were potentially dragons) then I decided to pick up the first GoT book.  And didn’t put it down. Then watched the first series and couldn’t stop.  Then read the second book and saw the second series.  Now I am feverishly trying not to start the third book until Christmas, but think I am losing that battle.  Haven’t enjoyed a book or series that much in almost forever.

So, to whet my wont,  I am designing the characters for a cartoon series.   I am basing my design more on my impression of the book versions rather than the series, but some of the characters cross over. Needless to say, I am having fun.

Whimsical monster feels whimsical

I have been having a stinker of a week at work and am so utterly tired – thank goodness tomorrow is Friday!  However tired I am though, there is always time to art.  It’s an addiction, I swear.  It is especially fun to draw cute things when my brain is so tired it can’t remember to open doors before body tries to walk through.

This week, I have not drawn half as much as I usually do; this is not due to my being in the pub (although a lot of gin n T have been consumed ..) or out actually enjoying myself - what I have been doing is learning how to build myself a website which will be up by Christmas and, more excitingly, (to me, at least) - learning to video record! This has been a hair ripping out, gritting teeth, wanting to scream experience, but I am winning! In fact, I have recorded the process of the painting teaser below.  Now I am at the stage of trying to work out how to piece the movie bits together and speed it up so that it isn't finger chewingly boring.  Hopefully in the next couple of days I will have actually worked out what I am doing...

Walter

I have recently started a Schoolism course with the wonderful Stephen Silver – character design.  Absolutely enjoying it so far.  This is my first submission; we were given a short brief and asked to design a character.  Hopefully, by the end of the course when we return to redesign the same character, we will have noticeably grown – here’s hoping!

Old COW reinvented

You may recognise this dude as a creature I designed a short while ago as part of Conceptart.org’s COW.  I was not that happy with the outcome of the original and decided to have another go.  This is a bit of a quickie, however I am much happier with him.  Probably need to give him a girlfriend.

Caricature 3

Aaand two more.  One should be fairly obvious and reveals a bit too much about my geek side.  The other – well, she was hard! Women are so much harder to draw, harder to pick out “distinguishing” features which is interesting -cant push some elements too much or it just looks ugly.  I don’t think the caricature looks particularly like the individual, but there is something, which is a good start.

Caricature 2

Aaaand another couple!  Hopefully, these will be fairly obvious (Including one of my favourite voices in the universe…)

Caricatures

Suddenly had an interest in caricature – something I have never, ever done before! These are my very first attempts and they were a lot of fun.  More grotesque than exaggerated at the moment, but what a lot of fun! I shall be doing lots more in the future.  Is it fairly obvious who they are?

Canine Tarot – 1 of Swords – Pharaoh Hound

Another of the Canine Tarot – this is 1 of Swords ; seeing through illusions.  I am not sure if the dragon is the illusion or the hound is.  

All I know is that I will never ever,ever again stop and think “Hey! Let’s paint each dragon scale individually! That would be fun!”

Wild Child

Someone is not very happy.

Catelyn Stark

Experimenting, having fun with skin tones.  Originally just a woman from my imagination, trying to improve on drawing humanity, I then realised who she was; Catelyn Stark, from Game of Thrones. Possibly the best books I have read in a long, long time – and the TV series is pretty amazing too.

Scared Router

One rather scared lemur thing.  A leftover from Halloween, obviously Grace-Lee has been dressing up again.

Heal Pet

Had a surge of nostalgia and had to draw my old gal, Nagini. She was a good broad, a troll hunter who was the highest level character I played.  She keeps trying to call me back to the World of Warcraft….

Somewhere by the Crossroads, Boxley, the awesome hyena of awesome awesomeness (sarcasm), had once again managed to pull 100 enemies.  After the usual cursing and dispatching, Nags has to use “heal pet” on her suitably abashed minion. Good thing she loves the stinky hyena. A passing windserpent has stopped to smirk.

Orchid Dragon

Playing with textures, dragons and orchids.  Bliss!

Happy Halloween!

Grace-Lee and Router say; mwahahahaha!

Quick Photoshop Tutorial

A couple of people have asked me about my process when painting in Photoshop.  I had this picture saved in several stages and thought I would throw this together for fun – not a true tutorial, but a guide of sorts.  I will do another better one in the future, but thought some people might like to get a glimpse into one of my processes.

Bucky O’Hare

Everyone!

Bucky! Captain Bucky O’Hare! He goes where no ordinary rabbit would dare!

Had to be done.

Jedi Rex

May as well carry on with the Starwars theme.  Everyone wants to be a Jedi, apparently.

The Ewoks made it home.

This week’s personal painting.  Progressing skills with environment and storytelling.  After a long adventure, the hero comes home to his mate and daughter – who has a small surprise to share with her own young partner…

This one was fun and quite frankly, there are not enough Ewoks in the world.  Perhaps I should do a Wookie painting to accompany it – I love drawing fur!

Canine Tarot – King of Coins – Old English Sheepdog

The King of Coins in my Canine Tarot.  The King of Coins is known as the Salt of the Earth and so the Old English Sheepdog seemed perfect.  I decided to give him a home reminiscent of my own childhood – minus the odd standing stones, although we do have the odd one of those.

I did complete a version without the crown, but felt that he needed something to confirm his regality.

Plus, sheep. Baah!

Sad Dragon

Another slightly older picture, but one I really like.  I used to keep leopard geckos and they were fun to draw – and I love to create dragons with their stature and personality – stumpy, big tailed and always slightly petulant.

Grace and Router Character Design

Redesign of an old, old, old character (The lemur type thing) who also had a rather bad name and decided to turn him into the sidekick of a rather Calvin-esque character. Had a lot, lot, lot of fun with these two, and am planning on putting them into a series of predicaments.

I decided to set myself a challenge with this one and put a timescale on this picture – as in, what if I had a time frame of only two days to come up with these characters. So this is what I ended up with after eight hours of designing and colouring. Admittedly, Router was already “designed”, (albeit rather different!) but Grace was from scratch. It was a lot of fun.

Self Portrait of Crazy Redhead

Hehehehehe.

I hate writing about myself, but thought it might be an idea to have an “about me” page for my pending website… so I did this today to cover most bases.

Sakaath, Mountain Gryphon

Another one today – having a productive weekend indeed.

This painting was for fun, and to explore texture experiments again.  This is an oooold character by the name of Sakaath that I created ten years ago – that fact alone horrifies me.  I found the original drawing of her and cringed and decided “I can do better.”  I will NOT be sharing the original drawing! If it was not a digital painting, it would have been burnt by now.

Best of British

Can’t…. stop…. drawing!

Something slightly different this time.  Wanted to try a more graphical piece and this was a lot of fun! Picked out some of my favourite British birds (can you guess them all?!).  Would love to make a t-shirt or poster with this lot.

Not too happy with the layout, was trying to go for a hear shaped outline almost, but I think it is lopsided.  Think I might rearrange the gang into more of a circle for the absolute final piece.

Fairy Pharoah

Say that three times fast!

A piece for a client from a few weeks ago, and experimenting with new brushes in Photoshop.  Another slightly older piece, but I do still rather like this one.  Typically, just after finishing this one Photoshop had a failure of epic proportions and I lost this brush – still have not been able to replicate it which is very frustrating, but I did come close thank goodness.

I am about to start building myself a website which will have lots of new work available to view – will take a little while but hope to have it done before Christmas!

Olympic Centaur

I had forgotten that I had not posted this picture – a couple of months old now.  I find it interesting that although the picture was not completed that long ago in the grand scheme of things, it already feels as though I have moved on again.  I do like this one a lot, and it was made for a friend during a difficult time, so it has a great deal of meaning.  I also had a lightbulb moment with this one when I started to go a little bit more graphical, and used textures.

Drawn during the Olympics, funnily enough!

Hungry Monster

Forgot about this little dude.

Character I am working on for a childrens’ book idea – he starts off skinny and sad and scoffs lots of sweeties and becomes rather rotund! There will be a moral to the story though.

Little Bit at the market

This picture… was both my baby and the bane of my life on and off for the past three weeks.

It was a fantastic exploration.  I wanted to play with three different ideas; hue, texture and creating a group scene.  I learned a deal about all three topics and so am very pleased.  It felt like the process would never end, though! However,  I have just tallied up my time and it took about 16 hours all in all, mostly fiddling and playing with ideas – so not as bad as I thought.

Anyway, am happy with the outcome.  Little Bit with her dad, visiting the local market.  The next one will be better!

Two lovely ladies

Sigh!

Drawing people is most certainly my weakness. I used to ignore the existence of human beings, instead preferring to draw dragons and monsters – whoops!

If there is anything I can recommend to other wannabe artists, it would be to draw people. Seriously. Because you will not be able to escape it, unless you are very, very good and find a very specialised niche!

It’s hard, really hard – but the more I draw people, the more fun it becomes and the easier too. Learning how muscles work and how colours blend and that skin colour is fun –   although I am still a very, very long way away.  Light years, perhaps. But have to start somewhere.

First pic is a quickie from reference, second is from imagination…. my imagination needs a good talking to.

Crying over dropped icecream?

I finished this a couple of weeks ago, thought it would do for now, as I have been working on the other fox picture for the past four hours and still not finished.  Trying new techniques with layering textures and completely out of my “safe zone” – but it is looking good and will be finished soon.

For now, one sad munchkin.  Based on a watercolour sketch I did a while ago, completed in illustrator.

Canine Tarot - Two of Swords – German Shepherd

Forgot I had not put this one up yet – Two of Swords for the canine tarot, symbolising partnership and balance, on a cautious but positive path.

German shepherds, meeting at their favourite tree.

Colours are a bit too saturated, but the general impression of being cautious and uncomfortable in a slightly creepy place came through, I think.

Dryad of the Autumn Forest

This picture about killed me.  She originally had a fox resting its head on her thigh, but if I attempted to draw any more, I knew the painting would be abandoned forever and never see the light of day. Took far too many hours again, but always learning, learning, learning. Thoroughly enjoyed it and hated it at the same time… as always!

Hona, the dryad, looking wistful as the trees change colour -quite appropriate, seeing as how quickly the trees have started dropping leaves this week. The squirrel is called Dave and he objects.

Ewok, Illustrator style

Ee Chee Wa Maa!

Yes, I went on google to find that. Help me.

It seems to be either a love or hate thing with Ewoks. I love them. Furry little gits.  I can remember watching the cartoon when I was a child – and have vague recollections of the Battle for Endor – was that a series or movie? But no matter, Ewoks are awesome and a fun way to practice with illustrator and textures. Makes me want to watch Starwars again.  The originals, not the new three… saying nothing.

I love illustrator, but I do struggle with the more technical/graphic side of things. And being an idiot, I don’t name my layers. Yeah, that’s not fun in Illustrator. I am learning.  I really like using textures at the moment, although they were added in Photoshop afterwards.

Altogether, rather fun! Onto the next one.