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!