More Sketching

I thought it would be good to put up some rough stuff from this week. These were done over two nights.

Valley of Heads

A pretty quick (by my standards) sketch from last week... maybe 3 hours altogether. This was pretty inspired by a couple photos from my trip to Botswana and Tanzania last summer and some Benin mask designs.

Hope

Something fun and light I did over a couple nights this week... I think Obama's election win has lifted spirits all over the world, mine included.

Halloweeny

some Halloween fun...

Tweaks

I originally did this last April, but there was a couple things that always bugged me about it, so I spent a couple hours fixing it up last week.

Another thumb...

...worked up in Painter. I've been liking that of late... I may keep working it, I may just leave it as is.

Close Encounters

Something I recently went back to after a while. I took an old colour sketch and spentlast week working it up in painter using some art pen tools, then finished it off in CS3. I think I'm getting better at a more painterly approach. I did most of the work on one layer, which is a much simpler approach than I normally take. I tried to keep it loose in areas and not overwork it.



and a detail...

Long time no post

So finally here's a small update. To anyone who actually checks this thing for new work - my apologies. It's been a great summer, but I've had almost no time for personal work. Anyway, I worked up one of my colour sketches a while back. I used Painter for this and really liked the way the Art Pen brushes actually update the cursor with the brush pen, unlike photoshop where you have to guess at the angle as you rotate the stylus.

Anyway, I hope to be posting more often as the weather gets worse and I start doing more personal work in the fall. Thanks for looking.

Vent

Hey hey,

Still really busy these days, not much to post other than this piece. Click the thumb for a bigger version.

Stuff from the last while...

I haven't made quite as much time for personal work for the last little while in favour of more bike riding and getting some stuff organized, but I've been chipping away at a few things.

Another page of colour thumbs...




A paint-up of the character sketch from the last post. This personal project is definitely gaining some momentum in my head...more to come.



This piece is from a sketch done in 2006. I had the idea a couple years before that even, so I'm pretty stoked for it to finally be done.

Colour Sketches

After seeing some really inspiring Colour Sketches from Hethe Srodawa I was inspired to try some out... mine aren't nearly as good of course, but they're super fun and I think they'll be a good way to get me to loosen up and try ideas out quickly.

Nothing Much

Just another random idea...

Street Wars

This has been a personal design project for me for the last year or so. I'm thinking of it as a very loose framework of an idea for a video game to just give me some direction and help design choices.
Inspiration for it is very eclectic and includes things like street fashion, the Blood Brothers (the song Streetwars/Exotic Foxholes and others on the Young Machetes album), weapons from around the late seventies to preset day, urban decay and whatever random things cross my mind...

I've been designing character classes in pairs of male and female. The idea is that it would be a co-op game something like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, where a dude can play with his wife or girlfriend, you get to upgrade your character with cool weapons and tactical stuff and your better half has fun dressing hers up in funky clothes.

It's been a really self indulgent project as far as design choices go, so it's not necessarily going to make sense or appeal to everyone...trying to do that is my day job.

Anyway, here's the latest characters. Some resistance characters inspired by the Black Panther party in the 60s, and a bit of the Blacksploitation movies from the 70s like Superfly.



and the characters I've done so far for some context.

DeathDiscoDancePunk

Another random idea...the girl's outfit was inspired by a VICE DO, and for some reason I thought she should be 80s dancing with a skeleton.

Some Touch Ups

Just a couple of pieces from last year that I wanted to touch up.

This one I did last September, I thought it was missing some final touches, so I went back and added some texture to the robot, made the girl's eyes less buggy, made the windmill thingy in the background a bit more apparent and added more colour to the flowers.



And one I started around November I think. Added texture and tweaked some values...

Monster Pack

Here's a character I finished up from an old sketch last weekend. It was a pretty quick one, maybe 4 hours altogether.



and the sketch for it...

Aether Machine - about context

So, here's one that I had an initial idea for about a month ago... a koji morimoto inspired girl inhaling out of a steampunk/vintage gas pump inspired Aether vending machine. I ended up just scanning a thumbnail and doing about a 4-5 hour colour pass on it.
I think I learned a little something about context with this one. I wasn't motivated to finish my initial thumbnail until I thought about placing the girl and machine in a distopic future city with acid rain and the whole blade runner feel to it...
I'm all for random ideas, but I guess it's good to do a little more storytelling and put things in context sometimes, it seemed to help this come together for me.

Old Tree

A piece I just finished after chipping away on it for months, and the initial sketch for it.
I sketch last April. It was a one off sketch with no tweaks or overlaying, which is new for me. I think sometime around November 07 I banged the colour and lighting in really quickly, and then put it away until early January again. I picked it back up and painted right over it, which was another first. Anyway, I liked the process and I was fairly happy with how the painting went, I wasn't as laborious as my process usually feels, and I think it came through. It's a bit looser and there's more edge variation than I usually have. Hopefully it can be a benchmark process going forward...

First post...

Okay, here goes... how about a mission statement, I guess???

Well, hopefully this blog will be a way for me to record my thought process and artistic development, both of which move forward very slowly, so.. you know... don't expect too much.