Archive for the ‘Artwork’ Category
IF: Adrift
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
Illustration Friday is a weekly creative outlet/participatory art exhibit for illustrators and artists of all skill levels. It was designed to challenge participants creatively. Illustration Friday just gives a no-pressure, fun excuse to use it. No clients looking for a particular thing. No one judging the outcome of the work. It’s a chance to experiment and explore and play with visual art.
My first thought when faced with this week’s theme “Adrift” is being adrift on a raft in the sea. I felt it was predictable so I tried to think out of the box and came up with being adrift on the wind. It was only after I finished my picture, that I found out the idea isn’t so unique after all, judging from all the entries on the Illustration Friday website.
I did a quick drawing of my idea in pencil. I wasn’t in the mood to ink or colour it so it is just a pencil sketch for now. I decided to keep the idea of having an inflatable raft and tied balloons to it so it can float in the sky. I had the passengers playing cards without a care in the world, as if floating away in a raft tied with lots of balloons is just an everyday occurrence. The passengers were originally intended to be manga-like characters but I decided to change them to Englishmen in top hats to give it added quirkiness. There is just something about an expressionless well-dressed Englishman in a top hat that pushes quirkiness to the next level.
Maybe I’ll colour this one day. I quite like the idea and hope to see it in colour. But that’s for the future and won’t be anytime soon. Because right now I working on something else.
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IF: Muddy
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
Illustration Friday is a weekly creative outlet/participatory art exhibit for illustrators and artists of all skill levels. It was designed to challenge participants creatively. Illustration Friday just gives a no-pressure, fun excuse to use it. No clients looking for a particular thing. No one judging the outcome of the work. It’s a chance to experiment and explore and play with visual art.
This is an old pencil drawing from a long time ago. It was meant to be part of series about some children and their pet pig called Peggy Sue. But I never got around to completing it and only this and another drawing exist. I planned to colour them but I never did. Guess I’m subconsciously afraid of spoiling the picture as colouring is not my strong point.
Then Illustration Friday came along and I thought this drawing fits the theme. So I took out the pencil drawing and inked and coloured it.
I’m satisfied with the colouring but I felt the coloured picture seemed to lose some of the charm of the pencil drawing. I also liked the expression on the pig more on the pencil drawing than on the coloured picture.
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IF: Focused
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
This picture was for the Illustration Friday theme – Focused. It is a cool site where a one word theme will be announced every week and people can create a picture based on the theme.
When I saw this week’s theme, I thought I had to skip it again. I had no idea what to draw. I played around with a few ideas in my mind but they seemed rather boring. Eventually I decided to do a light-hearted approached to the theme. Nothing earth-shattering but maybe a different interpretation of the theme.
This picture was done in 3 layers in photoshop; 1 for needle and thread, 1 for fingers and 1 for the face. I didn’t do a rough sketch like I did for What a big carrot! I roughly knew what I wanted and also didn’t want to spend too much time on the picture. So I just coloured in straight. I did the needle first, then the thread, fingers and finally the face. Then I blurred face so there would be some depth to the picture. I also darkened it a little so it won’t steal the spotlight from the needle and thread.
I feel that I am finally getting the hang of working with colours. I encountered less frustrations while working on this picture. This drawing style seems to suit me quite well and it is something that seems to come more naturally than other methods. What remains is to hone and perfect the craft.
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IF: Wilderness
Saturday, January 16th, 2010
This picture was for the Illustration Friday theme – Wilderness. It is a cool site where a one word theme will be announced every week and people can create a picture based on the theme. What I like about it is that I can participate as and when I have the time and inspiration, which isn’t often.
For this week’s theme, I did something that is more “feeling-based”. I want to do a desolated landscape where everything is in shades of grey to evoke feelings of isolation and despair. Even the sunshine has a little bit of grey in it.
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Artwork: What a big carrot!
Friday, January 1st, 2010
Came across this Bunny Heaven picture drawn by angrymikko. It is a nice picture and would make a good wallpaper. But as I looked at it, something happened and I felt inspired to draw a picture using the same elements but with my own take of it.
angrymikko’s picture has 3 rabbits, 1 giant carrot and lots of little yellow flowers in the countryside. I kept all of them, even though I did think about skipping the flowers because I’m no good at flowers. I’m proudest of the grass because I drew them one blade by one blade. I thought I would just try it out to see how it goes. About halfway through, it felt like a bad idea but since I already did so much, I decided to continue on. I’m pretty happy with the end result, although I suspect it’s one of those things that nobody else notices except the artist who drew it.
This is the actual size of the three rabbits. I’ve made mine a little mad and rabid. That’s how they appeared in my mind anyway.
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Artwork: One horse open sleigh
Saturday, December 12th, 2009
Something I did for Christmas. Took me about one week, working on it everyday a few hours at a time. Tried to draw a scene from the song Jingle Bells, so that’s why it’s not a reindeer. And there’s no background. Oh what the heck, happy hols everyone.
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Pencil sketch
Sunday, April 19th, 2009
Met up with some friends this morning to draw together. I did this pencil sketch in around 3 hours. Being the lazy person that I am, I didn’t bother to look for photos of motorbikes and just drew from memory until it feels about right. So it’s not an accurate rendering of a motorbike or even of a person riding a motorbike. Instead of doing a normal side view of the bike, which was difficult enough already, I tried to do a three-quarter view of it. I don’t know why I have a tendency to make things difficult for myself.
Sketch still looks a bit weird so I will need to do some more corrections before inking it. Eventually I hope it will become part of this picture I had in mind. Or maybe I will be too lazy to do anything else about it and this will be the last you will see of it.
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Artwork: Getting ready to fight
Sunday, April 12th, 2009
Click on the image to view the larger version
This is a fan art digital painting of Ryu, a character from Street Fighter. Ryu is my favourite character from Street Fighter even though I’m lousy at the game.
Since it’s a fan art and not my own creation, I tend to view it as a practice piece. When I started drawing this picture, I set out to accomplish a few things:
- Do everything digitally
- Get used to using the Wacom tablet
- Practice and find my own style in colouring
- Draw my own version of Ryu from memory
I did everything using Gimp and my Wacom graphire 3 tablet, from sketching to the colouring. I think I’m getting more used to using a tablet even though I still find it easier to draw on paper. When I sketched out Ryu, I decided not to give him any facial features such as eyes, nose and mouth because these are the hardest to draw and I don’t want to spend too much time on them. I’m still not very used to drawing on a tablet and I don’t know whether I’m proficient enough to do such detailed work. So in the end I put his face in shadows.
I wanted to give Ryu a more interesting pose than just standing there. Since he is from a fighting game, the logical conclusion is to put him in a fighting pose but it felt kind of boring to me. I wanted something that was not commonly used but at the same time, not too hard to draw and had a bit of movement. After playing with a few ideas, I decided to do a pose of Ryu getting ready for a fight. I used his clothes to add a feeling of movement to the picture. Since there were so many versions of Ryu, I used his clothes to identify him. I drew him mostly from memory, only checking to make sure that I had his clothing correct.
I’m a drawer, not a painter and I don’t really like colouring but in this piece, I tried to do everything in colour, shades and tones, even forgoing the black outline that I am used to. I think the result was not bad. It was only after I finished colouring Ryu, then I chose the background colour. It took me a while to decide. I can’t pick white as Ryu is dressed in white; black is too black and grey is dull. In the end I settled on dark red and I used some grunge brushes to make the background more interesting.
I started this painting in January and I only just completed it. Even though the painting was only just finished, I could already see some mistakes or areas which needed improvement.
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