This piece is called "Opening the Airlock Doors". I wanted to play with dramatic lighting which is why I stuck with a predominantly greyscale color scheme with with a splash of color in the face. I really liked how light can bring out detail in some parts of the character while taking away detail in others, but our brains fill ion the gaps.
I will continue to post my time lapses here, but if you want to see my collection of edited time lapses, check out my Videos Page here.
0 Comments
Welcome to Volume 2 of the "My Process" series. Last time I talked about the tools that I use and some of the very basics about how I start a drawing. For in depth talk about those things check out my Volume 1 of this series. However, to give a little recap, I talked about the tools I use and the very basics of how I start a drawing. Because I like to draw characters, that's where I start and give them shape using simple shapes. So now that I have simple shapes laid down in simple poses, Let talk about the next part of the process; we're gonna add detail on top of these shapes using layers. Layers are something that is distinct to digital art. It is one of the main reasons why a lot of artists choose digital as their medium of choice. The vast majority of digital art programs have layers in some form or another. They allow artists to manipulate one aspect of the piece without directly affecting the other aspects. An example of this would be having the line art on one layer, while having the color or inking on another layer. This allows you to erase or manipulate the color without affecting the line art. Let me show you what I mean. LayersFor ProCreate, one can find the layer controls in the top right corner of the screen. I think the symbol of two squares with one on top the other is a great representation of layers as a concept.
The goal here is to keep things super simple and refine as you go. There is no limit to how many layers you can create. If you are just starting out and have a long road of practice ahead of you, this gives you a chance to revisit old sketches and continue to refine. You can keep sketching on top and on top and on top for as long as you like. So far, we are just getting started. Soon, I will release the next part of the process which is the final pencil sketch as well as Inking the drawing. Until then I hope you enjoyed how Ghost-Spider here took shape. It's just one of the few new art pieces I created these last two weeks. Speaking of which... New Art!Two pieces are part of my original character designs. I have been working more in putting them in an environment vs just standing in a negative space. I am loving the results. Though I am currently working on figuring out a consistent workflow for environments like I have with character art.
My second two are, of course, in celebration of the new Spider-Verse movie coming out. I love drawing Ghost-Spider (Spider-Gwen) so much. She has a dancer-like quality to all of her movements. Each piece has been added to my portfolio pages. Just give any of the pieces a click and it should take you to my art pages. Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed this look into my process. Talk to you soon! As promised earlier, I wanted to give insight as to my sketching, drawing, inking, and coloring process. Today, I am going to focus on my sketching process. I am going to go into the brushes I use as well as to how I have things set up. My goal is to help give insight into how one can get started. I like to think I start off simple enough that most who wish to get their art ideas down onto paper can follow along. Even without prior experience. That's right, you read that right. Let me preface. There is NO EASY BUTTON for learning how to draw. The techniques I will be talking about in this post will require practice. As with any skill, one has to actually make a habit of getting better at it. There is a lot of discourse about AI generated art today, but I am not going to get into that in this post. I think I will post my thoughts on that at a later date. The ToolsFirst of all, let's get the physical tools out of the way. I currently use an iPad with an Apple Pencil. However, that is just one set of tools among many. I won't get into the weeds about personal preferences when it comes to the tactile feel of certain tools. This device and accessory are what just work well for me. Secondly, the software I use is called Procreate. I have used many programs throughout the years on my iPad, but Procreate strikes an amazing balance between the robust tools and ease of use. And, through updates, the app just keeps getting better. My goal for this post is to not be a tutorial on Procreate itself, as that would serious narrow the scope of what I'm trying to achieve with these process breakdowns. As far as the settings go, I have used nothing but the defaults. I have played around with the canvas sizes and resolutions, but nothing super crazy. Now, the question that I see often when people post art online is “What brushes do you use?”. My answer, I feel, is somewhat surprising. The Process
From there I start making my rough draft of my sketch! Will usually start with rough shapes and build in detail on multiple layers. I'll wait to talk about that in Part 2 of my process. I keep to basic shaped to make up my figures. These shapes include cylinders, ovals, triangles, and rectangles. I use these shapes to build my figures out. If you're looking to learn how to draw, the greatest thing I ever did was grab reference images and "trace" those images using only basic shapes. This gave me a feel for the kinds of shapes that make up the human body. Eventually, the need for tracing goes away and you start using the shapes to build figures from scratch. Here are some examples. When breaking these figures down, you can see the basic shapes I am using. That's the trick I am going to leave you with today. Don't look at the above figures as whole entities. Break these figures down into their basic shapes.
If you stumble upon this blog and you try this, let me know in the comments. I would love to interact with any budding artists out there. Next week I will post Part 2 where I start adding detail to these figures. Meanwhile, make it a point to draw figures everyday and you will find the progress get ever better. See you soon! I assure you, I do indeed live. In fact, I have been hard at work on my particular art style and there has been an incredible amount of progress since I last posted news updates. I have been putting new pieces in my gallery, but not really talking about them here. I am going to try to change that. Since 2020 I fell out of a lot of good habits like posting regularly here. We can all probably guess as to why 2020 interfered with a lot of people's habits... I am, however, on the path to figuring out where my priorities lie. One of those is making my art more accessible on multiple platforms, but to also talk about them here in case any traffic comes this way via those platforms. Rest assured, one habit I did not lose was drawing every day. For the past couple of years, I really doubled down on my own creative process. I made a commitment to draw everyday even if they were just doodles or gesture drawings. Before, I would go through periods of time where I would not draw for weeks to a month at a time. I called these "I forgot how to draw" times. I would finish a piece I was proud of and showed progress in and then I would "forget how to draw" and struggle to recreate that magic. This would result in frustration as you can imagine. Since 2020, for obvious reasons, I needed something to alleviate stress and keep my mental health out of the gutter. The result is I now rarely "forget how to draw". I've come to terms that not everything I start needs to be finished. I can just spend an hour or so drawing example poses and leave it at that. No one is telling me to output finished pieces every time I open a blank canvas in Procreate. That is only my brain telling me that. So before, where I would get mad that a piece isn't going anywhere and question my own ability, now I just see an unfinished piece as part of the journey. All this being said, I'm going to showcase some of my most recent pieces here in this post, but starting later this week, in an attempt to build good habits again, I will make individual posts about certain pieces breaking down my process and what I did to make them. I will even go into what digital tools and brushes I used for any who are interested. Hope to talk at you all soon! My Latest Art!Hello all! It’s been a while since I last updated. There is quite a few pieces of work I have finished since then. Some portrait work and som character art. I have been experimenting a lot with not just color, but how light reflects off of that color to create multiple shades. I have tried several different techniques to achieve this. One is to have a base color that I put down and then color over that “base coat”. The other technique is more of a classic one where I put down a dark orange version of a particular skin tone. This “burnt sienna” seems to work rather well, but I have much to learn in color mixing with this technique. Anyway, here are my pieces from the last couple of months. Admittedly, I had fallen off the wagon when it comes to being prolific with my practice. That sort of thing is okay! I think its healthy to take breaks in a hobby. It’s part of the natural flow. I find that I’m coming back to it and haven’t lost anything in the “vacation”. If you find yourself struggling with your creative outlet, it is okay to take a little break to come back to it. It might even be important to do so. I hope you all are well. Also, just in case you need to read this today, you are loved and valued. Be safe. Portraits
Character Art
If you’ve followed my work for any stretch of time, you have probably realized that I am a bit of a Destiny fanatic. I think the art style and the lore are beautiful and worth everyone’s time. Check it out if you haven’t. The next expansion is coming out in just a few short weeks. Anyway, with the release of a new expansion comes renewed hype for the world and characters of the game on my end. One might say that my art “grew up” alongside the Destiny franchise as I really started drawing around the time the first game initially came out. I wanted to draw my character and her adventures. I had so many stories cooked up in my head that I longed to get out but lacked the ability to do so. Fast forward about 7 years and you can see the progress I have made. I feel the need to thank Bungie for creating a world that has inspired me to create. Without them, I don’t know what direction my art would’ve taken, if I even had cultivated my skill in the first place. So here’s to the next 3 years of planned content on their end and may it continue to inspire budding artists out there to create and shape their world. Can’t wait to see where the next bits in the story leads... Below is some of my early works in the Destiny universe followed by a piece I finished up last night. It definitely illustrates how far I’ve come. And here is something I drew yesterday.
Hello all! I hope this post finds you healthy and safe. Just wanted to give a quick update that everything is going good on my end. I’ve made some updates to the website to reflect my more recent work. I hope you all enjoy. Times are crazy and its easy to fall into a funk with everything going on. Make sure you let the ones important in your life know you love them. Give them a hug even if its over Zoom. You are not alone in this.
I started this one in the morning and finished it off in the afternoon. Not a bad way to spend the day. The video below shows a brief one minute time lapse of the whole thing. I thing it turned out okay. Defiantly playing with more dramatic lighting effects as I go. This time I tried doing the shadows using a layer with a different blend mode. I thing the results turned out a little murky, but I like the direction its heading. It requires further study and experimentation. Anyway, hope you enjoy! This post is simply called Portrait #1. I know, not a very interesting title for a piece, but it was more lighting practice. It also served as my next step toward more realistic portraits. I’m getting there. Below is the portrait piece and a time lapse of the drawing. Hope you all enjoy.
Dungeons and Dragons has always been a big inspiration to me when it comes to art. Now, I’m currently running a campaign and the following are my players’ characters. I love how they turned out! I’m getting much better at multiple tones of the same color and creating shapes. Things are looking so much less flat than my earlier colored pieces. Hope you enjoy!
|
PoofypumaThe thoughts, musings, and postings of a character designer. Subscribe to never miss a curious inner monologue. |