February's End

Here we are again at the end of the month. We are just a few days away from Emerald City Comic Con and I am super stoked. I look forward to this all year. When one ends, I already start looking forward to the next one. Sometimes, when things get really rough at work, I can tell myself that there's always Comic Con around the corner. That is what made the pandemic so hard for the years it was happening. No Comic Con. No gatherings of fandoms anywhere. It took a really big toll on my mental health. Creating art was the only thing keeping me sane most of the time. 

But enough about that! ECCC is upon us! I get a chance to meet so many great artists. I rarely get such concentrated time chatting with people about their creative process. It truly fils my bucket. I am going to post again at the beginning of March to break down all I did. I hope you'll come along with me. 

​More art has been created however. 

February Art Dump

I did not finish as much art this month as I would like. I got distracted with some projects pertaining to my day job (not art related at all). I did manage to finish a couple of pieces so I'll share them here. 

A Possible Collaboration

The first piece I am sharing is the first maybe in a series of works. I am in talks to possibly collaborate with someone on a future art show. I won't say anything beyond that as nothing has solidified into a real project yet. But this possible collaborator wanted to see some of my original character and what it would look like with text. I'm am no graphic designer when it comes to font choice and composition, but I think it gets the point across even without the specific skillset needed. 

I initially started out with what I do best which is character design. So I drew each of these characters individually. Here are the full bodies of these individual characters. 

Portrait Studies

These next pieces were just little studies to keep my skills up and practice little things like angle and hands. Oh god...the hands. Every once in while you have to challenge yourself. For me, there is nothing more challenging than hands. So the first piece is specifically for the complex position of the hands. However, I was also able to experiment a little with the coloring as well. I wanted to mess with different hues of light while at the same time having the skin look more naturalistic. I think the coloring turned out a little more stylized than natural, but I still liked how it turned out. 

I think the hands are almost what I wanted to accomplish. The fingers on one of the hands seem too short for some reason. Not enough knuckles. 😅 Still, the face looks great and the piercing gaze was captured. So I chalk this one up as a win! 

The next portrait was more to practice angles that I rarely practice. I dabble a little bit in angles, but I need to keep trying to be more dynamic with the placement of my "camera" when it comes to my art. This isn't exclusive to my portraits, it is something I am trying to incorporate into ALL of my art. You will see some further experimentation later on in my Complete Compositions. 

I really like the design of this character. It happened solely by accident. It was a study, so it didn't really need to be a full fledge design, but she just kept peering into my soul and needed to be a more fully fleshed out character design. Despite that though, I think I nailed the angle I was going for. Why a cyberpunk elf? Why not? 😛

Completed Compositions

The next two pieces are completed compositions for this sourcebook I'm making for "Void's Edge". They're going to be full page spreads at the beginning of a few chapters. 

Definitely playing with angles here in this last image. Top down has always been a struggle for me. I think I did a pretty decent job. I'm making progress at least! The shared challenge is forcing myself to do the backgrounds. I'm seeing progress slowly. I'm waiting for that moment where everything "clicks". Right now I'm not thinking with enough detail. I think I should focus on more scenery studies. Stay tuned! 

Unfinished Works

This month also some works which stated out as something, but fizzled out midway through for one reason or another. I want to include them because there are som many artists out there who can feel discouraged if they struggle to finish a piece. There is no shame in leaving a project incomplete. If it is not inspiring you and there is no client with a deadline, then you are totally empowered to let it sit. Maybe I'll revisit these at a later date. 

This one I left unfinished because I only created it to practice realistic skin tones. I am focusing more on a more painterly color theory when it comes to skin tones and I am hoping that it will eventually allow me to diversify the many shades and hues of human skin. 

Anyway, I drew this piece specifically to try out a color theory with skin tones where one takes a main color and to create the shade one increased the saturation and bring down the brightness in very specific percentages. Then you add a little red to the midtones to create the sense of translucency of the skin. After playing around with this, I was trying to force my self to finish this piece only to realize, I didn't have to. The pose wasn't particularly inspiring and I was mentally exhausted trying to get the skin right. So here this character is, in all her unfinished glory. 

This one was a tough one to abandon. I love the story and narrative this has without saying any words. It's great visual storytelling and a happy accident. This is where it became a problem. I got invested in this piece and became obsessed and hyper-focused on the details. So things like the angle of the figure in the foreground not looking right or not matching 100% with the reflection made things so frustrating. Even with a reference image (Thanks @theposearchive), I couldn't get the details I think this piece deserved right. 

It was very frustrating to say the least. So I chose to leave it be. I want to give it the full finished treatment I think it deserves. I'm just wondering if I'm capable of pulling it off. Maybe I will come back to it at a later date. If you want to chime with your take on whether I should finish or leave it, please leave a comment down below. I'd love to hear you opinion. 

As March begins. 

This should be a month where things settle down and will be able to put even more focus on my art. I am trying new things with my social media presence to see if I can garner more eyeballs on my stuff. I've seen a little uptick on site traffic here as a result. I have to keep going and take advantage of the momentum. It's just...social media is not my passion. For the last decade I have used social media as a means of consuming media. It takes a lot of hard work to actually cultivate a following. 

My goal, of course, is to not make social media the priority. However, the more I can get eyeballs on my work, the better. So if you're here because of clicking on a link in one of my posts or my bios, welcome. I hope these little looks into my artistic process and mindset is something you find engaging. Tell your friends. 

In the meantime, keep on trucking. There is a lot wrong with the world right now, but there is also so much beauty and community out there as well. Let's help each other out there. Be excellent to each other. I will post again soon. So long!