Oh look, colour!

I realized I hadn't drawn anything in colour since September so I rectified that. Tried a different, faster method of colouring and am quite happy.

Comics

3 page in 4 days! I love being healthy!

My Alma Mater offers all recent graduates a free course in their continuing studies school so I'm now taking a class on comics (Yay!).  This is for my first assignment, a day in the life of one of your own characters in 24 panels or less. I thought I'd just do rough pencils and some tone here and there but I ended up doing more than that. Still fairly rough, but I'm trying to be less of a perfectionist so I get things done.

P.1 might need some explanation; Amelia grew up and was born in a brothel. As a young woman she came into a large sum of money and used part of it to buy said brothel to ensure that those unfortunate enough to end up there, like her mother, would be well looked after. She visits almost every day; the time she spends there goes towards paying off the contracts of those under her care (she cannot buy the contracts outright so she bends the rules by charging herself high fees to see each person there).

Amelia

Amelia being a BAMF. Still not keen on the armour details. I normally keep her designs really simple but felt that her armour should have a bit of detailing. Ho-hum. Technically it should also either have a head covering or war mask but neither worked in the illustration.

Edit: redesigned the armour. Still have my issues but I feel it's more balanced and consistent with what I want for this style.

Adrian

Pair of illustrations of an OC, Adrian. Left, the canon design and right, a modern design spawned out of a K-pop fuelled night of drawing. I plan on doing another of these for Adrian's mentor, Amelia.

Adrian's a bit of an attention whore. Lots of tattoos in both versions and hair cut to emphasize the large tissue damage to the right side of Adrian's face and shoulder. Adrian doesn't really like clothes, but the canon design mimic's Amelia's clothes (because Adrian idolizes her and totally wants to be her). In canon Adrian tends to walk around with little to no clothing because, seriously, fuck that. Modern design... well, it's about as naked as a person can get while still being stylish and not breaking any laws.

Mini post

Hey everyone, I'm not dead, just a bit under the weather. I probably won't be posting as frequently over the next month or two. Such a drag as I was really in a good groove this semester. Anyways, here's a couple of sketched done over the past few weeks.

Inspirations - birds, always birds. I love those little guys, as if that wasn't obvious by now. African wooden masks as well as pretty much any kind of mask that I've encountered in my trips to museums like the ROM and the Menil Collection.
Red col-erase, 2 weeks ago?
Amelia's face is off in the profile. Her jaw does not look like that. I'm not sold on Rodrigo's owl mask. I think I'll be fiddling around with that one some more.

Inspirations - mongolian boots (because they are so incredibly awesome), the hair styles I came up with for the Rapunzel pair, some old sketches
Red col-erase, 1 week ago
Been writing a lot for the All Hail universe thanks to the short story I'm working on for class. I decided that I needed a good look for the Northern Tribes that was very different from the look of Sentrans like Amelia, Rodrigo, and Adrian. I ended up using a lot of old sketch ideas and working with simpler, more angular lines than the puffy Sentran look. Lots of layers of wool to combat the cold. I think I need to incorporate the design on their boots into their clothes more.

Class doodles

I draw a lot in class (because I am the BEST student). I haven't posted any doodles for a long time. Here's some from today's batch!

Working title "Heart of the Self"

Inspirations - Tima from Metropolis

Pen

Bunch of character designs for a short comic story that I'd like to work on once I finish Rowan; the story is based off a short story written for class in November/December which I couldn't realize despite writing it about 4 times. I eventually realized that the reason why I couldn't get it right was because I thought it in images. Obviously I have to write it in a comic instead! Little tidbit about the story: its about a robot girl built to replace a dead daughter (parents in the middle). No text, completely picture based.

Mostly just one character/versions of the same character. The little pic on the right is, just fyi, not inspired by either the Terminator or Two-Face; she's a bit of an homage to Tima from the animated epic Metropolis based on Tesuka's graphic novel series of the same name and the famous silent film. I think the image on the left describes her the best.

Character designs for "All Hail" backstory

Pen

Designs for Amelia and Rodrigo (both can be seen in earlier posts) when they were much younger (23 and 50 respectively). I've been writing a short story for class about them at this point in their lives and wanted to get a good handle on their visuals (it really helps me to have a visual concept of characters, places, etc. prior to writing anything). The two images flanking both sides are of Amelia's mother, Talia. Her mother never shows up in the story, but, again, I like having a good idea of what she looks like. Her mother died very young, hardly into her thirties, which is why she looks so young here.

Year's End

Happy New Year one and all. Hope you had a good time last night and I hope your hangovers are not too difficult to deal with today. I've decided to do a big post to celebrate the end of one year and the beginning of another; the following will have bits and pieces from my backlog of art that I never got around to posting as well as what I consider the best of the year. Thank you to everyone who's visited this blog over the course of 2011! I look forward to the beginnings of 2012!

Backlog

Dec 30th 

Draw this while waiting for my plane to board. About 15 minutes, no references. I think it's pretty obvious that I had a big anime phase as a kid; her eyes are huge, haha. Clearly my favourite way of passing the time is drawing pretty ladies, because honestly, what else do people do with their time? Watch TV? Pfft.

Inspirations - an article in Times magazine

Dec 27 or 28th

While at home (Houston with the parents) I read an interesting article in Times discussing how there hasn't been a major shift in clothing over the last 20 years, which greatly contradicts the historical patterns. I have my own theories about this (including that fact that my generation has had everything handed to us on a silver platter, case in point: hipsters) but I found it interesting that no one's really tried to make a new style of clothing for the modern era. This is my take. Sci-fi infused clothing with poofy pants because skinny jeans, and jeans as a whole, need to go die in a fire. They're SO OLD and BORING. We really need a new pant style.

 

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

August 2011

A friend of mine Kat (you can find her under wkobra on dA and blogspot) had a theme drawing week where each day we had to do at least one drawing (doodle to full illustration) based off of the day's theme. I did Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander for films. Moderately successful; her mouth is off, as is the overall length of her face. Single colour and opacity on a white background.

Inspirations - birds, masks, blood
April 2011
4 layers, black background, white, two red (blood on hands and background red). I find it a lot easier to draw by thinking about form and then shaping it than line + fill. This was done by blocking everything out with white and then erasing to get the proper shape. This is related to All Hail; the mark at the bottom is one of my signatures (I go by "black koi" on a few websites).

Regina - Ghosts by Ibsen

Inspirations - taken primarily from a close reading of the text. The historical accuracy is so horribly off. Hair inspired by Wendy from Disney's Peter Pan.

January 2011

Watercolour, ink, pencil

1 of 2 illustrations for a class assignment back in January, Regina from Ibsen's Ghosts. I'm a huge fan of Ibsen, his work is so detailed and really lends itself to bold visual interpretations. The focus for Regina was that she was Oswald's "light" to save him from his venereal disease, she is, however, a child and cannot do these things for him. She's supposed to be a mild-mannered young woman, but she is easily tempted (flash of red after a certain scene). I'd like to revisit this design and make it more accurate (bustle is so off).

Oswald - Ghosts by Ibsen

Inspirations - same as Regina, Japanese kimono

January 2011

Watercolour, ink, pencil

2 or 2. Oswald is a failed painter whose primary characteristic is that his views are clouded and that he can no longer paint like he used to, at first this just seems like an artistic block but it is revealed that he's dying of syphilis like his late father. Red (lust) hidden by his artistic persona, a persona which is clouded (print on kimono). In the text he wears a smoking coat. I changed this to a kimono; they were trendy at the time. Colours to match Regina suggesting a connection between the two.

Summer 2010 - 2011

This was the first thing I drew when I started using photoshop. As I learned more about the program I worked on it more and more. I still visit it every so often to tweak things. A lot of it was just experimenting with brushes, painting styles, and the general mechanics of the program, which is why different parts are done in different methods. Painted over an old sketch from February 2010. Also related to All Hail, Alia from a previous post.

Faves of the Year

I'll hopefully be drawing some new things over the next week. I've got a week before school starts (yay!) but first I have to do some design work for my parents.

Faces and sketches

Hello all, been busy and had very little time to draw this semester. Classes ended yesterday but I've still got a week and a half before the end of exams. Posting a bunch of sketches from the semester. Nothing much, but it's something. Hopefully the break and coming term will allow for more drawing time!

Dec 1st

Got CS5, which I am very happy about. This was my first test sketch in the program. I'm loving the brush dynamics. Entirely done on one layer with one brush for paint (black) and one for erase and lots of alterations to the shapes and size of said brushes. I'm really looking forward to seeing what it can do over the break.

Life drawing

Late Nov. - yesterday

Been drawing people a lot. I often draw my classmates when bored in class, but I've been taking out my sketchbook a lot lately to pass time. The first set are from a coffee shop (top right was a guy at his computer and the rest are of my friends who are unable to stay still unless concentrating on pokemon). Second and third pages are just random people studying or texting. 2-10 minutes a piece.

Notebook doodles

Sometime in October? Before I stared the illustration from the previous post. A bunch of doodles of Adrain and his various hair lengths (he chops it off himself, which is why it's never even). Messing around with angles and trying to get a firm grip on his jawline, nose, and how well the right side of his face can work (because of the scarring). Also a rough sketch of the illustration from the previous post.

More notebook doddles

Inspirations - period waist/tailcoats, AtLA's clothing, geishas, middle-eastern clothing

October or November

Doddles of another character from the All Hail canon, Alia in her royalish clothing. 

The Animal - The Fountain

October?

Drawing of the Animal from the short story The Fountain, drawn on the actual photocopy of the story I have. Described as a dog-like being the size of a horse, all white and shaggy, with cat's paws. I'd like to illustrate this properly later.

Personal Projects

So. Little time for drawing lately and I've spent next to none of what I have doing costumes. Thought I'd do a post with some personal projects, sketches, and half-done illustrations for the hell of it. For those interested, it'll probably give you a bit of insight into how I draw.

Rowan - Rowan and the Spider

Almost finished panel for pg.2 of Rowan. Her hair is the most painful thing to cel-shade ever. I spent 3 hours drawing with friends at a cafe last night and spent most of it (the parts I wasn't laughing so hard I had to put down my pen) working on her hair.

Adrian - All Hail (part one of a pair of illustrations; the other is a colour swapped version with Amelia, see her below)
I did most of this in about 2 days after class and haven't had time to pick it back up. I really don't like how much white Adrian puts on a page (not a big fan of lots of white). He's so awkward in that sense. Mostly another colour/light experiment (which I do love on the other hand). I need to fix his jaw. It looks far too like Robert Pattinson's.

General Rodrigo Al Sayid - All Hail
Clearly this is half done; I only properly shaded his face, everything else is just blocked. I really like Rodrigo, but he's only scheduled to be in All Hail for a couple of chapters. I draw him from time to time just for the hell of it.

General Amelia Mondego - All Hail
She makes a come back from the first post! The other day I decided to do a series of sketches for all the layers of her clothing (knickers to normal clothes to armour). There's another 2 that need to be done. The first is just binding and shorts; second, under-armour (leather and wool) for battle; third, house clothes. I've slightly altered her design again. After doing the line up last year I realized that the current design stuck out from the overall direction. Now her hair is in a side braid, neckline is a straight slit, and her pants are extended with a cute slit hem at the ankle. As always, missing her left arm. It makes her so lopsided!

Amelia variations
Done for laughs (mine) while at coffee with friends (on the back of a tray sheet). The first and third are "Anime Amelia", larger boobs, more skin showing, cybernetic arm, long flowing hair, and a rounder face (younger too!), etc. Second is a poorly executed "American Mainstream Amelia". Why is she a boy? Because, like Marvel or DC would actually have a badass female character missing an arm; all their ladies have become walking sex objects. I have, however, faulted, Man!Amelia would have to be bulkier if he was in a proper America series.