Daily Draw February days 2-11

Days 3 and 6 were bust so they're not being posted here.
From top to bottom: day 2 - centaur, day 4 - naga, day 5 - mermaid, day 7 - plant, day 8 - zombie, day 9 - insect, day 10 - demon, day 11 - robots

Even more ink

Bunch of ink drawings from last night's drawing session. The little fattie in the middle is now my icon for both this blog and my tumblr blog.

Clothing ideas

Clothing ideas for myself, the first from a month ago and the second from today. I have a lot of fabric and it could use some culling. The green vest, black top, and simple black light jacket are musts.

Hats!

I started a millinery class on Monday and am now trying to design the 5 hats I'll be making over the course of the semester. I've figured out one thus far, the most complex and 4th due, a buckram fabric covered hat. I'm trying to work primarily with fabrics and notions I already own (to cull the masses) so I'll be making it out of raw silk (turquoise and black) with a sheer black fabric covering the turquoise. Likely lined with a dark grey.

Dailies

Been doing daily costume/fashion drawings for an hour over on Tumblr. These were today's and I liked them so I thought I'd share them here.

Hybrids

Mermaid painted in a few hours this afternoon/evening. Feels good to be able to paint again. Been too tired and unable to focus to do anything more than cell-shading for so long.

Pair of sketches, including the mermaid sketch, from last night. I'd like to do a pair of illustrations with the satyr girl and another satyr I drew in December. Got to finish other projects first.

Something old and something new

Returned to an old character from last year that I kind of forgot about. Been feeling that my style's been getting stagnant lately so I played around with colour and shapes on a sketch from last night for a bit. Liking it. More vibrant and eye catching. Now to just get over my fear of drawing clothes accurately in motion and perspective in digital.

Year's end

Little early but might as well post now! First something new to set the year off right,

An Art Nouveau (specifically Mucha) inspired illustration that I'll be submitting to Threadless for consideration. I'll post again once I submit and would appreciate any votes my few followers might be willing to provide (nudgenudgewinkwink).

Aaannnddd a compilation of my favourites from the year:

More design challenge sketches

 Sketches for "leather" and "suits" challenges, both of which I'd like to return to. Still can't decide if the plant/deer man should have little breeches or not. I kind of like him all fuzzy.

Mini-illustration for "shorts". The original sketch was horrible so I redid her in photoshop with a new colouring style that I felt suited her design. Not something I'm totally comfortable with, but I'd like to work with it some more in the future.

Future sketches

Doing a 30 day challenge over on my tumblr that focuses on costume/character design. I liked this sketch so I thought I'd post it here as well. This is from day 2.
Basically I wanted to create a simple, feasible design style which revolved around major environmental changes. Thus, breathing masks, heavy duty goggles, and almost completely covered bodies (skin-tight body suits with light layers over top).

Impractical outfit

Inspirations - Eva Unit 01's shoulders, anime styles in general, Helba from .Hack
Trying to push myself out of everything must be practical and/or simple and get into more complex stuff. As a result this ended up happening and it feels so teenager, ugh, but at the same time yeah! I'm not happy with the bottom half but that's mostly because in the sketching stage I was not thinking at all about the colour layout and paid for it later. I do, however, very much like waist up. I might mess around with this more later.
She needs a lance. If she belonged in a JRPG she would so be a lance person.

Photoshoppin' again

Haven't had the attention span lately to open up photoshop (much to the dismay of my entire self). I started tonight drawing in a different way than normal to get myself back into the groove and to get my head working. I find drawing jolts me into a good place when my head's foggy.

Inspirations - The Art of Tron: Legacy, Evangelion
There are actually three working versions and I'm kind of torn between which one I like best (I'm not as keen on the third/can't figure out how to continue with it). It's all on one layer so I'm trying to make sure I can go back if I fuck something up. Everything's done with the lasso tool. I really enjoy using it but often forget of its existence.
I've been trying to get out of my tendency towards fashion/couture/historical costume and more towards a streamlined look to get out of my comfort zone a bit more. I don't know if this counts as a success; I think I found a midway point with sci-fi couture instead of straight up different, haha.
I'm going to stop rambling now.

Correction

This is also part of my productivity levels yesterday. Right after posting last night and snuggling up for bed this decided to swim into my head. I guess when the only thing you can do in a day is sit and fester in your own head you come up with something eventually, even if it's not what you want (in this case, material for my Habibi paper).

Inspirations - the hipster's hood from Prometheus, Eureka seveN
The drape of the sleeves is really off, but it was 1am and I don't care.
On a side note, I loved the costumes in Prometheus. A lot of people seem to feel that they're too modern/too entrenched in modern styles, but I thought that was very appropriate considering the trend in minimal clothing changes over the course of the last few decades. I thought they were just that one step forward enough to work. The hood (cylindrical instead of a typical hood) was brilliant - a simple, radical change to something that is so common in everyday clothing. I'm smitten with it and it'll probably show up in my work a lot now (along with Mongolian-stlye boots and massive pants).

Only productive thing I did today

Today was one of my not so great days. I've been rewatching an anime I really liked as a teenager (Eureka seveN) to pass the time on such days. Back when I was in my teen years it really influenced my design style - which was a good thing in my mind and still is. Even though the animation is shoddy the production design and attention to detail is top-notch. It's still home to some of my favourite designs even after all these years.
I realized the other day that my costume history and construction background, in odd ways, hinders my ability to design. My designs always feel so confined to the realms of reality and what I know could be created instead of just being a product of imagination. I'm really trying to get away from that. It's one of the reasons why I'm trying to revisit old influences and finding new ones lately.

Anyways, enough angsting. This is really the only thing I did with my day aside from a small amount of reading. Unfortunately it was sketched in non-erasable pencil crayon so I couldn't fix things I didn't like. I'm definitely going to continue with this style for the series so I'll fix those things then.

Inspirations - Eureka seveN, Medieval lappets, military coats, men's doublets (mid 17th century), bugs
Couldn't figure out what to do with the boots. I'll figure that one out later. I'd like to fix the lower portion of the coat so that it has a more complex hem. I think I'll have this (when finished) done in multiple layers of clothing (with and without the coat, specifically so I can show the waistline of the pants at the back). The guy counterpart should be easy. I like this style. It's really easy for me to work with, but feels more outside my normal boundaries.

More sketches

Hello, all. Sorry about the lack of posting. Here's hoping that weekly meet ups with my classy lady artist friends gets me back on a somewhat normal drawing schedule. Unfortunately for the next month I'll be working on some papers from last term so drawing will be limited. However, during July and August expect a flood of drawings. I'll be working on several series to get some good portfolio work and be learning programs like Mudbox and Sketchbook Pro, which if you're a digital artist I highly recommend! It works like traditional drawing mediums so it's great for sketching and lines. Here's hoping it helps my atrocious digital line work.

Anyways, here are some early sketches of the series I'll be working on. I'm planning on doing a guy and girl in various styles of clothing to show my range.

 Inspirations - Prometheus and Mass Effect, skeletons
Space suits which will probably get full colours in the final designs. Girl front and guy back; very similar designs but blockier for the guy suit.
I might also do environment sketches for this pair as well. I find it funny that in every SPACE! series it's all metal and there's no natural environments. It's like everyone assumes that in order to have excursions in space humans had to have killed the planet prior to the beginning of the series. Silly.

 Inspirations - the Equalists in Korra and Iron Man's hand blaster, Mongolian boots (my love and joy), the hoods from Assassins Creed
Nothing to say. Trying to figure out a boy counterpart that's substantially different. This one feels pretty comfortable for me. I'm going to be trying to get away from this kind of design with the others.

 Inspirations - hairstyles of various Native American tribes and the hair of Amy Dorrit's sister in BBC's Little Dorrit
I think the clothes will end up a lot more Japanese even though these started out based on Native hair styles.

My good friend, Kat, just finished her fourth year and her thesis film. I finally got to see it properly on Saturday at the Toronto Youth Shorts Film Festival. I decided to do a quick sketch of the film's main character, Maki. I assure you Maki's a very lovely young lady, I just really like her as a pissed off snake. This is, for the record, about as cartoonish as I go.

Sketches

Drawings! I haven't been able to draw lately but here's a few sketches from this week.

Inspirations - I'm not quite sure at the moment, but I'm tempted to blame the large amount of BBC I've been watching since mum invaded. Also a pair of earrings from Oscura, which is a wonderful webcomic that has a very sketchy updating schedule.

Pencil

I'm not sold on the sleeves but I'm liking the head/shoulder area. This is one of those "damn it's 2 in the morning and I was just about to fall to sleep now I have to tumble out of bed to find the sketchbook before the idea leaves and gaaaahhhh why does light hurt so much" drawings. I'd like to work on it more later.

Korra from Legend of Korra

Ballpoint pen

Began sketching this while visiting my dad's shop on Saturday. If you haven't tuned into LoK yet you really should. The series is incredibly well researched and has some amazing production design. If you're a fan of fantasy, Asia, or the Roaring Twenties I cannot suggest this series more highly. I'm going to stop being a fangirl now.

My ballpoint pen skills are lacking. I really need to work on that. Clearly I am out of practice.

I'm hoping that I can get back into the game again soon. I'd like to finish the series started last week (and fix that illustration), get some character designs done, as well as some environment designs, and start experimenting with styles again - I'm not in a rut, but I do feel like I need to up the ante again some time soon. Also, please excuse my loopiness/rambling.