Space trucks

Something I drew in my sketchbook last weekend, a pair of galactic hyperways transports, drawn with Sharpie and markers:



I really should be drawing more...

Doodly doodly do

I haven't done much in the way of illustration lately, been kind of idling while waiting for the new version of Colors! for DS to be released. Mostly just doodling in my sketchbook in pen and marker-- I found this double-tipped calligraphy marker that lays down the richest black I can recall seeing, unfortunately the tip isn't very sturdy and is starting to crumble. Ah well. Anyway, I've been messing around with spotting blacks and working with contrast. Back to basics...

Anyhoo, here's a page out of my sketchbook representative of the doodling:

Ice ship

Haven't posted in a while, been preoccupied with work and the not-yet-born-but-coming-soon baby... I was inspired by the art on the Conceptships Blog and wanted to try my hand at a quickie ship rendering:



Spaceship skimming over the surface of an icy planet, Colors for DS plus Photoshop.

Ninja Robot with skates and a sword

A robot with laser skates and a sword, based on the previous shadow drawing, this one has more of a chalk/pastel feel to it:



Now that I think about it, there was a ninja robot in the cartoon "Bots Master" that had skates... it's entirely possible that's where I got the idea from. At any rate, I'm digging the whole painting in Colors! and adding texture in Photoshop thing.

Nifty

Took a robot painting I did in Colors! into Photoshop and slapped a texture layer on it just for grins, and I think it turned out really nice:



Gives it a watercolor/gouache-y feel. Definitely something I need to play with more...

btw, the texture came from here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bittbox/ / CC BY 2.0

Shadows

Played around with a shadowing exercise sketch:



The glowing "laser skates" are one of the concepts I've been toying with for the "Extreme Sports" robot story I've been working on...

And here's another shadowed 'bot:

When in doubt, paint a robot

Robot a-runnin'...



Been working lately with penciling and inking drawings, practicing spotting blacks, and have been frustrated with it because it just looks too... clean. Anyway, was flipping through Ashley Wood's "Grande Fanta" and got the urge to do a messy painting, which was cathartic...

Panel test

Been experimenting with the idea of using Colors! to paint comic strip panels, found that doing characters with detailed backgrounds might not be practical, for the most part. Ended up sketching the character and background separate and then composited them in Photoshop, seems to work fine. Also added a texture overlay to the background to rough it up a little...

Pre-flight Battle Prep

Colors painting based on a drawing out of my sketchbook:

Robot Tank

Doodled this while I was waiting for the IT Department to install some software on my machine:



Pretty much one of those stream-of-consciousness sketches, where I wasn't quite sure where I was going with it at first. There are a couple things I like about the final piece, particularly the earthy subdued tones.

New robot noggin

Doodled while waiting for a midnight showing of the newest Harry Potter movie...



Btw, the movie was really good. Not as much action as the previous films I thought, this one was more about character development, with nice bits of quirk and nuance everywhere. Also loved the cinematography; there were a couple scenes where, in the way they were shot, I was like hey, that's fun! All in all a good time, but now after not having gotten to sleep last night 'til 4 in the morning, I'm quite zombified...

Freelance finished (hopefully)

Here are the finished paintings, albeit scaled down considerably:



I ended up editing the panther quite a bit; the others stayed pretty much the same, relatively speaking. It's a shame these are going to be printed on umbrella panels, a lot of the art is going to wind up being cropped out... C'est la vie. At least it's done, unless the client requests some changes, which usually ends up being the case.

At any rate, I'm going to go sleep now.

Freelance Numero Cuatro

Last one! Mr. Sea Otter:



So most of the heavy lifting is done, it should be pretty downhill from here...

Freelance number three

Polar bear:



One more and then I can move on to the final step...

Freelance Woof

Here's another piece of the freelance project, this one's a gray wolf:



In order to bump up the colors, I superimposed the layer with a copy, and set the copied layer to "Hard Light" mode... that has the effect of increasing the color saturation, while tightening up the contrast, for a bit more pop.

It's kind of reminiscent of some old gouache and acrylic illustration from a 50's textbook...

Freelance project work-in-progress

Here's one of the pieces I'm currently working on, of a Florida panther:



I had to pop the saturation a little in Photoshop; one of the things I find about working in Colors is that I tend to misjudge the color levels while I'm painting, and when I transfer the final pic to computer it looks flatter than I intended. But that's okay for this project, since I'm just laying down the foundation to paint over in PS...

Freelance this weekend

This weekend I've got a freelance project to work on, the client is a wildlife preservation group that wanted some painterly pieces done for a promo umbrella. I did mockup color roughs using Colors! for DS. For the final pieces I'm taking those roughs, polishing them up some more in Colors, and then I'll upsize them in Photoshop and add the finishing touches. It's an experiment, but one I suspect should work well.

Here's an unused color rough of a dolphin, I think I dashed this out in about 15-20 minutes:

More robot dev sketches

These are pretty rough, I'm still feeling my way 'round for a style I'm confident about...

Robot rough

So progress on this robot-filled story I've been working on has been slooooow, but at least there's some movement. Here's a rough drawing, playing around with a sketch in Photoshop:

Alchemy

So I've seen this program "Alchemy" a while ago, and thought it was an interesting random shape generator. However, it didn't really occur to me at the time how I could use it. But today it hit me, it's actually a really nice way for me to create quick thumbnails to explore robot shapes. It'll be a great help in particular because I've felt recently my stuff has become a little stale.

I've only been able to mess with it a little bit, but in a short time I've found it's simple and easy to use. I like the mirror function, which makes drawing up a robot shape really really fast.

Anyway, here are some quickie Alchemy doodles that I might develop a bit further.

Nota Bene 'bot

New robo, painted using only hard brush, but with varying opacity:

New robot head

A new robot head drawing...

Four eyes

New robot, I'm happy with the way this one turned out:

Techno-organic

Here's a new robot done in Colors! for DS...

Probe

Testing out the new scanner at work:

Robots!

I've been participating in the the 3A Toys/Ashley Wood forums and submitted some drawings for their month-long sketch jam/art contest... the subject for this month is "Robots" so I couldn't resist...

New SketchCrawl

Wow, it's been forever and a day since I've posted here. Anyway, here's a new SketchCrawl picture... I went down to my old high school, Lane Tech, and drew the clock tower. It was a bit cold, so I had to wear my mittens.



Kind of took me back... I remember when I was a freshman, one of our first assignments for art class was to draw the clock tower. I recall riding my bike up to school (one of the few times I rode my bike back then, a rickety old ten-speed) and sketched on a lazy Saturday afternoon...

Happy Draw A Dinosaur Day!

Here are my entries for Draw A Dinosaur Day '09:

Action Method Online

I've been slowly piecing together the materials for the comic idea, with the help of a productivity manager called Action Method Online from Behance. I've been using it to collect and track notes, and write the script in bits and pieces whenever free time presents itself. It's proven to be a great help in organizing my ideas and figuring out what needs to get done.

More story sketches

Here are a couple more preliminary sketches for the robot story thingie:

SketchCrawl entry

Here's a drawing I did of a view out my living room window, for SketchCrawl.com:

Story sketches

Things have come to a dead stop here at work, so I had some time to scan in a couple sketches.

Here are some preliminary sketches of the main robot from the story I've been developing:



Another robot head concept:



And these are a couple of mecha sketches that, while I don't know that they'll necessarily appear in the story, inform the general direction of the design style I'm leaning towards: