Old man nap

Haven't been drawing in a while, been a bit too preoccupied... Sitting on the bus this morning, I got hit with the notion of doing a quick drawing; at first I was all like, Nah, I don't feel like it, but then the guilt set in-- You really should be drawing more, now's as good a time as any.
Whipped up a sketch of an old guy sitting in front of me, and refined it somewhat afterwards. I felt that I overdid it, as I'm often wont to do, so this version is actually a couple steps back. Walking away from a painting before it's pushed too far is something I really need to work on.

Robot b&w sketches

Freehand sketches with thin-tipped Sharpie and one of those India ink calligraphy pens:

I think for the moment I'm going to go back to the basics (again... and again, and again), working in black and white and grayscale, really try and get comfortable with value and form...

Blade-bot

An exercise in Colors, intentionally working dark, trying to play with light and shadow. Also experimenting with letting some underpainting show through... While I really like working with the textured brush, it's so easy to overdo it; I need to work on finding the right balance.

Zap-bot

Messing around with the new official v1.1 release of Colors! for DS, a freeform painted robot doodle:

Unfortunately, I'm not able to post it to the online Colors gallery due to a glitch-- the suspicion is that it's data corruption coming from either the microSD card or the flash cart. I'll have to test it out on another spare microSD I've got; otherwise I'll have to shop around for a new flash cart...

Robo Tweet

I've been working with the open beta for Colors v1.1, which is for the most part really nice. It's got a new textured brush, which allows for me to play around with a more painterly look. For grins, I re-worked an older drawing (one that I'd already translated into a watercolor painting before), and I like the way it turned out, despite some program bugs:

(The binary code translates into "TWEET", by the way.)

For comparison, here's the original doodle I did about three years ago (almost to the day, in fact):



It's interesting to me to see how much my style has changed in the last couple years. Hopefully I can keep that going...

Speedpaint animation test

Testing out posting a speedpaint animation onto Youtube...

Landscape

Something a little different for me, a speedpaint landscape from a photoref:



The objective was to concentrate on color and value, so I worked from a relatively "simple" reference; simple insofar as it was a pretty generic-looking landscape, which allowed for a high fudge factor.

Didn't use any linework, started out with blobs of form and tightened it as I went along. Chroma in the foreground is a little high, but that was intentional-- I find that my paintings tend to be a little flat, so I'm trying to push the color a little more.

Just have to keep practicing...

Sea Scout

Undersea scout ship on patrol:



Some concept art that started as a doodle while on the train to work...

Robot Alley

A random doodle from out of my sketchbook... I like that it seems to suggest a story, I'm thinking maybe a private detective meeting up with a cyborg informant in the back alley of some seedy spaceport.

Mira final

Okay, I think I'm done.

Latest Mira stage

The Mira portrait is just about close to done...



I've put in more detail than I originally planned at the outset, which is unexpected since I'm only working with a canvas of 384 x 512 pixels. Darn zoom tool, it's so easy to get lost in it. But that's okay, I'm just going with the flow. I have to work on her neck and body, and then add the finishing touches, and that should do it. Almost there...

Mira continued

Here's where I'm at with the Mira portrait at the moment:



I've been laying down darker tones, molding some dimension into it, and it feels like it's starting to pop out some. I'm trying to be careful not to overwork it, zoom out from time to time and make sure I've still got a sense of the whole picture. I think I might leave the painting alone for a little while and let it stew, and come back at it later with fresher eyes. That, and spend some time with Mira :)

Mira-in-progress

A couple stages of the Mira painting:



Right now I'm working on the halftones, pushing some of the values, tightening up details as I go along... I want the final version to be somewhat painterly, I'd like to be able to see the brushstrokes.

Idling

Not much going on in the way of drawing, outside of doodling in my sketchbook during meetings. I wanted to try to get back into working in color more, so I started a painting of my daughter Mira, here's what it's looking like so far:



I've got to punch up the contrast as usual, and I'm sure the proportions are off, but as long as I can capture the essence of her, I'll be satisfied. I just gotta paint, paint, paint. And then paint some more.

Spacey ships

Some new spaceship sketches:

Vehicles

Been spending my commute time sketching ships and such...

Kind of Cylon-ish, and the lines for some reason make me think of "GalaxyQuest":


This one reminds me of the fighter ship from the movie version of "Wing Commander", which I'm ashamed to admit I saw in the theater:


Seems like a cross between the animated Batmobile and the APC from "Aliens":

Colors! with Photoshop redux

I've been studying some Lynda.com Photoshop tutorials for work, and for kicks I applied some of what I learned to an old Colors! robot painting I did. Here's the original:




I messed around with high pass and blur using layer masks, and brought in some texture to make it a little more painterly. I'm pleased with the results:



What's nice is it wasn't all that hard to do as techniques go, and I think it gave the pic some visual punch.

Latest round of commute sketches

Just about filled the little sketchpad, ended up ordering a couple new ones. The pad is just the right size for keeping in a pocket and pulling it out on a whim. Page size is just small enough to not be intimidating-- "Oh, I can pull off a quickie sketch, not like I have a huge white sheet of paper to fill..."

Text is worth a thousand sketches

When I consider drawing someone in public clandestinely, I find there's always a slight hesitation at the thought that at any moment the person could notice I'm drawing them, get really upset and snatch my sketchbook out of my hands, rip out the pages and throw them to the ground, to stomp on them repeatedly.

But if they're preoccupied with, say, texting or surfing the web on their phone, it's all good in the 'hood...

Commute: The Continuing Voyages

Woman talking on the phone, she was wearing some big rings:



Didn't really know where to begin with this sketch, so I just started in a corner and worked my way out... Initially there wasn't anyone in the frame when I started drawing, but I figured someone would step in eventually, and I could just add them in later:



Doing quick sketches on public transportation can be exhilirating, but at the same time it can be a little heartbreaking; when you come upon a subject with so much interesting detail you feel like you could sit and sketch it all day, but you only have a few minutes within which to capture it before something changes... like your view gets blocked by another passenger, or you arrive at your stop, etc.

Commute people

I liked how this young lady's big hood hung over the back of her seat:




This fellow reading the paper had on Clark Kent-style glasses with really thick rims. At first I thought he was wearing eyeglass cords, but they were probably just earphones:



Book in one hand, coffee in the other. She had on some neat boots, too:



Oh, and I'll tell you what, sketching on a bus that seems intent upon hitting every single pothole and bump on the road is pretty challenging.

Latest commute sketchwork

Slowly but surely I seem to be mapping out the area around the Addison Brown Line stop:



Some people on the bus sketches:

Street corner sketch

One of my weaknesses has always been backgrounds and environments, so these sketches are turning out to be good exercise. I'm finding that I don't need to make them perfectly accurate, just picking out enough detail to capture the look of a scene is sufficient. And it's fun.

Corner of Addison and Ravenswood:

New sketches from my commute

Newspaper vending machines outside the Addison Brown Line stop:



Lady reading on the Ravenswood train heading to Kimball, I liked what the light was doing with her hat:

On-the-go sketches

Been preoccupied since the birth of my daughter (she'll be 7 weeks old as of Wednesday); too busy, too tired, too lazy to draw. I have a little sketchpad that I got as a gift, I'm going to try and do quickie drawings during my work commute... We'll have to see how long I can keep that going.