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...