Idle time (but not really)

Scanned in some ship sketches while I'm waiting on Illustrator to save out some huge PDF files...

I'm getting pretty close to filling up this sketchbook, always a good feeling...

Busy busy busy

Just recently, I've gotten the opportunity to start working on design-oriented projects at work, helping to create art assets for one of the other studios. Came at a good time, too, since I've been really pushing myself to improve my illustration skills. Admittedly though, it's taken my mind away from the stuff I've been doing on the side, but that's okay for now, as long as I can still find the time to sketch on the bus...

Btw, my first assignment was to paint up a rocketship from scratch... How's that for convergence? :)

New name, new sketches

Credit for this blog's new name goes to my fantastically friendly coworker Marta. I like it, it fits.

New spaceship designs, some of which I hope to develop into digital paintings at some point:

And a couple drawings from my commute sketchbook:

In other news, I've gotten access to The Gnomon Workshop tutorials through work, and they're pretty sweet. Right now I'm brushing up on foundation stuff; I've often felt that I missed out on a lot of fundamentals, just getting by on guesswork and dumb luck... and I'm really looking to change that.

Concept ship

Here's an attempt at a concept art-style spaceship, using techniques I picked up while studying digital painting from various sources:

Considering it's the first time I've really tried this style, I'm pretty happy with it... I've read and watched a bunch of tutorials, and it's nice to finally put some of what I've learned into practice.

Ships ahoy!

So lately I've started carrying around two small sketchbooks, one for drawing from life, and one for doodling down ideas (mostly spaceship designs at this point). One for capturing what I see with my eyes, the other for capturing what I see in my head...

Here are a couple ship sketches:

Bus sketches

Gamut mapping

Color study of an alien attack drone:

This was an exercise in gamut mapping using a triadic color scheme, something I picked up from James Gurney's Color and Light. I started out with a grayscale drawing, then when over it with washes of yellow-orange, green and purple. Wasn't very precise about it, but I think it holds together well overall. Knowledge!