Everything that's old is new again

Things have been a bit quiet on the illustration front for me, being kept busy with work and family life... One creative outlet I've found is colorizing old black and white photos that people have been posting on Reddit. It's been an interesting way to practice photo retouching, as well as explore color theory and lighting.

Here are a couple before-and-afters of pics I've worked on:

New stuff

After what seems like forever and a day, I've got some new stuff to post. I've been super-busy at work, and haven't been able to do much art for myself beyond the random quick doodle. But recently, we were offered the opportunity to submit illustrations to display in an upcoming gallery-style showing at work, and I decided to take some older sketches and develop them further...

Frostfoot, watercolor and marker

The original drawing of Frostfoot sprung from a weekly sketch challenge I participated in for the topic Ways Penguins Fly, and I've always wanted to return to it. From the outset I envisioned the Frostfoot sketch as a watercolor painting, like something out of a children's storybook, and this is pretty close to what I had in mind. I think the colors I used are still a little too "standard" but I feel like my sense of value is getting better.

Drizzle version 2.0, Photoshop

Another one where I was going for a storybook feel, per the original DS painting. It's still rough around the edges and I consider it a work-in-progress, but the intent is there; I'm mostly happy with the way it's turned out so far. I may tweak it a little further before final submission.

So hey, new art! Woot!

Raygun enhancing

I've taken the raygun illo into Photoshop and am noodling around with things like adding texture, boosting saturation, and playing with lighting:

Original reference photo here. (Remixed as allowed per Creative Commons 2.0 (by-nc-sa))

Trying not to get ahead of myself

 

This is a work-in-progress I've been doodling on and off during my morning and evening commute. I've been keeping it pretty loose and painterly, conditioning myself to work with larger textured brushes. I started to jump the gun a bit in terms of detail with the cockpit window, I'm going to leave it alone for now and try and get everything else in the scene up to snuff.

Pew-pew continued

Here's where the raygun rendering stands currently:

I added the little targeting sight thingy, and refined some of the detail in the grip. Next step is to take it into Photoshop and add some texture.

Here's what the underlying mesh looks like:

Original reference photo here. (Remixed as allowed per Creative Commons 2.0 (by-nc-sa))

Raygun work-in-progress

Here's a new gradient mesh illustration I'm working on:

Pew-pew!

Still rough around the edges, but I'm liking the way meshes work with metallics...

Original reference photo here. (Remixed as allowed per Creative Commons 2.0 (by-nc-sa))

Bus sketches

It's sometimes difficult with the winter cold to sketch during a commute, but people in this season can be fun to draw, with their big poofy coats and draping scarves...