Monthly Archives: April 2017

Illicit Response

Okay…. I’m not sure about the age of my audience. I drew this pretty quickly, so hopefully no one gets upset. Ready? Here we go…

So as much as finished pieces gets all the glory, it’s the ground work that makes it all come together.

I honestly was never one for sketching in the past. If I had an idea, I would just dive right in, no plan, just improvising as needed.

But as I got further along in my career, I learned that having a plan isn’t necessarily a bad thing! It actually helps to know in advance what you’re doing. It helps in a lot of ways.

For instance, I already knew where my light source would come from. It made layering my skin tones a LOT simpler.

Having a good layout helps with the speed I’m able to use here. I can reverse the image to make sure I have the balance needed.

Now that I’m happy with it, I can begin to blend my colors and perform little tweaks that are required for the look I’m after.

Now all I need to do is clean up my Image and give her shadows a little depth by cooling them off.

A lot of these things become easier with time. Give them a try!

Mandatory Wishes

I finally made my price list for commissioned work. It didn’t take me too long; it was more of a matter of me procrastinating, truthfully.

No, this isn’t going to be a rant about customers and what they’re willing to pay. Instead I’m talking about artists and what’sconsidered fair market value for what they create.

Let’s face it; some (most) of the artists I know are terrible at marketing themselves. Quite a few are antisocial, which is fine if you’re already famous, not so much when you’re a complete unknown.

My best and possibly worst examples of this are scammers; people who either modify an artist’ work or copy it completely in order to sell it as their own. These scum have NO problem with confidence or marketing. I honestly believe that a lot of artists could benefit from learning how to do so from these inhuman things.

There are a lot of reasons for not succeeding. You should never let yourself be one of them.

Rdh

Finally!!! My page has been acting up for a couple of weeks, but it seems to be working so far. You know what that means kids? You guys get a twofer!

So I went back to touch up this image. You guys might remember that I drew this using prismacolor markers. Well after getting a really good scan created I was not impressed with the quality of my image.

So I put it in Photoshop and added a few gradients and highlights. The difference was huge! It was nice taking a skill I already had and using a new one to create a totally different effect.

Anyway, it restored my faith in being able to do vehicles. I might even give my transformer, Optimus Prime, an update.