My scanner SUCKS
I hope you guys like my notebook sketches. I do them in pen and shade in pencil, but this time I used my markers. I’m also working on another picture that came to me yesterday.
I know, my fonts are terrible
I had a pretty decent weekend. It started out with a quiet Friday, something I truly needed. Saturday I decided to go sit in my local Starbucks and draw a little.
It usually takes me a few days to become more neutral in my thinking. This can usually turn up in my art. I start making pictures of faces that are not so much “happy”; more like, relaxed.
That’s sort of what I was going for here. No stress, just a tranquil look.
I feel like I did a decent job.
Of course, there were a few people (and at least one baby 😊) that took an interest in my work. One young lady even wanted to buy a print of one of my pieces!
I sent her to my page lionbrowneyes and offered to draw her as well. She happily agreed.
I was so motivated that I ended up creating another while talking to people around me. THAT was new! I hadn’t had to do it in awhile. But in the end I felt better for having done so.
So I had a nice, calm day. I didn’t think about any problems or concerns. I just commited to relaxing.
Yesterday,a after a weekend of cosplay and muscle cars, I decided to take a little time to relax. There aren’t many places in my small suburb where a person can do so; Starbuck’s being one of those. So I found a corner table slipped on my headphones, Irished up my green tea and got to work.
Since I am a fan of auto racing, I begin to draw. I heart radio was playing American top 40, but I had a problem.
People kept interrupting me.
I get it. I’m doing something you find interesting and you have questions. But headphones are the universal sign for “do not disturb”.
One guy in particular was a complete ass about it. Finally came and stuck his hand right in my face while I was in the middle of doing line work. Which caused me to mess up. Which caused me to freak out on him.
That’s me. I am not a small man. So me standing up and telling him “if you stick your hand in my face again, I’m going to break it in several places before I return it!!” had the effect I wanted. But I hated it because my mood was completely ruined. Worse, I was angry and it’d take awhile to relax enough to be in my groove again.
I went outside. Just sat at a table and stared into traffic until I calmed down. I started drawing. My only happy place.
Trespassers beware.
Thumbnails can be fun as long as you can keep from going overboard.Which I rarely attempt to do.
So instead I let myself have fun with it; I take it however far it can go. Sometimes I make a simple drawing; others I get the lizard, lol.
I guess what I’m saying is that I’m learning to remove the limits I put on myself. That’sa good thing.
Right?
Okay the flag looked a little clunky. So I got rid of it, which meant I had to do something with her other arm. Plus I had to consider her light sources, so in the end I came up with this. Now to add a color layer and check it all out…
…success!
After a LOOONG work day, I came home and finished up some of the coloring for the bodywork. For me this is easier than everything that came before. The hardest part is knowing when to stop adding detail. Sometimes I go too far and can’t recover, but an artist named Warren Louw explained it to me.
Ha! Warren. If you had told me in the 80’s that one of my friends and mentors would be a white South Afrikaan, I would have laughed at you. I’m glad my world has grown. I was never prejudiced, but apartheid didn’t seem like a friendly environment to me. In many ways though, its a version of my beloved South.
and now for the same thing done differently…
Any time you can get a moment to yourself, you should try to indulge yourself. At least that’s the way I feel about it. Next week I’m going to be out of town for a week with a lot of downtime involved. Well, you KNOW I’m taking my laptop and some digital art will ensue, hahaha. So from Monday on expect multiple posts from me!
Today I managed to finish my line work! It was not as bad as I thought, so I decided to Export my image into Photoshop. Sounds easy right? Well, it wasn’t! First it didn’t want to take my resolution, then it tried to merge my layers. I finally got what I wanted and started to set it up in ‘shop.
Once I had it there, I decided to clone the “detail” layer (ctrl J) then merge it with the line work layer. I also decided to add a color background in order to make sure no gaps appeared in my colors. I chose gray.
Having combined the layers allowed me to make selections that I could color anyway necessary. I chose a black and dark gray layers to add those colors in appropriately.
That’s it for tonight. Not only will I finish this soon, my muse for next month has already said yes! It’s so good to be me…
line work matters!
I decided that this month’s muse would be my son. It’s funny, you would think I would spend more time drawing my loved ones, but for whatever reason, I don’t. Maybe its mental or maybe I don’t want to open the floodgates; after all, once you began drawing family they all think you should.
So I made Sure that I wanted to do this first. because honestly the more time passed, the more it was becoming an issue and bothering me. Friday I started the line work. Then erased. Then changed. Then erased. It had to look like him and have his shape, so after several hours I got the desired effect. As usual, I sketched a rough shape, then did the detail work at one brush size, then outlined the overall shapes in a larger one. Since I’m self taught, it took a few pictures to get this down pat. Now I always organize this way.
Once I had all the line work completed and organized, I used the selection tool and created layers for the jacket, sweater, t-shirt, jeans, skin and shoes. I colored each with a brush set for 0% hardness and 25% opacity. On the shirt and jeans, an additional blue was brushed in at 7% and 12%, respectively.
The background will be done last. Honestly I’ve had several ideas, but none of them have stood out. We’ll see. In the meantime I’ll keep working on this and others.
Fun on a bun!
Howly Time! 