Red on the Mesa Process

I'm home sick drinking all the ginger ale in the tri state area so I thought I'd do a little write up on the process of a recent illustration I've finished!

I secretly want to call this 'Red on Top of the World' but I think a Pride & Prejudice film score reference is too esoteric.

I've been wanting to do another piece with Red for a while, a character I first drew a couple of years ago, as seen here in this file photo:

A month or so ago the idea of a really brightly colored desert really started to appeal to me, her story that I've been slowly putting together (to eventually be a comic or some other media) isn't 100% happy but I didn't want to set it in a grimdark kinda place and deserts aren't always just brown, I'm from Utah I'm an expert on deserts.

I knew I wanted her observing the landscape, I think these kinda of compositions are my favorite, the lone traveler and the vastness of the landscape behind them, or maybe I just really should admit I really like painting landscapes (I've always said I was more a character than environment artist, maybe I'm lying to myself, haha). Or maybe I'm just always super inspired by NC Wyeth:

ANYWAY, I did a ton of little pencil sketches during work meetings and on the bus trying to figure this painting out, and I can't find them otherwise I'd post them here, but imagine a hastily drawn rectangle with a bunch of indecipherable shapes in it. I then attempted to draw it out on the computer, thinking I'd figured it all out, which I hadn't and it was hard. So I jumped straight to color & shape because for some reason I'm starting to really like doing that lately, figuring things out in shapes instead of line sometimes really helps with environments for me. This whole scientific process is seen here:

So for choosing colors, it was actually pretty easy. I have this fantastic Photoshop addon called Coolorus. I put in the red of Red's #D71215 poncho (her namesake). I wanted to keep it warm since the desert is hot, etc, and as red is already warm I picked an analogic (essentially means 'the same', think analogy) color scheme. 

The addon has a handy button for schemes above the color wheel, I picked an accent too because maybe some green would look good in there somewhere. For Red herself I chose the colors in the original and oranged them up a bit, I mostly wanted her poncho/head to stand out, didn't care as much about the boots/legs.

Using these colors as a base I just changed the brightness/saturation/hue a bit for the different levels of the painting; foreground would be the the darker, cooler fuschia, midground a light orange, background, a paler, bluer (atmospheric perspective) version of the fuschia and the sky a very pale green.

I struggled with the composition of this one, as composition is not one of my strongest points. I tried to make the lines of the landscape lead to and frame her, as well as abusing the rule of thirds just a little bit.

I also checked my values a lot, with a white layer set to color above everything. I wanted her to be the darkest darks and some of the lightest lights (the clouds had to be white tho, that was in my vision) 

and there ya go!

Here's this again in case you forgot after reading all that.

BONUS:

~under the red poncho~

Thanks for reading!

Peter & The Wolf 4 : Free At Last Edition

It's been a while, almost a month! School-wise I am almost done, just a physics final.
I was able to get pretty far on this project, I think there's a couple of things I still want to do to fill it out a bit more, especially more story moments, but this was the final turn in for the class. :D

I'm going to break this up into a few posts since this could get a bit long. So look for the illustrations in the next post!  --  check it out here!

Peter's turn around (I originally had them all painted but I liked the look of the lineart next to the 3/4)

The many faces of Peter: 

The wolf final

The wolf chilling 

The Birds!

Ducks (still want to do a character sheet for the final bird/duck)

Plants/trees! 

The next couple of posts will go over the process and final on the two story illustrations I was able to complete. It was at times was difficult and involved but good in the end?

SUPER BONUS

First attempts at some trees, I learned tree stuff while working on these!

just let it go man

So this thing

went through an interesting process. I had just seen Frozen at CTN, and Elsa is neat so, for the first time in forever (ha) , I wanted to do some fan art. I scrawled out these sad attempts before giving up in frustration.

Being annoyed with myself and knowing I could do better I decided to do some studies of the pose, how can I get her to look more joyous, free, uplifted, I sketched some junk in my sketchbook. Trying to emphasize up in her pose.  I realized that my straight on approach in the above was super boring, and 3/4 kind of gives her more elegance as well.

(no picture because they are jumbled among other sketches at this point and decipherable only by an ancient code unknowable by man at this current time)

So then I tried again, I drew this on my Surface pro entirely, because I could be huddled among blankets while drawing. Also trying out a process gif rather than a huge line of images. I had some issues with her chin being kind of big early on for some reason.

and there you go!

BONASUUU

A drawing of the girl from previous posts

 (who thanks to an awesome comment is now named Lenna)

Statue Falls Process

I should just hire someone to title my stuff. IT IS HARD.

This was done for an illustration class at school which I love, I wish I could take 500000 more of them :C

So I wanted to do a series of illustrations with generally the same characters kind of telling a story, but more just stand alone pieces. The first I wanted to do a big statue kinda thing

thumbnails, yep. I did more of these but these were my favorites.

I took a lot of really hilarious ref pictures of myself in the statue pose and did a weird paintover of the thumbnail.

Attempted to fix the statue face a little and figure out the foreground. Added some god rays. *hallelujah*

I sized the characters up per class feedback and moved the statue to the background a bit more. (thank you skew tool).

Added some quick color on an overlay layer.
Decided figures were going to have a picnic in the foreground (cute factor).
Got bored of painting and decided to work on the line art (ie fix that statue 1000%). I wanted this thing to be all about lineart anyway.

Tightened up the painting parts a bit, finished lineart in background, finished up picnic, added even more god rays.  This was for the final turn in.

At final turn in, it was suggested the foreground didn't really mach the background, epic statue vs adorable picnic. So on a new layer I drew the characters just admiring the waterfall and the majesty of it all and then made the picnic a whole new piece on its own. I also moved that cliff up in the back to break up the background's silhouette more.

Here's the picnic by itself. I found I enjoy painting grass.

BONUSS

A really quick character drawing of the girl and dog. Currently nameless and pictured cloakless here. 

Squirrel mom

A painting I did for my mom a couple of months ago for a very late mother's day present. :D

Here's some process stuff I saved out, it got quite messy.

I had to really avoid drawing the faces for a long time because that's my favorite part.

There was a big jump of a month or so between the above and below, just got the urge to work on it after giving up, haha.

fixed the composition a bit.

and done!

Dino Riders WIP MKII

I type a lot in this you can just look at the pictures if you don't like reading! :D :D

Last year I posted this lovely thing in order to properly document my shame and make a new attempt. Of course, being the usual busy art student with a job and also one that wanted to forget that bad oil painting, I never really finished that photoshop painting. 

So, today, I decided to open this file up and see what I could do. I am posting this because it may go on hiatus again what with school starting up again soon.

Here's where it was when I opened it. Right away I saw some...issues

First of all, reference for this flipping dinosaur is needed, my last attempt was a sad attempt at reference, we will rebuild this parasaurolophus, we have the technology. 

 

I made the canvas bigger to accommodate the dinosaur and removed myself to make it easier to make the dinosaur more accurate. At least it is looking better than the oil painting at this point, that's all I asked for.

Put myself back in, laughed a lot, realized the dinosaur needs a pose adjustment or he's gonna look like a creepy guy. Looked at the cover of Dinotopia for help, cried a bit.

Dinosaur adjusted, now he's looking and not creepin. Had a bit of fun with the wrinkles on the neck, will paint over that later, too crazy detail.

I remembered some awesome advice I read the other day about pictures telling a story and realized there wasn't much of anything going on in this picture, just a lady and a dinosaur, I decided the dinosaur and I should be bros so I'm petting his face. Also started fixing anatomy issues with the figure, wow was I really bad at making torsos too short (still am, working on it).

SOME FACES because I like faces and I get bored too fast if there's no faces. Also I am trying to get away from my obsession with making things realistic every time I paint them, it's fun if you do it right but to this date I have never been satisfied when I try to do realism. So we're just gonna deal with my disney/anime hybrid way of doing faces but PAINTED. what. 

Also the dinosaur gets the cute treatment so we match. ALSO found out parasaurs with no fin on their crest thing are ladies, this one is a lady now.

I flipped the canvas and finally noticed the figure has virtually no chin and no cranium, nice, fixed that junk, makes me lean forward more too which is great.

A 100% of the faces, this is how messy I am.

There's still some problems but I feel like I made some progress today, woo.

Haven't even thought about the background, we'll cross and burn that bridge when I come to it (I am scared of environments).

BONUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(only if you read the words! If not, you don't get a bonus)

(nah jk you get a bonus too tldr guy)

some pokemons I drew a long time ago and a wip of the venusaur, I'm hopefully gonna at least finish the first 150 before I die.