As usual, there was bunch of stuff that needed to be included in the image – which in this case would feature couple of kids playing with a milk cart in an idyllic countryside scenery. While the final image would be bigger the most essential stuff needed to fit within a smaller frame so that you could use a tighter crop the image without losing anything important.

I did a bunch of roughs to figure out how to make everything fit and then drew a more polished sketch to send to the client.

The kids were pretty much ready to be inked by now but the background was left rough because we weren’t sure if a specific landscape needed to be included in the image.

The kids got an okay but it turned out that the client could use the illustration ahead of  schedule for magazine ads. The turn-around was very short so I got asked if I could just finalize the kids for the ads. I figured the kids would probably need some kind background for the image to make any sense, so I finished the kids and did a quick background based on the rough. I ended up sending three different versions with different colored skies because by that time I no longer had any idea which one I preferred and didn’t have time to sleep on the image either. This one got selected.

Time went by as a appropriate reference photo was searched for the background of the final. Eventually, all I got – along with some minor changes to the rough – was a picture of certain type of bridge that had to be featured. I sketched the background, sent it to the client and after a round of changes and some stuff getting left out, I finally got a go-ahead to finish the image.

That I did.

PS. I generally like to work in a way that affords me to go back and easily change things without having it affect the whole image, which means I usually end up with quite a few layers… to put it mildly.

Well, okay – maybe I didn’t. Maybe the image is just my take on Scobot’s character for the CTT.

I really saw the latter when walking home from work one day. A guy all dressed in black and wearing a hood, cycling a unicycle. It was freezing cold, so I figured he’d have to be a ninja or something to be doing something like that at such temperatures – a lesser man couldn’t do it.

Just a couple of days afterward there was an article in the local paper about the guy, and turns he’s an exchange student from eastern Siperia. So I guess I wasn’t really that much off with my assessment. At least I got the continent right… except Japan is an island.

Disclaimer: He wasn’t really armed, visibly.

And this was my fatty for the next in line on the activity:

I may have gone a little crazy with the glows but what the hell, it was fun. Here’s my sketch for the next in the activity:

Jeez, the site sure is slow today.

Just a doodle I did during the most festive of seasons.

Photoreferenced and painted quickly.

Forgot to add an apron and a hat, though.

I’ve been playing with the idea of setting up a scene in DAZ Studio and using a render as a reference for an illustration but haven’t gotten around to doing so until now. This time I did, however, and it really worked in my advantage regarding speed and probably outcome too. Much less thinking involved when it came to perspective, foreshortening and shading – even though this still just a sketch and a bit funky in places.

In case you don’t happen to know what DAZ Studio is, it is much like the better know Poser except that it’s FREE. You just need to register (again, for free) at the DAZ website, and you’ll be able to download your own copy. There’s a ton of free content available – including figures, clothing, hair, props – in sites like Renderosity.com or ShareCG.com as well as DAZ’s own website – because for the most part DS uses the same files as Poser.

Essentially what you do with DS is clothe and pose a figure, possibly include some props, add lighting and then render the scene. It’s like a “virtual photo studio”. It’s easy to use and good fun actually, I’ve ended up wasting spending a lot of time playing around with learning the program myself.

The third page is just some random people I drew from a few magazines. I’m not too crazy about how clinical the line work looks when I draw from referenced so I tried a different approach for one of the faces. It ended up looking like a teenage girl drew it – no good.

Not crazy about the style and it’s sloppy too.

This is what we were listening to first…

… and this is what we listened after that. I was having some trouble drawing the pentagram by that time. The last sketch of the night, heh.

And finally a sketch anticipating the live stuff…

This music business is serious stuff, you know.

Oh wow, don’t go over the top with those dreams man! A little depressing but, still, I found it oddly funny since I was acting so true to form, being caught off-guard.

I was drawing an hourly comic (a day late) but it was really boring to do when you have nothing else to do but sit by yourself with your leg propped up. This strip was part of that thing…

And a few that were drawn from life.

Here’s a couple of fairly quick caricatures done with them. The first one is of the “Finnish Hasselhoff”, Frederik, who’s already a sort of a caricature the way he really is. The original reference was a thumbnail sized photo in a newspaper, but the photo displayed here is a better version borrowed from his website. The man is like 63 (or something) and has a sweatband and a pierced eyebrow (edit: must not forget the mullet!) . Macho, so macho. Phew!

And the second one is of course the President of Finland, Tarja Halonen. Took less than an hour on this one. Frederik took maybe two.

I got me some new markers and a decent brush pen. This sketch was inked and shaded (in grayscale) with them and then colored in Photoshop.

Or maybe it’s the author himself?

For U16′s Literary Illuminations activity.

Here are the reference images…

…And the caricatures themselves.

Check their sites too. In order of appearance. Kiel’s, Jim’s, John’s and Dave’s.

And my sketch for the next in line… Consider this a preliminary sketch for another project to come.

So here’s a couple for U16′s Character Tag Team activity. First one is based on Gavin Mouldey’s sketch. And the second is my sketch for the next in line.

I think I could get the hang of this watercolor stuff with some more practice. Fun, except when the results turn out bad, hahhah. Or when you’re trying to get a decent scans of them…

Even though my pinup is pretty ironic take on Jed’s comic – which itself is quite ironic – it doesn’t appear all that ironic, which in turn is sort of ironic.

What? Oh. I’ll shut up now. First the pinup, then the doodles.

Don’t let my sad image scare you off, go read the comic.

Psychologist Dr. Alice Anderson has always been empathic, able to perceive the slightest changes in her patients. However, a terrible accident caused her to lose the ability to feel emotion. Instead, she gained the ability to modulate the neurotransmitters of other people; the control over emotion, pleasure, pain, and even death itself.

Here’s she is, instilling guilt without feeling any.

Another sketch in Manga Studio that got out of hand. It was just supposed to be a character concept initially.

This is just another photo referenced speedpaint of a naked girl – a redhead this time. I painted it in ArtRage 2 and really wasn’t sure if it would amount to anything, as it was technically a venture into the unknown for me. But what do you know, I think it turned out quite swell and was a lot of fun to do.

Actually Skeletor is the main star here – or Aviator General Skeletor as I dubbed him with the redesign. The shoulder pads and the crotch piece of the original design reminded me of feathers, so I went for a bird motif. Conveniently, with a different name and color scheme he could well fit in another story as well. I imagine the world the MOTUs would live in would be a mixture of the Napoleonic era, WWI, magic and weird gizmos.

And then there’s He-Man. He was kind of dragging himself along with the Skeletor design, but as you can tell he’s still slightly sketchy.

He’s hard to make look cool or charismatic like the leading man should be, considering the original design basically comprises of steroid muscles; sissy looking hair style from the Middle ages; S&M armor and solarium tan. He’s like Conan’s uncool, Californian little brother without any personality. I don’t know if my version feels any more like a person, but at least he’s wearing pants now. It’s way difficult to look noteworthy (well, in a good way anyway) when everyone else is properly dressed and you’re running around in your panties.

Scifi isn’t exactly my forte, but I think the exoskeleton dude turned out alright, for a silly, impractical design. Eat your heart out, Shirow!

I finally had some time to do some drawing just for myself, and here are the results. Doodles and sketches of my regular cast – monsters and women.

Trying out a new technique, which could be worth pursuing for some projects. These were done in Manga Studio, by the way. I guess I’ll have to see how much I can bend the program to break from the regular pencil and ink type approach.

Shit, this was a lot of work. Deciding to do a Google Sketchup 3D-model of the castle sure didn’t help either – except the actual drawing phase, of course. It would’ve been faster to just draw the castle the old way, though – but maybe someone else can use the model later on as well.

So to begin, here are some sketches I did to get to know the characters and their gear – as well as the said castle model. You can download the Sketchup file for castle here and use it as you like.

 

And the actual comic:

So, here’s a bit more man meat – at least they’re wearing pants this time around. I was looking at some beautiful Jack Kirby covers, and felt like drawing some manly action. So, if you see a Kirby influence, it’s quite deliberate.

This is pretty much just a sketch with plenty of things wrong with it, but yet again it was a nice exercise of traditional inking with a brush. I’m slowly moving up to more ambitious images. Maybe next time I’ll even try to come up with a proper composition.

And a completely unrelated note: All you fellow bloggers might want to look into Blogrush (it’s the gadget on the main page of this blog) to increase the traffic to your blog(s). It’s free and seems to work nicely, based on my couple of days experience.

And here are some other sketches I scanned a while back, but didn’t post because I didn’t like them. Why there here now, I don’t know – they still don’t look any better.

These two pieces were done for yet another forum activity. The first one is my take on Scobot’s mighty fine sketch. It could either be just an allegory of life – or an epic depiction of how the rebellion of Heaven got started.

And here’s my character for the next one to participate on the activity. It’s not fine or epic at all, but it’s really late and I need to wrap this up.

So here’s "Burning Kiss" – or "Excuse me, I think your cigarette just lit my shirt."

 

I don’t think I’ve touched my brushes in a long while, but it was nice that I seem to have learned something since the last time. Traditional inking (black gouache really) was a lot of fun, actually. These first one’s were drawn from my head obviously.

And the rest from old beefcake photos. The last sketch was done straight with the brush – there’s just something about sketching with pencil that doesn’t work for me.

 

…Good thing I’m not writing poems, though – or it’d be razorblade-time right about now.