Time for a full body character design. Going into this one, I didn't have full sketch of the body, but I imagined him wearing a red unitard sort of thing. It was only afterwards that it occurred to me that he'd have looked quite good dressed as a boxer! Oh well, next time I'll try and be more thoughtful of my character's "motivation", etc. Still, he sort of has a friendly Andre the Giant vibe, I think.
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| The Wrestler |
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| Line Work. |
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| Lady with Short Hair |
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| Line Work. |
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| Original Sketch. |
The nice thing with doing these types of drawings is I can mess around with different colour combinations and see what happens. With this one, I decided I wanted this character to have a green nose! Watching the time-lapse, you can see me messing around with some of the shapes/proportions. It's great to just try out things on the fly and see what works.
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| Man with a Green Nose |
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| Line Work. |
Following up from the previous post, I was keen to do another cartoonish portrait based on one of my sketches from work. This time I also captured a time-lapse of the process. I quite liked how this one came out!
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| Man Who Squints |
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| Line Work. |
I really enjoyed this. It was great to get away from the sort of realistic/hyper realistic stuff and just have fun trying something more cartoony!
At work when I'd have a little downtime I'd sketch little character thumbnails, and one day I just thought "Hey, why not take some of these and render them out properly?", so that's what I did!
This design kinda reminds me of those funny designs of the puppets on the old Spitting Image show which I loved.
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| Man with Large Nose |
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| Line work. |
Back in 2020 for work, I created some graphics to help "jazz-up" an Information Management System that my team was developing on the company's intranet. I was pretty limited to what tools I had at my disposal on the office computer; however, using Microsoft PowerPoint and the basic shape tools that come with it, I was able to create a number of graphics. I was pretty impressed with the results. The following are a collection of the ones I quite liked.
In September, I felt the urge to draw/paint something, so another girl portrait was the obvious choice! Based on the reference here, I wanted to play it fairly fast and loose. I was also trying a different brush in photoshop. Not much else to say. I felt pretty rusty doing this, but it was a worthwhile exercise.
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| Girl 2021 |
This was another piece that was a long time in the making, in which I took on around the time I started the Warrior commission back in 2015, with the idea that I'd commence it after the Warrior's completion (in early 2016). Needless to say, after getting through the greyscale render of the painting and I think having to stop for a period due to health issues in 2016 it went on the back burner for some time. Every now and then I'd do a bit of work on it, but would ultimately sit dormant until early 2021 (after the 'rush' I was feeling from completing Dragons' Feast) where I was motivated to finally just get IT done.
Unlike the Warrior painting, the brief was to take the painting of Kaiser Wilhelm II in German Navy Uniform and replace the subject with the client's likeness. It was an interesting experience, although not as creatively stimulating since it was mainly an exercise in reproduction. In all, I thought the end result was fine.
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| German Emperor |
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| Greyscale (Work in Progress) |
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| Facial Reference (Sam) |
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| Reference - Kaiser Wilhelm II in German Navy Uniform |
My friend had this idea for a painting where he and another friend were dragons and they were, I guess, leering over another friend (not a dragon). It's so long ago, I can't recall the exact pitch. Needless to say, it was some pretty high concept stuff.
It's actually embarrassing how long this took me to get done. I think this was something that started around the beginning of 2015. Somewhere along the way, my friend wanted to also include an additional person. Naturally, I chose to draw the additional character riding one of the dragons.
It was a totally bonkers thing that I started and stopped and started over the course of six years. At the start of this year I decided to bite the bullet and just get it done and in February I completed "Dragons' Feast".
On reflection, I probably bit off more than I could chew. It was mentally and creatively exhausting in some aspects of the process. I will say though, I'm glad I stuck with it and completed it. It's good to develop and maintain the habit of following through with whatever you set out to do, otherwise you end up with a whole lot of unfinished projects that never see the light of day.
Anyhow, this is definitely one of the more bizarre things I've painted in recent memory.
Below is of course the final image, plus a black and white version (pre-colour and finishing details), and some of the key layouts that I developed when planning it out.
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| Dragons' Feast |
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| Black & White (values only version) |
Layouts:
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| Layout #1 |
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| Layout #2 |
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| Layout #3 |
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| Layout #4 (chosen layout) |
Towards the end of 2018 I drew yet another girl. This time I kept the reference which was a photo taken by Tatiana Kurnosova and can be viewed here. I also recorded another time-lapse of my process. Looking back on it, there's a lot wrong with it, especially with the eyes, and quite frankly I don't know what's going on with the mouth. I should have re-posed it and spent more time refining the proportions. Another thing I know I struggle with (and it shows in this one) is painting the background. I either don't have a clear picture as to what I want to do with it, or just want to get it over and done with and so I rush it. Something I will try and improve on.
There's definitely a lot you can learn from viewing process videos of your own work to see areas of improvement perhaps more noticeably than when you analyse the end result. Just a thought.
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| Girl 2018 |
Time-lapse video.
It's been awhile since I posted anything here. Although over the last few years I haven't been doing much of anything visually creative until more recently, I figured I'd post some of the stuff I've done since 2016.
It appears I didn't really do anything in 2017, and it wasn't until 2018 when I drew/painted the below picture based on a reference photo I found online (unfortunately I don't think I kept the photo, so not sure who the photographer was). I did however record a time-lapse of the process of creating the picture.
That's all I got for this.
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| Lady (2018) |
