Raven Painting - Filling in skin tone

Adding color with inks. The skin is always the hardest, because you notice immediately if it isn't smooth. Also, the color is hard to get when you're mixing your own colors. But anyway, it's a good start!

Yes She is Still Doing Art

My posts lately have been filled with fashion, but I'm pretty busy in the art department as well. This is a T-Shirt logo that I'm entering in the Not Back To School Camp contest. It took a lot of sketching and designing to get the look I wanted. I used inking pens, a brush-pen and a no. 2 brush to ink, switching as needed. Also used white ink to outline the word "School".

Scanning onto my computer was a nightmare. The paper was just a cm too tall for my scanner, and part of the picture would get cut off no matter what I did. I had to scan it twice, one with top cut off and one with the bottom cut off, and paste them together. For some reason (because my scanner hates me) the two images were slightly different sizes, and so they didn't line up quite right. (>o<)*

Somehow I managed to work it out and got this in one day before the deadline... ha ha ha. (._.)

Here is that princess on acetate that I was working on earlier. Unfortunately, the pic of the coloring in progress didn't turn out, so I'm just posting the final version.


For those of you interested in the technique, here it is. I started with a sketch of the princess, with a basic idea of what the background was. I did this for a contest (which I probably wont win because they'll most likely pick a fan art piece instead of an original art, something that I only found out about after I finished this picture and am infuriated about but anyway...) so I had a basic theme to think about. Then I put the sketch under acetate and inked it with india ink. I had to flip the sketch so that she would come out facing the right direction in the end. Then I used an exact-o knife to cut various origami and Japanese wrapping papers to the right shape and pasted them onto a sheet of hemp paper that I taped onto the underneath of the acetate. I also used some acrylics to make a water color look.

Hey, we hit 200 posts 2 posts ago! Woot!

Japanese princess pt. 2

The next stage: inking on acetate. I've never done it before but it was necessary for the plan I've got for this piece. It is a really weird feeling - at first I had so much trouble with depth perception, but I've gotten used to it now. Eh.

You can see the sketch that I taped underneath, the one that I posted earlier.

I'll post progress as I get further.

Fire elf in ink

Fire elf, demon, a warrior in a fierce matriarchal society, whatever. It's inked and crosshatched to hell, and I have mixed feelings about it. Let's just say that sometimes I really wish there was an undo command in real life.

This pic is actually a modern revision of an old picture of mine. I always liked the concept, but I didn't pull it through very well the first time. Eh, well it's a bit better this time... I guess I'll have to redo this again in a year or two and see if I get it once and for all.

Inky Dancer

Several posts ago, I put up a sketch of this dancer lady. I tried to go for a sumi-e look with the inking style. She looks a little funny but I like how her skirt turned out.

Backwards

I drew this on a whim, and I liked how it turned out so I inked it. I avoided using pure black, and inked in only grey tones. I think it looks softer, which is exactly what I wanted for this picture. \(^o^)/ Yay!

Inking warm-up

I was looking through my sketch book for things to ink, and this is one of the sketches I ended up inking. I did it as fast as I could, without thinking about anything much really, and I like how loose it turned out to be.

Ze Mochi

Well this is the most recent and current version of Mochi, in ink. I used the dreaded inking pens again, and I hate to say it but not only am I getting used to them, I'm starting to see their advantages. No need for a big container of water to wash the inking brush, for one thing. And it's just more portable. Oh well, I'll still always love you, inking brushes. ^_^

This was actually originally just supposed to be a sketch, but it got so dirty that I had to ink to get any sort of clarity. And it's so annoying, no matter what softness of lead I use to sketch with, I always end up with pencil marks that I have to erase on the computer. This was done with 6B (which would explain why it got so dirty, at least >_>) and still I couldn't erase every mark off my paper. It must be the way I use it or something...

I'll be coloring this at some point, but at the moment I have so many pictures in progress that it will be put on hold for the time being.

(In case you were wondering, the stuff between her thumb and forefinger is fire. No, really.)

Little kid and Kitty cat

This is a submission that I did for Pixish. They are, in their own words: "...a place where people who want images and people who make images can easily find each other and collaborate on creative projects together." Cool huh? Anyway, just for contemplation, I posted the same picture below, minus highlights and color adjustments.
Bleh! So dull! But this is how I originally colored it. I first do the midtones, then the shadows, and then the highlights. (this is before the highlights) And THEN after everything is done, I flatten the image so that the whole figure is on one layer, and play around with color adjustments. These settings can be found under the "image -> adjustments" file menu.

To get the image looking like it does at the very top, I increased saturation and contrast, and played around with "color balance", mostly adding more green to the picture, as well as a bit more red. And voila! (^_^)

(First inked on paper, then colored in photoshop. 2008)

Stage 1 - inking

I'm planning on coloring a sketch that I made a while ago. Meet chaos butterfly, a cute little spirit that will be used as a killing MACHINE in my mmorpg. XD

Anyway, this is the first stage of the coloring. I inked with a tablet, which I still have to fiddle around with because I'm not happy with the lines I get. Even though they're at the sharpest, the lines aren't sharp enough! >_< You can see that I'm not completely done, I still have to fix up some lines.

This is why I much prefer inking on paper, with real ink. It gets the right look, and you've only got one chance to make the line. No undo, no eraser. -_-

A girl

This was the result of fooling around with a paint brush. There weren't any pencil lines, so if something looks a bit wonky, that's why. I really have no idea why she's all manga style. ^_^;

Daily ink sketch

I do these sometimes, to warm up. I don't use pencil lines so often they get really demented looking, but this one turned out alright. He kind of freaks me out though. >_>;

Perspective

It is hard.

(India ink, 2008)

Inking Pens

For some reason, I find pens really hard to work with. I'd prefer a brush any day. But I thought I'd try it out again, and it was almost a disaster. Well, not quite, but you can be sure I'm not going to do anything like this in a hurry. -_-

Colored inks!

I've now got a bottle of india ink in every primary and secondary color. To celebrate, I made this.

I never did these characters in color before (except for Mochi, using my tablet - which is still out of order, by the way), although I had a basic idea of their color schemes. So some of it's messed up. I colored Kisha's skin too green, and although it looks good on the paper, Chou is almost too light to be visible. But I guess that's okay, because she's supposed to look pretty ghostly.

Also, still experimenting with their character designs, but I think I'm nearing a final look for each of them.

Also just realized that there's only two happy people on there. (>_>)

(You really should click on the picture to get a closer look, the thumbnail doesn't look good at all compared to close up)

The Horse

It is a wonderful creature, if you get to know it properly. But I didn't do a very good job with this particular one. The lines don't vary enough, and the proportions are screwy. The sketch was way nicer. (._.) But I got to try out my cool new brown ink!

Duck, Duck Goose

I tried to capture the friendly and curious, yet malevolent gaze of a goose. It was difficult.

(Ink, 2007)

Fox

He ended up looking more like a dog I used to know, but oh well. (<_<)

The Japanese have a bit of mythology surrounding foxes - or kitsune, as they're called. They are usually tricksters who can use illusion magic to make themselves look like humans.

Ink on paper (2007)

Run for It

Ink and water, on paper.

This is a different style from the one I normally use for people, but you can still see my usual style in the lines. Funny how that works out. (^_^)

(2007)