Yay, Progress

Did some work to the background on this picture. I used a different program, painter, to fill in the cobblestone and building details. Painter is designed to feel more like traditional drawing or painting, and it is my new-found joy. I found that it was way easier to do backgrounds with this program, which is cool because I usually hate doing backgrounds.

The Mask

This is the final version of that pic I posted a little while ago. I'm really pleased with how it turned out - so much so that I will use a smiley. :)

Testin the new tablet

Here is a little doodle I did my my new wacom tablet. I wanted to try out the different nib types, and you can see that each doodle is labeled with the nib I used. I didn't feel that much difference between the brush nib and the regular nib, but the pencil one was pretty cool. You get some traction and it changes the way you make the stroke. I colored in the girl on the bottom of the page, and once I finish I'll put up a more detailed pic of her.

Picture progress

Bit of background changes, lines cleaned up, and some facial adjustments.

A new pic in progress

Yes, yes, I know. I have more than enough pictures "in progress". But this one suddenly popped into my head, so I had to go with it. It's fault, not mine. (^_^)v

It was originally supposed to be Kisha, one of my characters, but it doesn't really look like her anymore, so it'll probably just be member of Kisha's clan or something.

Note that I didn't start with any lines, and I'm trying to make it more realistic looking than usual. Except for the pink hair.

I would have posted this sooner, but she didn't have anything decent on and I'm trying to keep this a children-friendly blog XD

A little bit of progress...

On my mini comic. Just a tiny bit. Of progress. >_>

T-Shirt logo

This is the logo I submitted for the Willie Mae Rock camp t-shirt logo contest thing. WMRC is awesome, so I tried to make something equally awesome. It was difficult.

Basically, I started with a sketch of the girl and then inked it, scanned it into the computer and edited it digitally. It took longer than it should have for some reason. Probably because I tried too hard or something.

Anyway, I saved it over a couple of different colored backgrounds, so you can see that it can go on a couple of different T-shirt colors. I can't wait to see the outcome of the contest! >_

Art Meme

I did this for Deviant art, but I like some of the pictures on it, and it looks cool. So I decided to post it here too.

I actually have no idea what exactly a "meme" is, in terms of it being an art one. But this is pretty much a questionare that you fill out with artwork. It was fun to do, and I hope people have fun reading it. ('>')

Vera

This is a quick sketch that I did of Vera. Surprisingly enough, I didn't change any of her design this time around, even though that seems to happen every time I draw one of my characters. (-_-)

No, the thing that changed this time around was the style. I don't know if I'll keep drawing her like this, but it was fun to do all the same.

I might get around to coloring this at some point.

Mini comic - half inked

As the title proclaims, the inking is about 1/2 of the way done. The first panel is entirely done, but the others are still pretty rough and the last one is non-existent. ^_^;

Here is the link to the ROUGH rough. Woof. (-_-)

Mini comic

This is the beginnings of a mini comic that I'm working on. It's using two of my old, old characters, re-vamped a bit. This is pretty much what I had planned for them, so really I'm just taking a story that I wrote a while ago and drawing it now. It's very interesting. It almost feels like I'm doing a commission for someone, like it's not actually my own.

In any case, the main idea behind this one page mini comic is just a magical girl parody.

Using lilac, I sketched out the panels and the basic things that would happen inside of them. Then on a new layer, I drew out the borders in black. This is my lines layer. Back on the rough sketch layer, I used a darker purple to draw out the details of all the panels. I've just started inking the top panel in black (on the lines layer) - this will be what it finally looks like. The text and word balloons are in different colors, so I can read them better. I'll probably end up using the type tool to write out the words.

Butterfly, complete!

At long last! ... (>_>)

Not much has changed, just touched it up, added more depth to the shadows and highlights, and of course, the background. Oh yeah, and the gold swirly bits on the body.

I like how it turned out. ^_^

Butterfly with color

Well, here he is with some color. This is just blocked in, I haven't smoothed it out yet, or added shadows or highlights, except for a little bit on the body. I'm not too fond of the green color on the wings, so I think I'll color in something different. Also, I find his eyes are too dark.

I looked at some pictures of butterflies for color reference for the wings. There's a certain way that colors interact on butterfly wings, and I wasn't getting it right until I looked at some photos. Originally, the dark brown was supposed to be red, but it took over the whole picture. It also made him look like a fire elemental rather than a wind elemental, which he is.

Anyway, I'll post the finished picture tomorrow, as long as I don't find things wrong with it that will take forever to fix.

Butterfly continued

These are the lines, all complete. The pattern gave me a headache, but I finally got it all down. Working on the coloring now, which is actually going pretty well! O_O

:Edit: I just realized that the butterfly reminds me of a Flaminco dancer! >o<

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)

Further progress

Blocking in color for the background. I also changed around some of the colors on the girl herself, made them better match her surroundings and each other. And also, her eyes are now pink/orange/red. ^o^

For comparison: older version.

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. -_-

Obviously work in progress

But yeah, I felt like posting it. I'm going to end up changing the colors of the girl a bit, making them a bit brighter, but I wanted to get a background in first, so that's what all the scratchy brown lines in the background are.

I'll hopefully be posting this pic through each of the stages of coloring, so an interested viewer can sort of see how I do this kind of thing.

I really don't know how this pic is going to turn out. >_>;

as a side note, she's kind of freaking me out.

A bunny and a Bee

Oh noes! XD

Self Portrait

I've never done a self portrait before so this was interesting.

I sketched myself out first on paper, then scanned it and inked it with my tablet.

This is really just a smaller part of the drawing I'm doing for my DevID on Deviant art. But I decided that I liked how the unfinished black lines looked, so I made a separate file and did this one. The other piece will probably be colored differently.