Some Drama and Tidbits!

I'm still really happy with my owl chef. He needs some emotional poses though. Here was one!

 

Half an hour sketch of an old character I did for my 2013 portfolio. I think he looks much more flowing and dynamic. Forgot to add some hair to his thighs and chest though though! Creeped out much?

This was him in my 2013 portfolio. Stiffy stiffy...

New Character exploration for the Character Design Challenge on facebook. Artemis is one of my favorite Olympian Gods, partly because of her tomboyish nature. But for some reason, I've decided on miss sultry on the left. Want to keep this design really simple so I can practice some action poses.

Believe it or not, I've spent the week miserably failing and working solely on environments, but have come up with absolutely piss poor work. I was going to try and just push through it, but it was getting depressing, so i decided to take a break and work on my "acting" and movement instead.

 

Detective time!

I'm not one for final renders done in Photoshop but....here's a few hours of work

This character proved to be a bit of a challenge. I initially drew some big nosed, underfed man heads, but it seemed a bit too overdone. I wanted to try a weird character design that would have to be worked to fit the role of a private eye.  I decided to go for a more sweet, clunky looking type of girl.

The chiseled girl on the right was my first idea, and I might still try my hand at designing her. Was referencing a lot of 30s hairdos. Decided to go with unmanageable hair that is still trying to imitate the popular style but obviously failing. The middle was my chosen design. 

her hatless hair proved to be a difficulty to draw and I still don't think I quite got it right.

I did about 9 pages of body drawings trying to find the right figure for her. For the longest time was trying this figure with thin legs, but she looks like she was going to collapse I quite like the quaint feet. : )

The Epic Owl Masterchef

Final Copy - Watercolor and quick bg in Photoshop

New Character Design challenge Character! Woot!  A Masterchef, who I based off of an old owl concept, back from college. Here is all my not so shitty process work (there is another mountain that will not see the light of day). Hope you enjoy!

 

Decided to take some photos as I painted. I don't really set the colors in right away like I did here but I'm happy with the result. : )

Testing out different body types

The first thing I usually work on are heads. I asked my very supportive better half's opinion and it took many takes to come p with a design that wasn't "generic"! Bottom right won!

This was the original design I settled on, but decided to make the face a bit more expressive and turn up the eyebrows.

The full body design of the head rotations above. Happy with the body shape but the head needed work.

Charatcer Design Stuff!

 Decided to try out the Character Design Challange on Facebook this week after following it for a few months. I think its just plain good practice to challange yourelf to get out of your comfort zone and draw types of characters you don't usually do. I didn't want to go too crazy and drop too much time into this, so the final piece is pretty simple. Also my internet was down all weekend and tryng out epic poses with a broom proved to be useless in coming up with something creative. Anyways, I'm happy to be back to using my Copics again! I even found a shop in Guangzhou that was getting rid of old inks, for like 4 bucks! I stocked up well....: D

Anywho..here is some of the concept work leading up to him!

Started with noses and eyes..I always seem to start with the nose..

Used a lot of homeless guys as facial references. Some preliminary sketches. Originally wanted to go for a techy old guy, but that wasn't coming along at all.

Liked how his cheekbones lead straight to his nose. I like jagged, mostly symmetrical things...Decided to go for a middle aged tough guy instead.

Tried a couple of body builds. I was pretty sure I wanted a bulky guy, but wasn't sure how his shoulders should play out. He looked too perky and tarzan-y in the first sketch, but more worn out in the second, so I went with that.

Front and side views. His nose is weird to turn...kind of makes me want to model him in 3D.

Decided he looked too mean. No man is a real man without a soft side. One of my students was really keen on small fluffy dogs and we spent a class talking about poms. I tried drawing the miniature one, but didn't even know where to start. Its just a ball with 3 circles..decided this little guy was cuter.

Put it all together, and gave him a backpack. I did actually do some fancier drawings of the backpack but got too lazy to clean it up.

Grannies and Sketches

 Hello! Woot, update as promised! Here's a collection of sketches and loose ends from this week and a few weeks back. Saw some older ladies battling it out over a bag of stolen vegetables at the wet market. Both got dragged off shouting by police officers into a dodgy white van.

A quick sketch of a hairdresser from around town. His hair and outfit were quite  something. One of my students saw this sketch and noted I got the shoes all wrong, as they usually wear very shiny Sicilian mafia shoes.

 And my current pride and joy! My granny model! She is still faaar from being finished, but I wanted to show some of the idea development (there wasn't too much, but still) Her clothes and hair still need loads of modeling, and now that I have got a hang of working with skin, I want to properly colour all of it. The crocish shows I am quite happy with, but the hair is still bugging me. She also has a few props I need to learn how to model. Loving how much learning is going on through every new project in Maya! It is such an incredibly extensive program!

 Some head desing I did for her originally, and the body model I am more or less using as reference. She has a pretty big hump on her back but her arms fold nicely under it.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Let's Get the 3D Party Started!

Left - Photo based lighting and Mila Subscatter Skin, much more realistic! Right - Sun and Sky lighting and general photoshop painted texture plugged into Maya. Looks kinda lifeless and plastic I think!

Hola! Long time no see! My lovely boyfriend pointed out that I have really been neglecting my blog-and I have absolutely no excuse as I now have a scanner and much art to show you. Now it's just come down to pure....laziness of scanning. Yikes. But I think my biggest problem is I have a TON of new art to post, but it's all over the place. And I really like organized pretty stuff. So I'll post it little by little as more categories work out.
Today's stuff...its finally time to come out of the 3D closet! I am still a complete novice, and it has been a very frustrating journey learning Maya on my own, but I do have to say...it is SOOOO much fun! (at least till you hit a problem google doesn't have an answer to and it takes you 3 days to solve it!) The first piece is my current WIP of a little old lady. The side by side pics show different materials I tried. The one on the left is a properly rendered skin, and on the right was my first pass, which looks quite plastic in my opinion. It's far from done of course (I need to learn a whole new program to texture that bob of hers) but I am finally getting the hang of working with colour and light in Maya. Woooot!

This second piece was done partly for fun and just to test my progress back in February. My boyfriend, who is studying marine engineering had to design and create a product with a small group, and being a viking of course they had to create an automatic beer machine. He asked me to draw it out, and after getting really annoyed with a perspective grid and a lack of space to do a good job, I made this thing in about 6 hours. Am still quite proud of it! (and I know the glasses look like glass and not plastic...still have to figure that out!)

 The last piece worth anything is this little guy. He was my second project in Maya, all through tutorial and he is still unrigged, hence the boring pose. I was a bit stuck on texturing his overalls, so for now I gave up and left is a boring blue, but I think I will try to fix him up with some proper jeans soon!

Thanks for reading, and I will be back to uploading weekly, even if its just a life drawing dump!

Real First Names Are for Pooftahs (pardon the language)

 

The Whole Population of Carrabin

I'm back in the land of internet! Nah, just kidding, I'm still in Australia (where you can actually buy airspace as well as land), but managed to get my hands on a little signal, so decided it's time for a nice big update. Proud to say my sketchbook is nearly full (it's been a while since I've successfully gotten to the last page before smearing everything with food and coffee stains) though I've been more focusing on specific projects, rather than random sketches (so its not so fun to look through).

The Regulars of Westonia

Morning Coffee

Farmer Boys

Truckies

My Mining Boys

First off, I had the not so brilliant idea of drawing everyone I met in Australia (since January) who's had some sort of contact with me whether good or bad. It's turned out to be a rather sour endeavour after the first few drawings...quite amazing just HOW many people you meet when on the road! But those involved seem to love looking at themselves and their friends, and as I promised, I'm posting them now. No, I still have no scanner, hence the over exposed pap smear quality. I do have plenthy more where those came from...but I figured one location would suffice. Only 20 zillion to go!

Finally a cover image for my comic, Septembuary!

 

Also, I hope those of you following my work have been checking up on my other blog "Septembuary", as I do regularly post new comic strips there. And here's a bit of news that may come as a surprise, I'm going back to China! I've gotten a pretty good job this time round (helps when you know what you're looking for) with heaps of perks, paid holidays and all that, so I can manage a life between Asia and Europe. : ) Partly I'm going back because the money is much better than back home at the moment, partly because I felt horribly guilty for not devoting time to learn the language, and mostly because I want to continue compiling my comic book, for reasons I will disclose in a future post.

Yes, Australian News seem to breeze through any actual IMPORTANT events while spending countless hours on exaggerating useless things, and adding a whole soap opera thing to almost ANY story.  No, I have nothing against the little prince. Yes, I have major beef with certain news stations. 

And now back to Aussie land. Having worked in remote areas for the last few months (as in no tourists) I've been getting a really neat and different feel for the country this time around, and my partner suggested I should write down my ideas or do something with them. I've been wanting to explore different styles and such and this little side venture (cause I definitely don't have enough of those) gives me that chance. Plus, the inknig takes waaaay less time than Septembuary! Here's a little teaser for ya.

A few more weeks left in this beautiful and incomprehensible place and then I'm back to the Northern hemisphere where seasons and temperatures make sense, and the internet is free, plenty and functional. See you then!
 

I wish I had a scanner...

Some stereotypes from a town in Australia I lived in

 Because I can't really show anything of what I've been doing unless it's digital. And the digital bits are mostly boring photo manipulation or web design type stuff. This was the last couple things I managed to scan, and now with my camera completely broken I can't even manage to take photos. Hopefully, I can fix my electronics in the New Year and get back to more regular updates!

First of three paintings for a competition which I managed to win! (in the watercolor departments that is). The theme was Past, Present, and Future, relative to the surroundings of the town I was living in. I decided to focus on the degradation of nature that so many people have been talking about, due to a boom in the oil industry. My amazing partner helped me out with the concept for these three pieces and made all the frames from scratch and reclaimed materials.

Present, shiny clean, progressive

Future, a bit of an apocalyptic outlook..

Sorry for the lack of updates or explanations, but I figure you'd rather enjoy some eye candy instead. Hope to be able to put up heaps of cool stuff in the upcoming year. This year has been an incredibly well traveled one for me, and the inspiration and new things I've seen should keep me plenty occupied!

Hello There....Ladies.

 

 

 

His name is Edouard. 

He loves his exercise.

And his ladies.

Who don't love him back.

 

I hope it creeps you out looking at him just as

much as it creepedme out

drawing him..