Pencil Portraits and Digital Doodles

Hello,

Since my last post, it seems Blogger has been having issues. For example, I can only see one post from my Reading List per day, and when I click "View More" nothing happens. Not sure if I'm the only one with this problem, but nonetheless, it's one of the reasons I haven't posted much lately. Been hoping that the glitches would be quickly fixed, but alas, they have not.
Also, I've been working away on some new, secret projects, so that's also why I haven't shared much.

Anyway, a short while ago, I've updated the tools at my disposal and have been experimenting with sketching and inking digitally. And it's been really fun! To no surprise - there are many benefits to drawing digitally. Here are my favourite:

1. You can erase, redraw, skew, and do all kinds of modifications to your sketch, pretty much infinitely. (Provided you don't delete your original image layer and all you have is some skewed experiment which you don't like the end result of.)

2. No more scanner dust cleanup. For people like me, who are pretty OCD about dust specks making into a nice sketch or inked drawing which I want to show later, this is fantastic. More time drawing, less time hunting for little dots.

3. You can only use one physical drawing tool - the pen stylus - to produce marks similar to pencils, markers, ink pens, paintbrushes, etc. It can take some research and experimenting before you get good at it, especially if you don't often work digitally, but any skill takes time to learn.

There's only one the only thing I dislike about drawing digitally so far:

1. Zooming in and out. Now, this isn't a true dislike. It's more of a personal "quirk" that digital tools let me exploit. I like to fiddle with my drawings, too much at times. So, whereas on paper - the size of my sketch is as big as I let it be on the sheet. And the tiny hand movements are restricted by the dexterity and size of my hand in proportion to the size of my drawing. BUT,  if I'm sketching in Photoshop on a tablet - I can zoom in, and in, AND IN, to make tiny little adjustments here and there. This isn't healthy at the sketch stage of an illustration, and something I have to restrain myself from. It's always better to make a new sketch.

Anyhow, that's that. Here are some sketches, both traditional and digital I've done for fun, during work breaks.

Also, as an exercise to get more comfortable with colouring digitally (so that I can quickly and easily do color studies and coloured concept thumbnails in the near future, and make finished digital illustrations in the slightly less near future) I decided to create a simple self-portrait, in a more comic/cartoon style.
Here is the breakdown of my process. (Pretty much the same as my traditional methods, but way more layers that I could click on and off)

Loose sketch

Digital line-work/ink

Added some simple colouring underneath the inking and that's what it looked like with the linework turned off.

Made some color adjustments to the some of the line-work to make it more in tone with the colous underneath.

Finished off the piece by adding some subtle patterns.

And made a GIF of these main steps, because it only takes me a minute to do that.

Have a nice week!

Losing Altitude - Northern Spotted Owls

 

Hi there,

Today I'm going to do a quick process post about my latest painting - "Northern Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis caurina)" It was a piece I did for Losing Altitude - an upcoming book about threatened/endangered birds. This collaborative art book will feature over 50 artists and well over 100 pages of beautiful, full-color art of endangered birds from the world over.

Check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/LosingAltitude

And now for the process.

1. As usual, I sketched out some thumbnails. to see what layout I wanted to work with.

As you can see from the finished product, the image ended being a combination of all 4 of these.

2. After getting my references together I went on to penciling. I like use the double penciling approach - where I first get the shapes and elements down more loosely with my blue pencil and then go over ad add more details with a graphite pencil.

Close up of the adult owl.

3. Then came my favourite part- the inking, using my black microns.

Adding even more detail during this stage.

After inking the whole image, I erase the pencil marks.

4. For this piece I decided to do a grey-scale values under-layer. It seemed like a logical idea since the owlets were mostly grey.

Almost fully rendered under-layer. I ended up darkening the adult owl some more later.

5. Then I got my coloured, waterproof inks out and finished up the painting, sprinkling some table salt on the background for hazy effect. Oh, and of course - for the final touch I used white gouache to add some shine and detail to the birds' feathers.

Here are some close ups:

 

-Original size: 11 x 17.7"
-Materials: Waterproof coloured inks, microns, white gouache, and salt on 300 series Strathmore Vellum Bristol paper

Prints available at my Society6 shop =)

Cheers for now!

Art-School Owls

This piece is contribution to a project happening at my university. Long story short, a few of my illustration classmates and I are illustrating different locations from our school for a book/booklet that will be printed for 1st year students this fall. Without revealing the exact location, I'll just say it's a place where certain students meet up to discuss various issues.

As usual, my process was to start with some thumbnail sketches (which I'm too lazy to scan, and they're hardly that fascinating).

Then the rough version looked like this:

Then, after refining the rough sketch, I did my line work, which I scanned in, should I screw up later when I'm painting.

And the final piece:

 And there we have it -- some artsy art-school owls chatting and what not.

Original is painted on 9x12 Bristol Smooth paper
I used a mix of micron pens, watercolours, waterproof inks, and touches of gouache.

Subtleties of Light

I was back in the (traditional) darkroom developing and printing B&W photos last week. It was for a photography assignment for one of my classes. In short, we were to focus on how light touches its subjects.
Here are some photos I took and printed:)

Ilford 400 ISO film*
printed on 8 x 10 glossy paper