Anomboligious

This kind of popped in my head after drawing the other doodle,...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 19:07:21 -0700

This kind of popped in my head after drawing the other doodle, so I scribbled it out and slapped some colour on it.

Fifteen minute warm-up doodle. I never seem to draw this guy the...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 19:01:46 -0700

Fifteen minute warm-up doodle. I never seem to draw this guy the same way twice xD

More Age of Fire fanart, this time from Dragon Champion. For...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 18:29:00 -0800

More Age of Fire fanart, this time from Dragon Champion.

For those who have read the books and might be wondering why one of the characters is so… intact, I figure this takes place the morning after The Thing :)

Troll SpeedpaintFanart for Age of Fire by E. E. Knight

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 18:56:00 -0800

Troll Speedpaint
Fanart for Age of Fire by E. E. Knight

Age of Fire Concepts: Troll Sketches E. E. Knight has some very...

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:35:00 -0800

First design done back in 2011

More recent design

Age of Fire Concepts: Troll Sketches

E. E. Knight has some very interesting trolls in his universe and it’s been a fun challenge to capture them on paper. My brain was doing so many cartwheels around the description at first that I missed some crucial details, so my first sketch is pretty off-model. After some discussion with the roomies and going back over the descriptions again, I think the second design is a lot closer.

The plated ridges on it’s back are where it breathes through and the tendril-orb thing is it’s main sensory organ, replacing any eyes, ears, or nostrils. We think it works similar to the sensory orifice of a hagfish. We’re still not sure if the tendril is attached to the belly or the back. We need to rummage through the descriptions again.

My roommates and I are on a big Age of Fire kick and have been sketching a lot of our favourite scenes or trying to figure out the designs of the various critters and characters. Knight does an incredible job of using very minimal descriptions that imply far more and build such amazing mental images.

Also, go read these books! They are fantastic!

Fanart of Age of Fire by E. E. Knight Drawn at TAG Seattle using...

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 04:21:00 -0800

Fanart of Age of Fire by E. E. Knight

Drawn at TAG Seattle using sketch pens and prisma markers 10%, 30%, and 70% grays since that’s what I had on me. I sketched with the markers first and added the inks on top.

Haven’t used this technique since ‘08 so I’m a bit rusty and make weird anatomical mistakes, but it felt good doing it again. I need to do it more often :)

A 20 minute doodle done while taking the train. The laptop...

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 03:16:23 -0800

A 20 minute doodle done while taking the train. The laptop screen sucked so the colours came out very muddy. I figure it’s a good start though :)

Character sketches from Perdido Street Station by China...

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 14:07:47 -0800

Character sketches from Perdido Street Station by China Mieville.

There’s a description of various folks in a rundown bar: A woman with a mechanical hand that’s dripping oil and spouting steam, a man with a fox snout grafted to his face licking beer from a dish, and a man who had been sentanced to silence by having a seamless square of skin grafted over his mouth, but instead of eating through his nose he tried to cut his mouth back open with a knife. He trembled when he did it though so the cut is uneven and incomplete.

I’m liking this book. I’m getting a lot of intense mental images from the descriptions, so I will probably draw more characters and environments in the future. I want to draw one of the main characters, Lin, especially since most artists just depict her as a human with a scarab for a head, wheras I imagine her more insectish than that.

Creature doodle from last week’s Drink&Draw. Ballpoint...

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 20:45:38 -0800

Creature doodle from last week’s Drink&Draw.

Ballpoint pen, prisma marker, and photoshop

Where do you get your inspiration from?

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 18:25:53 -0800

That’s a great question! I had to really think on this one.

It’s difficult to narrow down the things that inspire me because everything does in one way or another. Some specifics would be things like nature, which is great for teaching me how things work and building up a visual vocabulary; Old stories, mythology, and folklore are great for inspiring the fantastical. I especially love reading novels for exercising my imagination.

I generally enjoy everything under the category of “art”, whether it’s visual arts, crafting, sculpting, music, writing, etc; I love to see people create and it inspires me to create :)

Halloween Gribblies! Page of sketches I did back on Halloween....

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 02:54:43 -0700

Halloween Gribblies!

Page of sketches I did back on Halloween. What better day to draw gribblies than a holiday celebrating them?

Artist Trading Cards Ballpoint Pen

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 19:26:17 -0700

Artist Trading Cards

Ballpoint Pen

Creative Project Motivation Over the last decade I observed a...

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 16:46:00 -0700

Creative Project Motivation

Over the last decade I observed a pattern in myself and in various creatives around me when it came to working on projects, most especially personal ones. Whether you’re creating a comic, drawing an animation, writing a novel, sculpting a city, or any creative long-term project, it starts out strong with a full head of steam and a drive to see it to completion. But after a few solid days of hard work, that motivation starts to fade, and with each day it gets harder to work on it.

Around the 10 day mark is when it seems to get the hardest. There will be a few days where it’s difficult to pick up the pencil or boot up the computer. The true weight of the project suddenly seems heavier than I can handle.

This seems to be the most crucial point and can make or break a project. Often if I give up at this point, that’s it, the project will never see completion and simply rot in Development Hell. In a rare case, I might pick it up years later, but that’s happened maybe once. However, if I can get myself to keep going anyway and trudge through those few difficult days, I will slowly start building motivation back up until it becomes a solid routine. In every case that I can get past that rough spot, I have seen the project to completion.

I encourage others who are suffering in that questionable zone to give this a try. Do whatever it takes to pick that pencil back up, or open that writing program, and work at it.

A technique I’ve found that works very effectively for me is to tell myself that I only need to work on it for five minutes. Surely I can handle five minutes! Usually within those five minutes my brain will then switch over and I will work the rest of the day/night. Sometimes it doesn’t, and after five minutes I’ll still put the pencil down, which is fine. But I’ll try again for five minutes later that same day, or on the following day, and eventually it will click over.

Hopefully this helps some folks out there struggling in their second week of production!

Doodle pages from the last few Thursday Drink & Draws. Drawn...

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 13:44:37 -0700

Doodle pages from the last few Thursday Drink & Draws.

Drawn in ballpoint.

Speedpaint1 hour; Photoshop More practice with Feng Zhu’s...

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 14:19:21 -0700

Speedpaint
1 hour; Photoshop

More practice with Feng Zhu’s technique of designing from chaos. Mostly done with the default sponge brush.

Speedpaint15 minutes; Photoshop Architecture is a huge weakness...

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 14:10:10 -0700

Speedpaint
15 minutes; Photoshop

Architecture is a huge weakness for me. My visual vocabulary for it is weak and I tend to make everything look like it’s either drawn with a ruler or made out of foam. I’m still learning how to find that middleground.

prrb: How I pratice drawing things, now in a tutorial form.The...

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 14:04:19 -0700

prrb:

How I pratice drawing things, now in a tutorial form.
The shrimp photo I used is here
Show me your shrimps if you do this uvu

PS: lots of engrish because foreign

Speedpaint1 hour; default brushes; no reference First speedpaint...

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 15:54:55 -0700

Speedpaint
1 hour; default brushes; no reference

First speedpaint I’ve done in a long while. I hope to be doing more of these and try to improve. Currently I rely too much on a contour foundation to get my perspective and proportions right, so these speedpaints are a real brainbuster for me to work with just shapes and forms.

Photo

Sun, 27 May 2012 15:18:52 -0700

Strong Man with a very strange evil chicken hat. I love Alchemy...

Thu, 24 May 2012 17:23:53 -0700

Strong Man with a very strange evil chicken hat. I love Alchemy xD