Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Moleskine Octopus

Just something to keep me occupied in between classes...























Today was the last day of my internship, which I spent at my public library, reading to children. It was a lot of fun and I will miss working with the people there. I am excited to be over with this semester, though!
My last final exam is tomorrow, so I will be scanning and posting more doodles (and hopefully finished pictures, now that I have time to work on them) soon! I'm already just itching to begin my summer reading - I just need to get through one last paper and a little more school reading. Wish me luck!

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Speedy Mouse

I drew this a few weeks ago, when I didn't have a lot of time to dedicate to art. Everything is very simple, so I figured it would make an easy-to-follow step-by-step piece... This was done in Photoshop CS3. Everything is in its own layer, which might seem like a lot of work, but allows you to be lazy later on...























Rough sketch. This was done in its own layer on top of a white background layer. I used the hard-edged round paintbrush tool in gray at about 70% opacity.
























Lines. I set the hard-edged round brush to have shape dynamics. I made a new layer on top of the rough sketch and traced with the regular round brush in black at 100% opacity. When I finished, I made the sketch layer invisible.

























Rough colors. Basically, I threw a bunch of colors all over the place, like a three-year-old. It's messy, but everything is in it's own layer (background, mouse's feet and tail, mouse's body), so I can erase the mess later.

























Final. (Hey, I told you it was a speedily-done pic...) I blended the colors by using the eyedropper tool and painting at an opacity of about %4o on top of other colors, and then using the eyedropper tool to use the newly blended colors. I fiddled around with mixing the colors until I was happy with them. I also used the soft round brush at a low opacity (about 15%) in pink to add blush to the mouse's ears and face. Now the "everything has its own layer" bit comes in. Since each colored section is separate from the others, you can just go in and erase anything outside of the lines in each layer.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Friday, April 3, 2009

Stipple Dragon

Here are some step-by-step pictures of an old stipple. I just did this one on an index card with a felt-tip pen. This is by no means the "right" way to work - this is just how I work.
















First, I dot very lightly, to decide where I want things to go.

















Next, I work on creating some definitive lines. Some people will tell you that lines are a no-no, but I'm very attracted to bold lines.

















After creating some outlines, I start to shade. I tend to work on a section at a time, so my lines don't get "lost" in the work. Shade lightly at first - you can always go darker later, but you can't go lighter.















A clean scan of the final image.