Sketchbooking II

Been sketching a lot lately, to gain more confidence.

Season's greetings

Latest offering here; Christmas card illustration from moleskine pocket sketchbook to final acrylic painting. I went through few different ideas but ended up going for more traditional style. I feel it is some of my better works so far, although I think the girl looked more enchanting in the original sketch. The more stylized the approach the more difficult to execute it. I painted the face twice because the first take ended up being too pink. It was challenging to first dry brush white higlights on terra verte green and then light wash the actual skin colours on top. The last sketchbook page is extra stuff for ya, merry Christmas!

5

4

Sketchbooking

Piratey (work in progress)

"Ay, I'll get me revenge, even if it took me 600 years, ay."

As a kid I used to really dig Monkey Island 1 & 2 and read books such as Treasure Island. There's something special about the genre of pirate fiction, the adventure, the Caribbean atmosphere... Few months ago I also read the Christophe Blain's Isaac the pirate 1-5, a quality pirate comic series.

Concept design (updated)

Science fiction oriented video game character concept design. Preparing portfolio for gaming companies. A drawing done on my A4 sketchbook, scanned. Masked it and planned lighting in grayscale mode.

Edit: added colored version. Looking at it critically, it could be more symmetrical, and the hand position or the pose is not as convincing as it could be but the picture is still a bit progression on my path from mediocre to great.

Bought a roll of packaging paper to practice large scale portrait drawing skills.

Pointillism

A pointillist (or impressiost) style painting completed in an oil color course. Haven't done this style since senior secondary, and this is a lot more restrained piece than more current works... Below is an oil pastel sketch done on A5 paper, it might be actually a bit better than the painting itself.

Times are uncertain and it has been quiet on the commission front. Portfolios were sent to few illustration agencies who were either full-packed or felt that the style of the works were not quite suitable for their customers. Too unusual, rough or dark for mainstream perhaps? The search goes on. There has been thoughts on whether to concentrate more on comics or instead striving for fine art, particularly sculpting.

Coffee and ink

Coffee stain and ink testing.

Refreshing

Experimenting with acrylics and charcoal again. Browsing through some old photos, I found one in which flashlight had captured a person turning face, eventually showing reflections from two sideprofiles.


It's refreshing to try character design this way: first modeling the shapes with acrylic and then drawing on top.

There, see ya!

Character design

Character design gallery. One of the many of different styles. Used as ideas for a possible animation pre-production. Someone commented that otherwise it's ok but the lady with a child is somehow irritating, wonder why...

It has been a while since I used this approach of constructing an image from basic shapes such as circles etc. Study of a photograph by Mucha.

Another one but with an indian ink brush line art on blue pencil sketch - my favorite technique ever.

Pic from sketchbook

The most recent page from the A4 sketchbook. Rough charcoal study and a marker drawing mixed.

Update for the sake of update

I currently have a day job of a kind, loosely related to web-design. Things have been quiet for the last two months, though I've been drawing a lot and producing some promotional work for a band as well as some pre-production for an animation or two, but I can't reveal more details yet.

September experiments

I've been busy sending portfolios everywhere for job applications. The comic is progressing, slowly though. I bought this book What It Is by Lynda Barry to help with script writing. The book contains inspiring tips on writing, adapting personal memories into stories, comic scripts, plays etc. It has nice atmospheric illustrations too. I'm also reading Aristoteles' Rhetorics and Poetics to learn more about storytelling.

Another print image

Haven't decided yet if this is going to be another t-shirt print, but I just had to post this.

Anyway, back in the academy I didn't always realise how sloppy some of my works were, at least people seldom said too critical things out loud. A while a go my mind was blown by a quote I stopped by when I was reading Naomi Klein's No Logo (awesome book by the way). In it the anti-adverticing artist Rodriquez de Gerada commented:

MTV-sukupolvi on tottunut siihen, että kaikki on kiiltävää, puhdasta ja hohdokasta. [...] Jos uhraa aikaa näyttävyyden hiomiseen, työ ei jää huomiotta.

(Don't know the original quote, but probably something like: "The MTV Generation is used to everything beign shining, clean and glamorous. ...If you put effort into refining the work, it won't stay unnoticed.") I should have realised it earlier. Not saying the work above is a masterpiece or anything, but I'll keep trying.

T-shirt design

I think I outdid myself here. Rendering the model made my arms sore after hours of intense drawing, but it was fun to make this design. I was browsing the site Design by Humans and got inspired. I always wanted to combine drawings and photos so I edited out parts of the model from my photograph and changed a something spicier instead.

Randomness

Watercolor underpainting and charcoal on top. Another thing that just occurred to me in a dream that I quickly doodled before I would forget. Come to think of it, the charcoal drawing lost some of the elegant atmosphere of the sketch on the upper left corner. Perhaps I'll try again to catch that feel.


White oil pastel on paper + rough watercolor strokes + ink. Someone commented that the figure on the left could make a nice t-shirt design. Got to think about it.


I read from this one art therapy book that it is often a good idea to start the work day with a warm up drawing: "Try not to make art with it, the point is to get relaxed without feeling pressure." I think it worked rather well, I just thought "what the heck, I'll just scribble some nonsense and throw it in the garbage can." Then I got carried away and it turned into this, funny. Somebody actually liked it. Anyway, it is a cruel fact that peer pressure and competition can be very daunting in this industry, and it is sometimes difficult to start drawing because of that.

Material experimenting

For a long time I've been fascinated by Enki Bilal's fine art approach on comics. This picture is a study of Bilal's style with my own take on it; an acrylic underpainting with charcoal line art on top. Still trying to find a suitable style for the comic-in-progress.