Merry Christmas

Been busy lately with everything, but here's a quick sketch for Christmas.

Kidnapped!

Penguins can do anything they put their minds to.

More bits of fun

I kind of wonder how many of these I can create by the end of the year. They're a ton of fun though quite a bit of work 'cause of all the hatching while inking. I really like the coloured right. I've been meaning to draw that for awhile.

Winter Dance

I'm still super busy and kind of can't wait until the Christmas break to relax a bit. This is a work in progress of one of my winter cards this year. I've been meaning to find a way to use the colour teal for awhile now. I use to like the colour a lot as a kid, but it doesn't really fit much with my current colour palette.

Little bit of fun ...

I've been doing some small ink drawings recently after seeing another artist, Eric Hancock, do this on their blog. I wish I could work in pencils as well. The small format allows me to spend less time working as well as lets me have fun with the very limited space. I've been using 1.5" x 4.5" dimensions so far. I've forgotten how fun inking can be though I have to admit that working on that small scale is starting to cramp up my hand pretty bad.

Work in Progress # 17

Another work in progress. I've been a bit busy, but hopefully I can finish this and the smoking devil soon to start working on some winter pieces. I always manage to skip out on fall and I feel bad. There are some of the most beautiful of colours in the fall season. I should work on that more next year.

Devil & Dragon

For some odd reason it feels like it's been month since I've coloured anything in Illustrator and I don't know why. I've still got to texture finish this up, but it's looking pretty nice though a bit late for halloween.



This sketch is came from a little doodle I had lying around. I really wonder if a dragon raincoat exist somewhere in the world. I wish I had something like that as a kid.

Happy Halloween

Just a quick sketch for Halloween. I'm tempted to finish this illustration to a final piece.

Trick or Treat

Sketches

Being sick, working part-time and having very little time left makes it hard to draw on my free time though I'm working on. The sketch on the left is one of my Halloween promo idea and the half inked drawing on the right is an ink illustration I'm working on for the OCAD Whodunit? 2010 mystery art sale. Hopefully I can finish on time or if not,I'll submit it next year. I always seem to remember about that two weeks before the art is actually due which leaves little time to do much especially on a busy schedule. On another note, I've updated my website again with new content. There are the finished work of some of the pieces I've shown on my blog in sketch form. This has to be one of my favourite illustrations I've done so far this year. The final finished piece turned out so much better than I imagined. Check out the new stuff and I shall hopefully be updated more often soon enough.

UPDATE: I donated a print of the Little Magician Girl for a silent auction for heARTS for Pakistan's silent auction at the Gladstone Hotel on the 18th of October.

a Knight

Having to change my schedule has completely thrown me off drawing as I've finally organized my time to go with life. Fun. Here's a bit of a Halloween preview, which I'm early for for once. And I drew this on an old illustration class schedule handout and I think it was for my core 3rd illustration class.

Sunset Beach

Summer is a slow time for me and the heat sure hasn't helped. I just finished this today even though it looks awful outside today. Enjoy and hopefully I shall be back to creating works left and right soon enough.

Beach Fun

I actually haven't gone to the beaches in years, but here are some beach drawings. I've got one more I'm working on and hopefully I can finish the set of spots by the end of the week. They should be quick and fun.

drawing fun

Just a work in progress shot of the illustration I'm working on at the bottom. I'm hoping to finish it soon so I can get started on the last illustration in a short series I'm currently working on. I haven't been in the mood to ink much of my drawings lately except for finish stuff so here are two ink illustrations from a little book, one of a kind, that I made as a gift for a friend. I had a lot of fun creating and drawing up the illustrations so here are two pages of it.

another day, another illustration

Children, please do not try this at home, but if you do "wheee!".

Firebirds

Just a detail screenshot of the Magic Girl illustration I'm working on. This is about half size of the view on Photoshop. It's turning out pretty good and the textures are meshing really well together. I can't wait to see the final of this.

a boy and his cloud ...

... 'cause every boy needs his own cloud.

Magic Time!

Kind of sick, which makes it harder to think and as much as anyone wants to disagree, illustration requires quite a bit of subconscious and conscious thinking on how you do things. Anyway, it's time for a bit of magic before cowboys come by.

Cats and a Baby

I really have to figure out how to scan watercolour illustrations one day or maybe I just need a better scanner. I actually like how the watercolour spot turned out; I'm still trying to find my voice with watercolour, but it's fun. Now for something cuter, little baby Red Riding Hood with a wolf plushie and a basket. I might I think take this into a final with a light bit of a modification like making the sucker more pronouced.

Castle Playground (working on)

There's the second image of the series of playground promos I'm working on. I've got one more plan that I'd like to work on. They've been fun and relatively simple to come up with. I miss the old days when imagination was more than half the fun. On a site note, my website has been updated with a few illustrations I've finished in recent month including the last playground promo I finished last month. It's been so hot lately, it's impossible to work at 100%, I can't wait until the fall rolls in with cooler weather.

Girls

I've realized I've drawing lately, but not inking as much. Here are a few older sketches from my sketchbook. The top sketch is another sketch for an origami story I've been meaning to write and the bottom sketch is just something random.

On a site note, my friend, the wonderful illustrator Jacqueline Pytyck has a print up at Working Proof were part of the procedes go to a charity and in this case, the charity is The Shama Foundation. It's a lovely piece of illustration ahd it's going to a good cause so check the print and charity and buy one if you can.



And here's a colour piece to add a bit more colour to this post. This was part of a series for a custom hand-made book that was a mock RPG flora and fauna guidebook. I've been meaning to go back to them and add more textures to make them pop a bit more.

Summer Games

Here's another rough for a promo this month. On a side note, I did a puzzle illustration for ChickaDEE magazine for their back to school issue. It should be the September issue, so I'm looking forward to that.

Cats

I've never been cat person, but they're fun to draw.

Music vi

Been a bit busy working on various projects so there hasn't been much of a chance to update. Honestly, it's always a big surprise when a week or two suddenly flies by without any notice at all. I think I miss school if only so I know exactly which day of the week it is in relations to my classes. Here's a work in progress of a small spot illustration. Hopefully I can finish it this soon and get working on the bear illustration.

Creative Block

Just been going through a slight creative dry spell, which sure isn't any fun. I've decided to re-draw an old drawing so I can make a finish illustration with it. The colour illustration is a working rough of some quick spots.

Athena - work in progress

Hopefully I can finish the flat colours to move onto laying down the textures. Got a bunch of ideas for illustrations and not enough me to work on all of them at once.

Athena

I'm finally starting to use my sketches for ideas for drawings. This one has been sitting in one of my old sketches for awhile now.

Sketch Dump # XIV

So even though I haven't been able to do much finish work on the computer without my prescription glasses, while they got fixed ... twice, I was still able to sketch and draw. So here's a sketch dump of a few drawings I do like out of the pile of sketches.

Glassless

It's finally great to have my glasses back again after being without them for about 2 weeks of this month already. So production of drawings have been a bit slow without being able to work at the computer with a headache. The second illustration is from a sketch from my sketchbook of last year. I've always wanted to do something with it, but haven't found the time until now. The top illustration is going to be part of a series about fairytales. It's a bit dark and it's fun to go that direction compared to what I normally work on, but I've got a few ideas for some fun illustration in the series.

Panda

I've finally gotten around to making a new profile picture for my about page on my website. I've been a bit lazy about this so it's been a bit overdue. The end result of the illustration is really interested and it's funny how the same drawing rendered differently can be so vastly different in the end. I kind of wonder how the illustration would look with my strokes lines in it. I should go back to add that in one day.

Imp (verion 2.0)

I wonder how often I post an entry around midnight. There should be a stat somewhere to keep track of that. Here's a quick illustration I did awhile ago. I got around to adding some textures to it tonight and it gives it a different effect from the flat look it had before. I might go back and add some texture to some of the other illustrations in that series. Now to get some sleep so I can get some more illustrations done before the month is over.

Balcony Garden

Woohoo! New illustration though the actually image is quite a bit larger than this screenshot of the rough, but I'm going to crop it in the end to get a better overall picture.

Thought Process: Part II (Technical Process)

Step 6: To continue from where I left off, here everything gets digital. Depending on the feel of the piece, I either scan in the linework as either print quality or screen quality. If it's screen quality, I'm importing the rought into Adobe Illustrator to redraw all the lines. I know that live-trace exist in Illustrator, but I still find it clunky and has never really used it. This way also allows me to fix up bits of linework as I'm re-drawing it as I'll encouter things that doesn't work as well on second inspection.



Step 7: Here I'm just laying down flat colours and gradients. I use to do more of a cel-shading process, but I tend to avoid that these days or don't use it as much. It has its uses and has its own feel that I'm not using as much. The same goes for when and when not to use linework in a piece of illustration. It does sound stupid, but honestly the illustration will call out what it should be. Back to the illustration, as I was working on it, I started to play with the background and thought of putting up trees instead of buildings. It worked well, but gave off a different conceptual idea I didn't want.



Step 8: Here's the illustration with the buildings as a background like the original drawing had mapped out. I have to admit that backgrounds are an area I still have trouble with so I like to play around with it more to see what works and what doesn't work. Sometimes, in this stage of colouring, I might decide to change the whole palette of the piece, which is a lot easier digitally than painting traditionally.



Step 9: After finishing everything up on Illustrator. I transfer it all over to Photoshop. I've tried to export it in the past, but it is honestly one of the just awful. It creates way too many layers or just the wrong layers so I prefer to just copy and paste it layer by layer from one program to another. It gives me more control. I got at this slowly and I start to add in the texture works to the illustration as I go along.



Step 10: Here's a close up of some of the textured work in the piece. I tend to avoid heavy filter usage in Photoshop though I do admit I do use the blur filter a bit to give lights a bit of a softer look. Maybe it's just layering and a bit of dissolve here and there to give the desired look. So this is more or less how I create my illustrations thought it can vary if I'm going for more of a flat look and sometimes things don't make it past step 6. I have my own mini-graveyard of abandoned illustration that I've given up on for various reasons.

Thought Process

Step 1: So I thought I'll go through a detail thought process from rough to finish or somewhere near finished. It's almost spring and I wanted to do something "spring-y" and fun for a spring promo and I had the idea of a little girl watering a giant flower. This is just one of the sketches for it, other variations had her with a bigger watering can.




Step 2: As I was drawing it more, the original idea of just watering a really huge flower felt a bit bland 'cause I could do more with it. I wanted to tell more of a story so the illustrations could stretch out over a few months to get art directors and others I'm sending it to interested in the story so I went back to the beginning of planting the flower. This is one of the more finished sketches of her dancing as she's planting the seeds. I do like this drawing, but I wanted to keep the illustration more portrait over landscape.




Step 3: Here's a really rough drawing that's hard to make out any details for most people except for me. Now this is something I normally show no one else 'cause, seriously, no one could understand it but me. They'd either see too much or too little, which is bad either way since the viewer isn't seeing what I want them to see. But this is the start of the idea I liked. It's playful and kind of funny. Now continue on to ...




Step 4: So I took the idea I had in before and roughed it out more to get a better pose and overall design of the illustration. It's hard to remember how I thought of things as a kid, but even now, it's still kind of magical how a seed, something relatively small and ugly, becomes something big, beauitful and colourful. So it's almost as if she's planting magic seeds or using magic to make the seeds grow.




Step 5: Here is the working rough right now. I'm inking it in and most of the foreground is pretty much finished. I'm probably going to tweak the lines a bit when I end up redrawing them in Adobe Illustrator and I'll have to do something to better emphasis the seeds as right now it's hard to tell where they are though I guess I could just take them off or have them on top of the mound of dirt already. I'll probably have another post later on as I finish the colouring of the illustrations to show that process though it's fairly simple compared to the sketching and thinking part.