Monkey King - WiP ii

This is coming along really well, more so than I thought it would be. I've still got to find the time to add more textures to my library 'cause I'm still looking for a proper "sky" texture. I'm going to see if a picture of clouds might really work but I've got a feeling it won't. The digital version of this takes on quite a different feeling over the ink one. They're both very different, but I like what each medium brings on them. I should go back to trying to combine the two mediums again.

Monkey King - WiP i.

I tried to keep the palette simple with just blues and oranges. It is in some way harder to work with a limited colour range, but there's a fun in the challenge of it, too. Now comes the painfully fun process of transferring the layers into Photoshop. There is one thing I found is that export layers is still pretty bad after all these years from Adobe Illustrator to Adobe Photoshop. There's no perfect system and in the end, a human hand always works best with a human mind guiding it.

Dancing

I actually started this last week, but have forgotten it for a few days. I wanted to create an opposite picture to the pony ride one I had with the father daughter pair.

Monkey King - rough

I am really happy with how the original ink drawing turned out, but once I scanned it into the computer to show it off I immediately wanted to create a digital version of it instead. Mostly it's just different ways I can imagine the textures to replace the hatching I used. The funny thing that I can never figure out how to draw the Monk in the story. I always found him a bit bland 'cause he's the "damsel" in the story. Every monster is after the monk and although his work is the "most important", in terms of the story, it's up to everyone else to save his life time and time again ... and mostly, I'm not that good at drawing robes.

Monkey King - whistling

I got a chance to meet up with an old friend and that got me started on drawing more of the characters from Journey to the West, a famous story that forms the basis of the original Dragon Ball story. There's something soothing about returning to traditional medium as I spend more and more time working digitally. I've started to rougher paper for my inking. I honestly can't remember if it's cold press or rough press, but I know it's 140lbs Arche paper. The textured paper provides a nice bite that doesn't always pick up my ink so I can almost control it like a dry brush. I will probably try to take a photo of the finished ink drawing as I find the texture scans odd into my scanner.

Owls

I started drawing a bunch of birds lately and now I've been in the mood to draw owls now. They're really cool birds, but it's scary how much of their volume is really just feathers and without the feathers they kind of look like skinny chickens or something like that. I just notice that I'm almost 40ish post short of 400 post. Hopefully it's something I can accomplish this year 'cause it's been a long time: 6 years. Time really does fly.

Pony Ride

After working with elementary school kids for a few months now, I remember how much I wanted to grow up faster as I got older. It's funny that we spend so much time wanting to be something else, we often forget to enjoy what we have now. It's cliche 'cause it's quite true. It's been giving me ideas to draw little vignettes of the simple joys of childhood: playing with your parents, playing with sibling and friends. Here's one of the flat colour roughs.