Kitty's Drawings

Super quick post today guys – Managed to get sick with a nasty cold/sore throat/runny nose thing and am feeling decidely MEH. Haven’t been sick in over a year (well over!) so I guess it was about due. Boo hiss.

Here is a sneak preview of something I started the other day. If you can guess the blogger then yay to you! You don’t win a prize cos I don’t have one haha. But have fun guessing. Maybe it’s too easy to guess? We’ll see.
Trying out how I go without leaning on the crutch that is linework.

See you all on the other side of this MEHness.

Hello!

Time for some art! I’ve finally finished the work for my other client – Renee at Beauty Fool asked me to draw her a new header for her site. She wanted a rough icon look in black and white, of a girl applying lipstick. She sent me some reference images as well as some of my own work that she liked. It didn’t take me long to whip up a sketch but and later the final art was done. Happily, we didn’t even need to do any revisions! Though I did make two versions, one with colour, only because I got a bit excited with the digital watercolour in Corel Painter. Up until I got my new computer, using the digi watercolours was just not an option as they are so realistic to use, my poor little laptop couldn’t cope with the heavy memory load. Painter mimics the wetness of the paint spreading across the paper in real time (if you choose it to) – you can adjust the drying time, spread of the paint, even the direction and strength of the wind pushing on the paint while it is drying.
My new Beast takes care of this with ease and I’m itching to play around with these tools along with the other ‘real’ paints like acrylic and oil. Yay!

SO….here’s the black and white followed by the colour version.

I wanted to go fairly simple and subtle with the colour – the digi watercolour I used on the hair using a big wet bristle brush. It produces the nicest soft wash, it’ll be fun to try out different paper effects and layering later.

Anyways, back to work!

Hiiii!!
Finally I think I can show you this! I’ve been working on this for a lovely client and while it has gone through a COMPLETE redesign I think it has turned out well. The redesign being completely my own idea. It’s totally not ’standard procedure’ to completely start again and do something entirely new for a customer when they haven’t suggested it – but in this case I wasn’t overly happy with the way the other drawing was going and some random sketching brought about a new look which we now both agree looks better.
This is for her business card as she is a makeup artist and wanted a pretty girl with some flowing hair and makeup on.
I had a lot of fun doing the hair and thankfully my other client also specified flowing hair – YAY. So much fun I am going to get cracking and finish that one off too.

Other news….I just got back from a fantastic afternoon tea with some awesome bloggers…Get ready for the link love…I got to meet: Violet LeBeaux and her beau Jimmy, Super Kawaii Mama (squee! Starstruck!), Esme & the Laneway (omg too!), Nicole from Circa Vintage, Celeste (she has many many blogs!) and Natalie/Briar Rose. We went to the Cristina Re Where a Girl Goes store in Collingwood where we indulged in delicious sandwiches, quiche, macarons, cupcakes and chocolates. Oh, and TEA of course. Even though I’m not normally a tea drinker, I really enjoyed the different varieties they had on offer. Yum!!

Everything in that store is so ridiculously awesome and they even gave us some gift bags to take away with us. They have a bunch of pretty papers in them which I think I might use in some drawings. Yay! Everyone was dressed so impeccably too and the company was just fabulous. I shall have some photos for you in a future post.

Right now I have to get back to finishing a ConceptArt.org CHOW entry I started. The theme is The Magus…This is the brief:

The Magus

London, England 1907. Cyril Grey is the leader of the ‘Order of Shining Starres’, an occult organisation that aims to become the most dominant in Britain. Grey has access to some of the darkest forces of the astral realm, and demands complete devotion from his acolytes. He is a man obsessed and committed to the promulgation of his black bible, the Book of Regulation, or Liber Ordinatio said to have been dictated to him by a messenger from the gods that provided to him his magical motto, Sit Vis Vobiscum. He has inherited wealth, independence, and apparent youth; appearing little over 35. But there is talk that he is older and uses a ‘glamour’ to fool his followers. There is also talk of the wealth running out, and debts beginning to mount up; of pretenders to his position, and of… murder. Dark murder, as prominent figures in the occult underworld start to… go missing…

Design Grey in his ceremonial robes of office. Consider the historical period (Edwardian) and setting. Also consider his apparent age and powerful persona, and try to present that in your design.

Interesting! I stared it on a whim – just from a sketch of his face….which turned out alright. Hopefully things keep running smoothly and I can finish on time and still like the drawings. Expect more soon!

Ciao!

So I’m posting since its been a few days. Struggling. Really dont like this but had to finish it to be rid of it. Meh.

Struggling with my computer also. It’s really not coping and its pissing me off having to WAIT so goddamn LONG just to save a smallish drawing. I can’t go past 300PPI for anything and that doesn’t really allow for much detail in faces etc. Grrr.

/rant

It was just a sketch anyway. I left it too long and fiddled too much. Its a Dior outfit from a few seasons ago – sometime last year I think.

(have to sign my name with an ‘10. Kinda weird!)
Seeyas!

Omg – posting on Christmas Day. Who’d've thought! Welll……I am waiting on the darling boyfriend to return from work. My lamb roast is in the oven (shit, that reminds me, I have to put the potatoes on!) and the dessert is setting in the fridge – Vanilla panna cotta with raspberry coulis. Mmmm.

So in the meantime I got to browsing Etsy…which lead me via some tangents to other vintage sites…..and spying a pretty pretty dress which was alas, sold. Damn! So I drew it instead. There I was thinking I’d be too lazy to draw over the Xmas break – but sometimes the urge to pick up a pencil is too strong and a drawing just happens.

Now, it’s hardly polished or anything fancy – but colour sketches always turn out nice enough to put on the blog. So here you go – something to look at while you’re trying to digest all that Christmas food and trying not to fall asleep. Heh

Hope you’re all having a good holiday! I am

Hi!

As promised, here is my Concept Art Character of the Week entry. The topic was The Surveyor – imagined up by one of the super cool girls on CA…..The surveyor being a woman from a multidimensional race who is surveying every human on earth – asking questions from the incredibly mundane to the philosophical. She flits around the globe every .005 seconds and is impervious to weapons and violence. No one knows why she is here and when asked she only replies “for the survey”.

Intriguing!

I wasn’t expecting to enter, let alone finish this piece so I was quite surprised at myself on Thursday when I found the sketch I was fiddling with actually looked kind of alright. So I took it into Painter and got busy – and this is the result:

And some details and the work in progress (these are all required for the CHOW submission as you don’t make the poll without them).

Sorry about the HUGENESS of the pics! Hope no one out there is suffering on dialup!

Anyways! I really like this. More than anything I’ve done before. First thing I’ve done in a while that wasn’t frustrating. Everything turned out exactly how I wanted it – the picture in my head FINALLY came out the same on (digital) paper. Yay!!

Now before I sign off for this Monday, I want to say a big “HI!!” to everyone who landed here via Makeup & Beauty Blog!! Thanks for visiting! So cool getting a big spike in hits (yeh I’m still a teeny tiny blogger). Thanks!!

Sooooo – I guess I shall try and post some more this week. I might explain those banners I’ve got there on my sidebar now…..see if I get to do some more sketching…and finish that business card.

Byeeeeee

Hello!
I can finally show you all the commission that was taking up my time the last few weeks! Its finished and the client is happy (yay!). I learnt a ton in this one aswell – namely – STICK TO COREL PAINTER! Photoshop is still frustrating and annoying and hard to pick good colours with. Also learning to streamline my workflow and plan things out better from the start.
I will also be ditching the B&W to colour method because while it may be good for controlling values, I find the move to colour is difficult. What is this method I hear you ask?? Well, its all about working in a greyscale palette at the start of your drawing so that the range of contrast is easier to control. You can focus on what is dark and what is light a lot easier than starting with colour.
Which is all well and good but then you have to figure out how to convert that B&W to colour….how?? Tutorials on the web are a bit vague about this as I guess each artist works differently. You’re supposed to use an Overlay or Colour layer over the top in Photoshop but no matter what I did, the result was always a muddy mess. Black and white also doesn’t account for a shift in hue….There is more complexity to a drawing than just the tonal range.
It may be to do with my lack of experience in Photoshop – but I like to just pick a colour and paint with it. SOoooo I am back to Painter.

Enough rambling hey!
Here be the drawing….

I’ve also got something I’m working on for this weeks CHOW….I didn’t expect to enter because I only started sketching on Thursday and it’s due Monday …..but as soon as I started drawing I liked what I was doing and so continued. Its nearly finished so you’ll get a post tomorrow