Kittys Drawings

And it was awesome! YAY.

We went to +39 Pizzeria on Lt Bourke and nommed on pizzas (what else)….Audrey was really really lovely – even though I felt awkward as usual. She did a drawing for me on my napkin – which is now in a photoframe on my desk.

Sooo…..I drew something quick just before – inspired by the lady herself – but not as good of course. And looks crappier than the sketch I did. Oh well – I’m really not that good at linework on Painter….Bah!

Here are some terrible photos of the night. Jonny’s ones are better.

Yaaay!

and here’s my cruddy drawing

Better work next time I promise.

Hi!

Guess what? I totally WON the dinner with Audrey! Woooo!! It was a pretty splendid night and I did actually manage to hold some conversation. My photos suck – so I’ll be posting those as well as Jonny’s good ones later. But today I have some drawing completed. Another piece where I was all gung-ho at first…then I abandoned it…then I finished it just to be done with it.

Next time, I think I’ll be ready to attempt something original. And spend more hours on it. Definitely have got the hang of Corel Painter’s tools – now to get over my own self-sabotage.
Some work in progress and (shitty) detail shots….

Not a very high level of detail but whatevs…NEXT.

Seeya’s round (Audrey post up soon)

Hi!

Woo! I think I’m getting the hang of Corel Painter for real this time. Just took a few digs around on the web for a tutorial (there aren’t many good ones out there) and some tweaking of my brush settings. Much better.

Another copy of a pinup from way back – George Petty this time. Of course it doesn’t look a lot like his work as he has much cleaner lines and lighter colours. Still had to do it how I like it huh. This took about 3 hours again.
Eyes are a bit of a problem…I’m not drawing these with too high a resolution as I think I would get lost in the finicky detail if I did that and right now it’s more about quantity than quality. The more I slave away at something the more I hate it. And then I get all stuck on the face…Raarr!!
Anyway – A little of the process…Usually I start with a fairly low res file – say 700px across by 1000px high – which is enough to get most of the drawing done. Then I take it into Photoshop (cos Painter I find is pretty terrible for up-scaling) and pretty much double the size which in this case, gave me just enough room for a sort of recognisable face. You don’t want to go over what you’ve done in the low res file too much as I reckon that makes things too smooth, where focus should only be on the parts that matter – face etc.

I’m probably not making much sense. Or I’ve already explained this before. Do I blabber on about too much technical jargon?? If you have any questions about how I do things then please ask

Onto the drawings then….

And some (sort of) detail:

No reference photos to compare with this time You can dig them up on Google yourself if you’re so inclined. Good luck!
Hmm – the more I look at it the more faults I pick…

What’s next….

Yaaay finally some work!
Okay so it’s utterly shit.
But that wasn’t my intention to create something great. Trying to pick up the Corel Painter skillz again…trying some new things. I drew this without any initial sketch – something I realised I should be doing after finding it so liberating dropping the linework at life drawing. I was getting all stressed about getting the perfect line all this time, and yet I feel more comfortable pushing blocks of colour around.
The only problem now (there’s always a problem), is that Corel Painter doesn’t behave the way I want it to. Or more so, I haven’t figured out how to make it behave the way I want it to. Hrrmph. *whinge whinge whinge*

ANYWAY….so I started off happy with this…and then when I got to the face it all went bad. And I pottered around….and then I thought “F*** it, just FINISH IT”….the more I do the better I will get huh.
Took about 3 hours all up….copying directly from a Gil Elvgren painting.

And I’m a bit obsessed with pinups right now – I like the skin tones and the shapely legs. Legs are fun to draw/paint. I can hear my ConceptArt readers (think I still have a few of those?) screaming “But the anatomy!!!!”. Hehee – I won’t argue against that – have you seen how small the feets are in these paintings? But oh well….it’s practice.

So here’s the drawing…

Also – not something I usually do, I’ve added some inspiration pics…and the original. So you can see just how much I failed

Til next time…

Hiiiiiii!!
Lightning fast posting tonight….Just a few sketches I did on the weekend from “The Figure in Motion”. Retro 70′s nudes FTW lol!!

Excuse the really dodgy heads and clumsy shading.

Should bring some colour back into this little blog huh?
ConceptArt is up to its 200th CHOW which involves a month long contest with the theme “Monarch of CHOW”. We have to a depict a king or queen of a particular music genre. TOO MUCH FREEDOM. Soooo many ideas! I should start sketching soon. Need to think about this one a lot.

You know I haven’t even done anything digital for a few weeks now? Feels strange.
Life drawing last night was fantastic too – if a little messy. Silly me to wear a white top on the day we’re meant to colour in our entire page with BLACK charcoal. Messy messy. Will attempt to somehow capture my drawings with the camera. Dreading the thought.
Okie then seeyas!!

Hi!

All done for this week’s CHOW. I can’t believe I managed to go out Saturday, bum around Sunday, do life drawing today and STILL get this done. Awesome. Oh and I don’t hate it so much either. Omg.

Okay so it’s not fantastic but it’s better than most (all?) my other CHOW entries so I gotta be makin’ some progress. Plus this week’s theme was mega mega awesome.
So onto the drawings…

If you can’t tell – I decided to go with a whacked out junkie as my Dorothy. Tehehehehee. WHY? Cos I can. And you gotta think that whoever came up with the whole OZ thing had to be on something. I know it’s not the original but have you SEEN Return to Oz?? Cray-zee. The first one was bad enough.
Some progress pics (Click it to make it big if you so wish)….

And how was life drawing I hear you ask?? FAB. Loved it!! Much better than what I was expecting. I shall show you my results tomorrow and talk about it in more detail.
Until then – BYE!

Hellooooooo!!!
Lately I’ve had the opportunity to do some illustrations for work. It’s not often that I get to crack out the Wacom but it is getting more frequent as our clients realise we CAN do the fancy pants design and photography without having to pay two lots of people to get their work done. Yay for the customer!!
And Yay for me cos I like being able to potter about drawing while at work.

Today we had a customer that wanted a revamp of their old designs with some illustrations thrown in. I wasn’t sure if they were happy to pay the extra for full colour process plates (cyan, magenta, yellow and black – which in our kind of business costs a lot more than the printers that make magazines etc) so I kept the colours to a minimum. Just one spot colour (Pantone), black, our standard double white (for opacity on the clear bags) and varnish.

First, the illustrations. I found some stock images and redrew them into a pleasing composition. I wanted a sketchy kind of look – all done in Photoshop. Corel Painter 9 packed it in on my work computer too. I think it may have something to do with updating the Wacom tablet drivers for the new operating system so I had to use PS.

Red wine and garlic:

Garlic and herb:

And this is the final result. This is only the first concept for the customer so I’m sure they will change it.

The stripes and colour block reach to the top and bottom of the bag so they will form a band across the meat.

Annnnyways it’s almost dinner time. Hope you have a good weekend peeps and I endeavor to finish this week’s CHOW so I will have that ready on Monday.
Ciao!!