Kittys Drawings

Hey!

Guess what!

I have a new job!!!!

YAY!

I start at the beginning of September – similar kind of work – still in food packaging…..but now I’ll be out east instead of north….and lots more opportunities in the new place (I hope!). It’s going to be a super fast paced role, servicing a very high profile client in their head office.

So that is what was special about the grey sheath dress in my last post – it was what I wore to my first interview with my new employers.

That’s all I got for you today. I finished a dress – but I’m not taking photos cos today is a bludge day and I can’t be bothered getting dressed up and doing my hair etc when I don’t plan on going out. Heh. I’ve also been drawing…a few crappy sketches. I’m really out of practice with sketching.  Here is one just so I don’t have a words only post.

Till soon guys! I’m off to go figure out THIS pattern – make it smaller, and squish the skirt onto the small amount of fabric I have. I’m going to see if I can use parts of another pattern where its a gored skirt not a full circle. Should still have enough swish and hopefully be more economical on fabric.

‘Sup!
Wow look I’m finished!

Once again I got a bit sick of it all towards the end. Really need to get better at drawing faces – however starting with the head is always hard. I find that proportions work easier if I draw the figure first and add the head later….but that means that I’ll leave the face til last and by then I’m usually well over the drawing.
Next time I’ll attempt to block in the majority of the figure first….do the face and THEN finish the rest of the drawing. Hope that works out better. Always something new learnt from doing one of these.

Some work in progress.

So yeh – not entirely happy with the face. Hmm. Thoughts?

Seeyas!

Hi Everyone!
This week I had all intentions of fixing up the drawing in the previous post. I also did a bunch of quick fashion sketches that I had plans on colouring.

But then I became aware of ConceptArt’s latest CHOW topic. Fantasy Pinup. Umm – could that have been any more perfect?? So of course I jumped on it. Actually fairly pleased with this one – It could have done with a bit more detail but overall, I think my CHOW entries have improved significantly
This took me about 6 hours – maybe more? I used a ref for the pose. By Sunday, I was hungover from the night before so I was glad I’d pretty much finished it on Saturday.

Work in progress. Look – no lines!

So this week, I will finish the drawings I had planned on.
Also – I might head back to life drawing next Monday.

Ciao!

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…

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

Yay!
Just in time too. I hope it is what was expected I’m quite happy with it too. Could have polished it a bit more but just didn’t have time.

No time to chat today! Gotta work on that harem girl.

Have a good weekend!