bluh bluh bluh bluh

As I sit typing this, it's about two minutes until new years, and my resolution is to suck less. At art, that is. It will take some work, but that's something I think I can do. I've been doing a lot of practice lately, but the only thing I have on hand for easy posting are these:






For some reason I have huge difficulty with digital painting. So I'm working on fixing that. I'm starting with some small, simple things to try and figure it out, so I'll be posting some of my efforts. Mayhaps we shall begin to see less suckage! :P

More Pencils

Some more sketches, this time ones that became finished pieces. Well, two finished pieces and one half finished one.






The finished versions can be found here:

http://sgt-duckie.deviantart.com/art/Anna-185618234#/d30pgx3
http://sgt-duckie.deviantart.com/art/Anna-185618234

Sketcheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees

I haven't been keeping up with my blog very well, because I don't really have either the time or the energy to edit sketches for posting at the moment. However, here's some fairly recent sketches that have been sitting in my flash drive for a while.

Flats

Well, it took a while because I've had so much other stuff to be doing, but I finally got the flats done. Now to move on to the actual painting part. :P



You should also ignore all those little jpeg artifacts, because for some bizarre reason it would only let me convert to JPEG. Oh well.

Hwee!

I have a secret: hwee doesn't mean anything.

Today I have a couple practice paintings from around a month ago. I was fairly pleased with how they wound up looking.

Comic Pencils

Here are the pencils for some comic pages I made for my portfolio- they are really the intro of a larger comic project I'm not actually going to be tackling in full until I'm a lot better at a variety of things. Note that these are rather messy- I've already neatened them up a bit, don't hold your breath for them to turn pristine. There's a reason I don't use my pencils for the final comic. :I














These four pages will be posted on my DA as soon as I finish the fourth. Then I hope to finish the intro pages of this and then tackle a short comic project that I'd really like to get under my belt before I head off to school.

Oh, grand dreams.


Edited for grammars. :V

For realz post which is shorter than the aforemention short post

This is an image I popped out when I was casting around for portfolio ideas. It was originally intended to be a marker piece. I never dd finish that version of it, but I think I'm going to use it for CG practice now.

Short Post

I haven't posted much because I've been both on the road and terribly busy, but now that I'm back home and things are gradually starting to wind down, I can get back to pretending I have more than 2 or 3 readers. C:

So, for the time being, here is news about a neat little art raffle one Tehkeh is holding:

http://news.deviantart.com/article/132026/

She's auctioning off a neat little halloween picture, and she has some other very nice marker pieces on her DA site:

Sun Goddess Glass Window by *tehkeh on deviantART


Herryk in the Rain by *tehkeh on deviantART


Pink Sky At Night by *tehkeh on deviantART


Elf and Bugs by *tehkeh on deviantART


Go check it out! I command you! I'll be updating with actually art-stuff later!

Duckies

Some rubber duck designs. It's generally best not to ask why. I probably won't tell you anyway.

Watercolor WIPs

Today, some watercolor wips.




Some lines, with masking fluid.



This particular lineart has been sitting in my room for a month; I started painting it the other day only to discover that cadmium red and masking fluid apparently don't mix well. This one may be put aside for a while anyway, because I don't really know how I'm going to approach that wall....

Candlesticks 1.1

As me mum pointed out, the contrast between the color blocked candle holder and the finished one is interesting.

New Still Life WIP

Since my French Horn still life wasn't going to work out (I choose to blame the paper :P), I've restarted with something simpler; and on better paper. Here I'm using the sennelier pastel carte instead of mi teintes paper, and GOD DAMN does it make a difference. I may have been able to do the french horns successfully on this paper, but I kind of got sick of having them in the middle of my floor. So I've been working on this; and with great success, I think.



It's better to do something simpler that I can render with finesse than try something overly complicated and botch it all up. When it comes to portfolios, anyway.

Not not as zombie

This is getting quite close to being finished, so this is probably the last you'll see of it before I finish it entirely.





Self portrait version 2.0, now with 50% less zombie.

WIPs- interior and zombie face

Some more wips-



Attempt #2 at an interior. The first one was prematurely aborted. Should stop sucking so much as I continue to work on it, but could still stink anyway.



And zombie face. Supposed to be a self portrait,but eeeeeeeeeh. It has a bit left to be done to it, we'll see if it resembles me when it's done.

This partcular self portrait is meant to be a kind of foil to the first one I did. The first one I carefully sketched everything out and it has a very tight, controlled, almost tense feel to it. This one is supposed to be looser and more soft and sensual. To that end, instead of drawing out the face before hand I jut jumped in and tried to, as my watercolor teacher would say, express shape, tone, and color in one line. Maybe that's why it doesn't look like me?

Big Fish WIP

More pastel work. It's a big fish. :P I have a lot more work to do on this one.. But I need to get a trip to the store to pick up some blue/purple pastels.

FEESH

Today we have a sneak peek at the production of a collage. :D


First I start with what I refer to as a map or a chart. I'm sure there's an official word for it, but I don't know what if is so I don't care. Here's the map for this picture.



Each element is completely outlined in a different color. It makes it a little hard to look at, but that way it's easier for me to trace each individual element properly when it comes time to make a template.

Next, I make a template by tracing each individual piece on tracing paper. Then I can cut out each individual piece and use it to cutout the actual paper pieces. Here is the template for the fish in the above picture.





That's all you get for now. Shoo. :D

WIPs 1

Just a couple of wips. I'll probably be posting mostly mid-progress pics for a while.

Doop de Doop

An update for the blog that nobody reads-



Just a quick pastel sketch that the teacher stopped class in the middle of for us to do. Within the next day or two I should have much more stuff to post- sme color charts I've been working on, sketches, thumbnails, and hopefully some wips.

Plein Air Painting # 1

I'm taking a plein air painting class,and this is my first outdoor painting.



Hopefully I'll have a decent picture to post every week, and at the end of the class I can put the all together into one post and see how it all looks.

Moar Stellas

I HAD cleaned up today's sketch in PS and added a border and made it nice and pretty. But then photoshop decided to break when I tried to save and I'm lucky it didn't take the rest of my computer with it. Unfortunately, I just plain do NOT have the time to go back and redo it. =( (I wish I did. It had a nice little colored background and everything.) But alas, more urgent things than my blog come a' calling.

ROBOT DINOSAUR HORSE COW THING FROM SPACE

Color test for future painting. I don't think it'll have any brown.



'Nother super messy page, though. I'M TIRED, DANGIT, LEAVE ME ALONE.

Stella Sketches

A few Stella sketches- hopefully they aren't too hard to see. I've been playing around with figuring out how to clean them up and I think I almost have something that works, but it's getting late and I don't want to perfect the technique tonight. I want to go to sleep instead of wrassling with photoshop. :P



A few faces. Cleaned up versions of a few of these may make it onto a character sheet I want to put together. I want to do a short comic about her, but it won't make sense unless you know a little of her background. =)

Filler Post

Still haven't gotten at the scanner, so I'm going to make a little filler post here to show you all just how hard I fail. xD This is the remnants leftover from my first attempt at digital painting since I was about 14.




My first attempt, done by drawing straight into photoshop with my sadly neglected tablet. Abandoned for obvious reasons.




Hand drawn and inked lineart. Took about 15 minutes, all told. Much nicer. :P I scanned it in black and white, but I'm not entirely happy with how that came out so I think I'm not going to do that next time.




My first attempt at coloring. Here I tried to do a little stuff with the smudge tool, but I didn't really like it. I need to get my tablet working properly so I can try to master actual shading techniques.





And the final version. I kept reading a lot of tutorials while I was trying to color it the first time, and I implemented a lot of new tricks when I restarted. I started trying to do gradient blending, but the only place I got it looking okay was on the chainsaw blade. Nice for metal, stood out strangely everywhere else.



And finally, just for yucks, one of those pictures from when I was 14.





MS Paint, bitches.

Old Sketch

Just an old sketch, since I haven't been at the scanner in a while.




WHY YES, THAT IS MORE POKEYMANS.

Colored Pencil Sketches

Today, a couple of colored pencil sketches.




Stella



And Anni. She is my friends character, and you can find a bunch of her art here: http://nellyonly.deviantart.com/


I tried to clean these up a little in PS, but I don't think I did that great a job. I'm not that great at playing with levels yet. :P

More Pokey-mans

Mudkip Rage

The lines for a picture I'm working on. <3 Why yes, that is an angry Mudkip holding a chainsaw with a little heart on it. Why do you ask?

Badass 80's Gnome Chick

A couple sketches of a gnome character I designed for my sister. The first one looks like some kind of angry 80's gnome chick.

Sketches

Just a few sketches I've done recently.

In Honor of Improvement

I guess my sketchblog lives again. For a day, at least.

Anywho, I recently took a watercolor class. This is the first painting I did:


It super sucks.

This is the second painting I did.



I think this painting is important simply because of the sheer amount of improvement I see between one and the other. I really learned a lot while painting this weird little door. So I might as well restart this blog on a high point, and give myself a little credit for once.

Here's to actually remembering to post!