Graphic Design and Illustration.

Posts tagged ‘art’

Pen and Ink Sketches

After reviewing my site, I was surprised I never posted any of this. As I have blogged about in the past, I sometimes take part in the monthly art challenge of Inktober. I usually avoid the various prompts people post and do my own thing. One year I decided I just wanted to draw people (my favourite subject matter) in different poses in natural settings with an emphasis on trying to get as much variety as possible. The ones I have posted here are the ones I think turned out.
I also added a splash of colour to each one for effect. Since Inktober takes place in the month of October, I felt an orange colour was best. Enjoy!

Nerdy Girl

Everyone loves a nerdy girl, right?
A quick sketch from my trusty sketchbook, inked with a brush pen, scanned into the computer, and then quick colours dropped in using Photoshop.
I tend to use more simplified backgrounds for my cartooning. It helps to keep the foreground/midground elements and the background elements separate. Plus, it’s easier to draw! Got that tip years ago from watching an interview with Matt Groening of the Simpsons fame.
Enjoy!

Mail Kobold

This little guy was a fun one to paint. Started off as a fairly tight pencil rough and then all the rest done as a digital painting in Photoshop. I wanted something firmly visceral and loose without being too sloppy. Special thanks to the artist Matt Dixon for the inspiration for this piece. And apologies for not being nearly as good as him.

Enjoy!

Among the Ruins

Nobody ever came here.

The monolith rose out of the only oasis in the Sea of Broken Glass, or Quaa Rouchar, in the local dialect of the desert nomads who managed to survive out here. It was built eons ago in the hopes of banishing an ancient menace from the land. One thousand souls were sacrificed in the dedication rite, so determined the ancients were to rid the land of it’s tormentor. It was never permitted to happen again, And it was thought would never need to happen again. So the ancient blood rite was forgotten, and place abandoned. Even the reason for the monument’s existence was a faint and distant memory. All was well.

It worked, didn’t it?

Sarna knew otherwise. And he had a plan on what to do about it.

This was a redo of artwork long abandoned by me (it’s not just ancient monuments that get left on the dustbin of history). I wanted to monumentalize something that is ordinarily quite small. In this case a chess piece. A knight. Was fun to really play around with the sunset style colours.

Started out as a pencil sketch in my sketchbook that was totally repainted digitally in Photoshop. Enjoy!

A Boy and His Bot

“This is no place for the likes of you,” said the giant robot. His old gears creaking as he bent down.

“Come with me. For an adventure. I’ll not harm you.”

This was a fun one to draw. Started out as a pencil sketch. Was scanned into the computer, and colour loosely dropped in behind in Photoshop. The lines were then redrawn over top with a fairly gritty brush in Photoshop. I tried pretty hard to preserve as much of the original line as as I did that. I wanted to keep everything fairly loose. Adding in the texture to the robot was my favourite part.

I can’t take full credit for the design of the robot. In my son’s Kindergarten class, the had an in class assignment to build their own robot to teach them about different shapes. This monstrosity was all my son’s doing. I just added a few details.

Enjoy!

May The Fourth Be With You, Always.

Long, long time ago, in a galaxy not to far away, I did this image to make a poster for a Christmas present for my then girlfriend (now wife).

Keep in mind, this one was done in 2004. The third prequel had yet to come out, and it never really looked like there would be any future Star Wars movies, so I thought it was a pretty safe bet to create a fictional seventh movie.

Most of the background stars came from an even older digital painting I’m too embarrassed to post here, the planet is mostly a photoshop filter, and the vehicles are 3D renders with a bit of digital paint thrown in afterwards. Everything else is me trying my very best to digitally paint using Photoshop.

The poster still hangs up in my office to this day.

Enjoy.

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Incoming

Aurora was a sleepy little world located near the Pleades. Nothing much ever happened there, even though everything was a pretty blue hue. You’d think tourists would flock to it from all over the quadrant. But no. I was always very quiet. The light blues just gave everyone and everything a nice mellow tone.

And then the proximity alarm went off.

There was some sort of ship blasting by. It appeared out of nowhere. The local jump gate registered no unlawful entry and virtually no one in the system owned a private ship.

This was a fun digital painting of a fictional planet being buzzed by a small ship. Wonder who is piloting it? Anyways, all done in Photoshop using some fairly old techniques. Was nice to do and unwind after a busy couple of hectic weeks.

Enjoy!

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The Many Faces of Eve

A series of head sketches featuring Eve. An expressive little kid that sometimes tags along with the Oxfordians.

Traditional pencil sketches finished off in Photoshop. Designed with a quick turnaround time in mind. Enjoy!

Into the Void

Pulling out go Hyperspace was always the worst. One small miscalculation, and you materialize right in front of an asteroid and it’s all over.

 

I hate technical drawing. I even took three years of drafting in high school to get better at it. I’m okay, but still never liked it. Took much relying on rulers, triangles and don’t get me going on drawing tangents on arcs! So this was an exercise in driving me crazy. Though it is a bit of a cheat. This started out as a very basic 3D render of the ship only. With lots of painting over. And the background is all me noodling around in Photoshop. Enjoy!