Wedding Guestbook 2022

 A "guestbook" for guests to sign at a wedding. Guests would choose a book and sign their names along the spine. For a family who enjoys reading and spending time together.

Wedding Guestbook 2022
Digital - Krita and Google SketchUp

Guest Book for Wedding 2022

 As I explained earlier I seem to always either be sick, tired, or busy. It sure makes it tough to pursue my many goals and aspirations. This year was no different as I finally got married! Life is great, but planning a wedding, having a wedding, and raising two kids definitely takes up a lot of time. Somehow I managed to squeeze in this drawing for people to sign as a guest book at our wedding. I was inspired by a similar gest book sign in drawing with stacks of books, but wanted to personalize it to my family.

The finished guest book. Guests sign on the spines of the books!

I love the way it turned out! There's a couple jank things here and there - courtesy of the rust building up on my arms from months of disuse. This is also the first time I've ever used a 3d model to reference and layout my scene. I knew stacks of books were going to be difficult to freehand perspective wise. It had to look right, so I mocked it up in Google SketchUp first. I set the opacity down low and drew my scene overtop. It's a great way to lay out a complicated piece, and I'll definitely be using it again in the future for some more ambitious pieces.

I used Google SketchUp to layout my scene. It made those stacks of books way easier to draw.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to everyone! Here's to me hopefully getting back into a regular routine artwork and other project wise. Take care and thanks for stopping by!

Gestures of the Week 2022-12-23

 I managed to do two whole gestures this entire year! That's a bit of dry spell ain't it? My excuses are the following, and they are always the same: life is busy, and I'm always tired. I'm always afraid of falling back to square one when I leave drawing for so long. There's definitely some rust to shake off, but I'm at least always pleased to not be completely incapable after so long. Here they are!

Hands - Little Arm Noodles

This has been a long time in the works. Life - it gets busy. I started these hand studies ages ago, like months ago, and I've finally managed to do enough to satisfy myself for now and move on. Being a parent in addition to having a full time job demands a lot of time and energy. It doesn't leave much room for drawing. BUT! I'm not going to give up, and I'll continue at whatever pace I can manage.

First, I had to finish up the last bit of these arm studies. Again, I'm using Michael Hampton's methodology from his book to construct these. Arms can be kind of confusing with all the different muscles wrapping around the form. Understanding how the bones in the forearm twist is also important.

Here's some hand studies using Michael Hampton again. It's a little brief in the book for something that so many people struggle with - including me. There are some helpful tips and imagining of the form, but I wanted to go a little further so I've also looked at additional resources.

Found a slew of helpful hand tip drawings - only one problem, they're not in english! It's alright though, they're drawn in such a way that it's pretty easy to understand the point each tip is getting across. Simple proportions to memorize, the way things bend, how to simplify etc. This was great practice.

Lastly, I took some screenshots from Owl House, a show I'm really enjoying by the way, and cropped out the hands. I'm really interested in how the hands get simplified, and I really like this style of hand drawing. So, I tried to study some of them and break them down.

That's all folks! On to legs and feet - one day. We'll see how much time I get while being the working parent of 2 young children! Take care, and have a Merry Christmas :)

Quick Refresh Studies

 As I've been mostly busy working and tending to my newborn son I haven't been drawing too much lately. Anatomy information and figure construction techniques always get hazy in my head after such prolonged periods. So, I've been thumbing through my Michael Hampton book, "Figure Drawing - Design and Invention," and revisiting some of the studies and lessons. The following is what I've "refreshed" so far.

Gestures of the Week 2021-08-15

I suppose these aren't all gestures from this recent week. There are a few old ones here that had not been uploaded yet. A few are recent and I think it shows because I haven't been actively doing gestures for the last few months. I still like them as a warmup, but lately I've just been jumping into my studies.

Whistling Forest - Process

 I've wanted to make a piece of fanart for a streamer I like for a while now. Life gets pretty busy being a father of two so time is precious. Some of that precious time finally got spent on the following piece! The streamer's channel is called Whistling Forest. I know I wanted a forest scene and to possibly incorporate some kind of whistling - just like the name of the channel. Makes sense right? I decided to have the streamer playing video games at dusk in the forest. The trees are making little whistling music notes as they watch and a few little mushroom dudes have also come to watch the exciting game.

Like everything we first start out with a really rough sketch to get the idea into the real world. Get out of my head! Again, I knew I wanted a forest scene with the streamer playing some video games.

I plugged one of those rough sketches into Krita and used it as a base. From there I created some perspective lines and roughed in the general tree locations, leaves, bushes, and the streamer. Once that was taken care of I also added some details like the water bottle, mushroom viewers, tree stump, and computer.

I tried drawing out the title, Whistling Forest, but it didn't look very good. A standard font didn't seem to fit as well so I decided to make the very tedious and time consuming decision to custom design the lettering in Inkscape. That's a program I hadn't used in a long time sooo... I kind of had to relearn it a little bit. That didn't help me finish it any faster, but I was happy with the result. I wanted something with square cornered bottoms and rounded tops.

Reference is key - and drawing some sitting cross legged is a little more challenging that I anticipated. I had to go back and redraw his legs a few times. I was initially inspired by the art piece below title "Journey" by Varguy for the style of my piece. Their colours and linework really appealed to me so I tried to emulate it - I didn't nail it, but it turned out alright.

A forest at dusk.

Journey by Varguy inspired me.

Really happy with the way this turned out and the streamer really liked it as well! Thanks for checking out my process. If anyone ever has any questions for me about my process I'm more than happy to answer as best as I can.

Whistling Forest

Dusk falls on the Whistling Forest as a gamer draws a crowd of locals to the spectacle of his gaming skills. The trees of the forest often whistle their tunes in the gentle breeze, but tonight they cheer for him.

Whistling Forest

Digital - Krita and Inkscape

Curious Centipede

 A curious centipede investigates the source of a bright light in a mysterious study. The source, a candle, oozes beads of wax along the contours of a skull.

Curious Centipede

 14-1/2x8-1/2"

Copic Markers and Black Pen on Copic Paper

Fish Bait

Adorable fish nibble on some delicious, sandwich bait. A sandwich consisting of lettuce, cheese, mustard, mayonnaise and your choice of deli meat between two fresh slices of bread. This sandwich sounds scrumptious so I can see why these fish would be easily lured to it.

Fish Bait

8x8"

Copic Markers and Black Pen on Copic Paper

Here is a cleaned up digital version isolated from the background.