The Dragon Slayer's Daughter is Finally Finished

The Dragon Slayer's Daughter, Digitally Colored Drawing, 2011

This one has been waiting awhile to be finished... it's nice to finally see it in the light of day. I posted sketches in an earlier entry, click here to view them. Personal projects are hard to finish these days but you can always get less sleep, right?



Early Color Study

Maddy's Night Lights

Maddy's Night Lights, Digitally Colored Drawing

The Banishment

The Banishment, 12.75" x 20", Digitally altered
drawing combined with digital photography and
digital painting, 2010



Drawn components before digital treatment


Drawn Components


Digitally Painted Components

The Toy Inspector

I'm a little late in posting this. It's an illustration that I created as a holiday gift for family members.


Digitally Colored Drawing

Some of the reactions to the work reminded me of the importance of understanding your audience. As an artist I did not see it coming, but some of my hatch marks were a little too aggressive. Many people read the hatch work on the younger elves arms, as hair. "Look at her hairy arms", was not one of the reactions I was hoping for when I created this piece.

Silas, The Root Man

Silas, Digitally Colored Drawing

Tall Water Falls, in progress

In Progress Screen Shot: Digital Coloring


Shading Stage: Digital


Original Graphite Drawing, 8.5" x 17"


I've been working on this one for over a year. It keeps getting pushed aside due to other obligations or other (paying) projects but I keep at it with stolen chunks of time...30 minutes here or 2 hrs there (seems like a lot of my favorite pieces are finished this way).
I love these characters and have big dreams for these little guys. They're a great blend of some of my favorite childhood influences (The Gummi Bears the Saturday morning cartoon series, Winnie the Pooh illustrations and animations) and some of my grown-up observations about how our individual quirks effect our childhood and family experiences.

I've included some shots of different stages of my digital coloring process:
The original drawing was intentionally rendered lighter. I've found that the contrast gradually increases as I work on my illustrations and the lighter I can keep the drawing in the beginning, the less I have to beck peddle while I work on it digitally.

The shading stage is the first step after scanning the drawing. It's done by creating two layers; the first, is a duplicate of the original drawing and the second, which is a darker version of the original. I 'll use a soft eraser tool with a 15% to 30% opacity and erase sections (shadows) of the top, lighter layer and expose the darker layer below it.

The coloring stage works much like the shading stage except I'll change the color of the bottom layer instead of the value. I then merge the layers and repeat the process over and over again until everything is roughly the color I want it to be.

As I 'm erasing I will create silhouettes of the various erased sections and save them as separate layers. I'll use these layers later on in the process to create selections that will allow me to tweak specific areas until I have the color and value that are appropriate for the final art.

Some effects, such as highlights or reflective light are done as direct digital paintings and simply sit over top of the colored drawing layer.

Latest Character Study for Snow Days Project

I like how this characters guarded nature comes through in the sketch. However, now that I look at them together, in the digitally colored version her expression seems a bit too suspicious. In addition, the wisps of hair at her ears are too dense... perhaps I'll go back into this one later on.




That's better... updated version Sept 28th.

Anthropomorphic Animals in Watercolor

I've always loved illustrated animals with anthropomorphic qualities and in my head I'm always coming up with ideas for different characters. I finally found some time (stole some time actually since I had a couple lesson plans to write and a freelance deadline looming) to play around with some ideas and to break out the ol' watercolors. It's been years since I've done anything serious with watercolors and it was nice to work with them again.

I did the two character studies (the mouse then the fox) and then worked up the nerve to do a more complete composition with the raccoon. I'm really pleased with the result especially considering that I've become so rusty with the medium.

Enjoy.

Character Studies For a Personal Project: Snow Days

I just finished a couple of character studies that I'm fairly pleased with. These are digitally colored drawings that I scanned from my sketchbook... you can see the original drawings below.