Monday, March 27, 2017

Daily Quick Sketch: Three Lilttle Kittens

During the weekends, I've been playing around with developing characters for a story idea I've had for the past few years. In this tale, I use characters from the classic Nursery Rhyme the Three Little Kittens. I want to develop a unique style.

I wanted the kittens to look like triplets, with slight variations. This was simple to do via scanning the colored image (seen far below) into Photoshop. In Photoshop, the character was duplicated twice onto separate layers, then each layer was altered with size, shape, and color.
The final compilation of all three kittens crying ('cause they lost their mittens!)

First I wanted very simple features, to make a minimalized version of a cat.
This version lacked character,

The is a marker/ink sketch, which was scanned into Photoshop.
Then duplicated/altered to create two more variations
Original pencil sketches of kittens

UPDATE: Cowabunga Donatello!

Originally posted on 6-12-2012

Still testing out the digital inks and color styles that I will use for my kid's book, Bobby's Biggest Bubble. So I thought I'd do a cartoon with my version of one of the Ninja Turtles, Donatello.
(He was always my favorite, mostly because of his nerdy persona and I like that bo stick.)
The digital ink + colored version of Donatello created in ArtRage Pro

As far as digital painting programs go -- I'm leaning more towards ArtRage Pro again.
Painter is powerful, but its interface is just too #$%* clunky.
Photoshop doesn't provide the line and palette control I want.
Sketchbook is nice, but it just doesn't have the extra bells and whistles I need.

UPDATE
Found the original pencil sketches which I thought I lost. This reminds me, I should do the two remaining turtles I haven't drawn yet, then compile them into one scene together. You can see my version of Raph here.

The recovered pencil sketch of TMNT's Donatello

Friday, March 24, 2017

Ramblin' On: Digital Artwork vs Physical Artwork (Image: Pirate Dreams)

Ah, the conflicts between digitally and physically drawing.

Personally, I never liked to paint. Painting is punishing when you are unsure of your finished image. This is the reason I think most paintings are portraits, landscapes or still life; they are usually based on reality and what the artist physically sees.

Pirate Dreams: Originally created with color pencils + watercolors, then I digitally recolored the night sky

Growing up, I was always more driven toward things that weren't real. The mysteries and unknown. Imagining what could be out there but never found. When I started drawing, a pencil and eraser were the only way I could explore my imagination; So much more forgiving to changes than using crayons, ink or paints. Because of this, I became an Illustrator/Cartoonist and not a Painter.

Then came the digital world. Programs like Photoshop/Painter allowed one to paint with an eraser. Layers allowed one to experiment. As time went on, these programs became more and more expressive at mimicking mediums with Wacom tablets and other technological advances.

Pirate Dreams: The original pencil sketch

Today, I find myself mostly creating pencil sketches and then finishing digitally. (If I need physical coloring, I always go to alcohol based markers because they provided great color blends and control.) I strive to change my heavy cartoony line style to something more painterly and loose, to better fit the picture book market. When painting digitally today, I still struggle to "see" what that final image will be. (Oh, it's easier to paint now, but my traditional methods still get in the way.)

One thing I'm sure of: a physical piece is more challenging, a better representation of an artist's process and therefore more rewarding since there is an actual finished piece of artwork. The same can not be said of digital art.

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Touching up my Batman cartoon for a shirt.

This is an image I did in black & white for Inktober awhile ago. I started to color it and adjusted the image so that it can be printed on several different colored t-shirts.
Colored version of one of my favorite Inktober cartoons - soon to be a shirt on RedBubble.com
I already had this available on RedBubble as a t-shirt, but after ordering a dark t-shirt version, I found several areas that needed to be corrected (or backed by a white background.) Hopefully, I can make the shirt available in about a week or two.