Happy Holidays!

Here are a few quick photos of little greeting cards I painted last week for family and friends. Gouache is an unfamiliar medium for me, but it was alot of fun. Various Australian animals, as usual!

...and of course, I painted little things on the inside too!

 Happy Holidays everyone!

Character re-design

This week was re-designing a Lord of The Rings character, I chose Treebeard. First are some idea sketches done straight in pen, then did the final with microns and some sepia ink and watercolor.

I was going for more of a fantasy illustration type of look, as opposed to thinking about pushing the design, but I'll definitely keep the critiques I received in mind when designing characters in the future!

'nudies' (more lifedrawings)

I don't consider this 'mature content', but i'll just say ya' better scroll fast if you can't handle a few nudes.  Here's some of my drawings from last Fridays session 

 

I had a little too much fun with that one.... she's some sort of dragon-guardian-empress haha. 

hands and feet (totally an original title)

Just hand and feet observations.  All colored with markers, but the first one was done with traditional pen and ink, which is obnoxious but has an interesting line quality. Second one done only with only markers , and it was challenging trying to think of opaque shapes when it's really a translucent medium. Last one done with microns, as I got frustrated by the other restrictive mediums and decided to just plain out draw like I always do.

Slaying the schooling dragon...

Last weeks assignment, drawing 3 friends in the style of another artist. They dont look like themselves at all haha, but it was good fun. It's final exam time here in Australia, and its a very daunting and stressful time for everyone. The idea was of a final schooling showdown, so I guess they're belated graduation illustrations. First is Tomer Hankua's style done digitally, second is Barth Maunoury's style done with ink and marker with color changed digitally. I'll be sure to post more in the weeks to come.

Film studies!

Last weeks assignment was to draw a scene from a film, but add animal heads onto all the people.

For a challenge, I decided to go for a 'lineless' approach and try looking harder at colors painting digitally using only a mostly opaque brush, so it was a  great learning experience. I made them all relatively smart dog breeds to try to emphasize their status as part of the educated middle-upper class, being wealthy enough to flee the turmoil of the cities...maybe I got too into it haha. I was feeling inspired by the fantastically awesome artwork done by my peers and decided to do some more but with different brushes, and try to implement the great advice I got. I would draw every second in Bladerunner if I could, but here's just one for now. It was great fun painting the neon lights and reflections...

...and here's another Dr. Zhivago, without the dog heads this time!

I love drawing from films more than dawdling around painting the entire shot, but its still good practice painting digitally. I can't wait till I'm done with exams and actually have time to draw, but I better go study some Japanese or English now. Till next time~

Getting out and about...

Here's some observational work done for Mahoney's portfolio development class. These first two were done without taking the pen off the paper and then colored digitally. It was interesting experimenting with color schemes and the various moods created.

This week I drew for under an hour at Urimbirra wildlife park in Victor Harbor. Both were sketched straight with pen, but the color for the birds was a pre-done acrylics wash, while the kangaroos were colored digitally. I was so close to the animals, I had to constantly stop the kangaroos from nibbling at my paper, and its pretty enthralling having bug-eyed emus literally hovering above your paper while you draw. All in all it was great fun. I'd like to go back through these studies and experiment with pushing the anatomy and such for more interesting designs, that's something I'm striving to improve on. Bye for now. 

Blueys go to Canberra

I did an entry awhile back for the Waterhouse Art Prize for Natural History, and thought I'd post about it. While at CSSSA, I found out my entry Blue Swimmers won 2nd place in the youth category. The exhibition in South Australia is over, and now my blueys are travelling to the Australian capital of Canberra.

Blue swimmer crabs are native to South Australia, they're beautiful and delicious, what else could you want?

'Bluey' is also Australian slang for red-head, just like our prime minister and me. :) I drew it straight in ink without a preliminary pencil drawing, then watercolored.

I've seen these little dudes swim outta' a crab net faster than you can say 'Julia Gillard'. They have a lot of personality and I really enjoyed drawing them. They're on display at the National Archives of Australia in Canberra until November 13th. Cya!

schoolyard sketch

Just a quick pen sketch done before sitting my Economics exam. 

Hey, this will probably be my last update until mock exams are over. Doodles done in text books and such. A little (dare I say it...) Hetalia fanart of adorable lil' Pre-revolutionary Russia and a sketch done in my Japanese book of a character i'm still trying to figure out, havin' fun with Hue and Saturation in Photoshop.

Scanned n' colored a drawing done in the last few minutes before leaving the resturaunt.

Okay, so I have this thing for drawing mythological figures and well, here's a digitally colored in pencil drawing I did after reading the Wikipedia article on Shiva. He's a major Hindu deity and is often portrayed dancing on top of Apasmara, the demon of ignorance. I got the impression he'd be a sort of whimsical and spacey—I mean, he's pretty much the mascot of psytrance from what I've seen. The colors are intentionally retinal burning. Hope it doesn't happen to offend anyone, Cya~

Maann, I gotta stop always updating on Sunday nights. Anyways, I've been trying to make more visually interesting character designs and consider color schemes more, trying to move away from drawing 'generic' things. School, or maybe just Economics assignments and Japanese presentations, drain any creative energy, but I guess it'll be over all too soon so I better enjoy it while it lasts! 

Oh, and here's a sketch of a corner of my Japanese classroom. One of my peers wanted it, and since its scanned...

I finally got around to photographing (most of) my life drawings done during my month at the CSSSA Animation program. I did around 60+ drawings in life drawing class, of course not taking into account my sketchbooks! The drawings range from less than 5 min to around 15, and I tried to be selective and choose the ones I like most. 


For those of you that are unfamiliar, the life drawing at CSSSA is nothing like an average life drawing class. The models dress up and we were encouraged to use our 'imagination'. The teachers were incredibly helpful and inspiring and really forced us to create characters and scenarios out of the model in front of us, and consider design and composition as well. Whilst the cat handbag and plastic deer were actual props, I unfortunately must confide that the razor barbed hula-hoop was not. 


Apologies ahead of time for the snippets of our terracotta tile floor visible in some of the photos, but it was unavoidable.These are mainly in order of which sessions I did them. I hope nobody objects to me putting up a few of the portraits we did of classmates. If so, please tell me and i'll remove them. Click to enlarge the pictures. 

Continuous movement drawings.Yep, exactly what the name implies. 

 

 

The last two were done with tempera paints and involved some finger painting. xD