Posemaniac studies

More posemainac studies.

Loomis, Bridgman and Posemaniacs Studies

I am currently on holiday. This update is just some quick studies over one night. Studies were taken from Loomis, Bridgman and Posemaniacs.
No real text to go with this.

Continue Manga Fan Art

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Continue Manga Fan Art.

As most of you have gathered by now I love to draw. When I am not drawing I tend to spend a lot of time on youtube. One of my favorite channels is Continue. Figured I would do portraits of the hosts of Continue as a thank you for entertaining me (or distracting me depending on your point of view).

For all of you who don’t know Continue is a web show featuring three guys playing video games. They play a selected game for around thirty minutes (all the time bickering among each other XD) and after that time they talk abit about their experience and decide if they would continue or game over. The show is very funny and has some great recurring jokes like Epic maneuver (queue nightwish.)

Be sure to check out their videos and subscribe to their channel. http://www.youtube.com/user/continueshow?feature=results_main

Lets get started on the tutorial.

First step is as always mock up a quick sketch. I actually messed up some of the faces here but the idea is readable. So long as the image is readable then I can always come back and neaten up areas I don’t like.

After neatening up the image it is time to import to illustrator to clean up the line art.  I feel I am getting quicker at this as I have figured out my personal way of dealing with illustrator. Line art complete it is now time to import the lines into photoshop so I can begin the colour process.

I lay down the base colours and then adjust the brightness and saturation. This is to ensure that the colours are distinct from one another. I then tidy up the colours erasing any parts that may have gone over the lines. Each colour gets its own layer.

A transparency lock is placed on each layer for the shading. This is to prevent me colouring outside the lines thus saving me time and aggravation. Shades and small highlights are applied.

Little touches are added before I work on the sofa. For the glasses I drew small white lines for the reflection. Beards did not translate well so I focused more on heavy stubble. A grey colour was applied with a soft round brush followed by specs of dark colour to give some texture. I tried to match the font but I could not find the correct one. This was the closest I could find.

For the sofa I wanted to try something I recently learnt from watching “Eden of the east”. In this anime the backgrounds were painted with a very distinct look to them. I used a hard round brush flattened. I then rotated the brush to a forty-five degree angle. I layered the lighter tones to give the sofa a plump shape. I added a darker layer with the same brush fore the dents in the sofa. This gave a really nice effect. Will defiantly do this again.

I really enjoyed working on this. My workflow seems to be improving as I feel as if I am getting faster.

I do think my shading needs a bit more work but I feel like I am developing my own style. Having more fun doing these as well.

Quick notice:

I will be away on holiday next week so no drawing tutorial for 2 weeks. These take a while to produce and I will not have the time.

Fear not I will be writing two reviews for the weeks I am not around. They will be published through an automated system so if I do not respond straight away it is not because I am ignoring you it is be cause I am away from my desk.

Normal service will resume when I return.

L8r all.

Manga Muse Fan Art

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It has been a while since I created a fully finished piece so I decided to work on that last week. I remember hearing one of my favourite groups on radio 1’s live lounge (muse) and had a look to see what pictures they took of their performance.

You can find the original image on the radio 1 Facebook page. I do not own muse or radio 1 (I just like to draw lol)

The image was done in several phases over the space of a week. It would have been quicker but I caught a cold ad that slowed me down.

First step was to get a quick sketch done. This was done with a low opacity brush. Whilst it is a slight bit difficult to make out it enables me to work fast and make changes with out the need of erasing so often. This makes it easy for me to map out where everything goes.

I import the plan into illustrator where I begin the inking process. This is one of the longest parts as I work in some of the details and improve the line strength. Crisp clean line art gives me extra confidence to add colour to the image. The down side to this method is I have to swap programs if I spot an error.

I group the different colours on different layer. All the skin will be on one layer, the tee shirt and guitar neck (sorry I don’t know the technical name) have the same colour so I keep them on the same layer. After that I add shading. I keep it at a 2-tone system. This adds shade, gives the image form and also adds speed. The tee shirt is a bit different as I added a third tone to make the inside of the sleeve a bit darker.

Now that the character is done I move on to the background. I opt for a flat 2d background. Very little shading and no line art in illustrator. This is to make the character pop out from the background. I once completed I then de saturate, darken and blur it slightly. Again this makes the character pop out even further.

Now that I am finished it is time for a quick artist’s critique.

Over all I am very pleased with it. As mentioned in an earlier blog post I struggle with backgrounds so it is nice to see the background gel so well with this piece.

This piece is not perfect. The hands are bugging me. I need to practice more on those so my next set of studies will probably be on hands. God I hate drawing hands lol.

Till next time peoples.