Small improvements

I made a self portrait for my "very special top secret project" some time ago, and I liked it but there was something with it that kept rubbing me in all the wrong spots. So, today I went back to it and finished it properly. It doesn't look that much different, but I like it much more this way:

Mummie kids; the process and the end result

So, long time no see! I'm still working on the same secret thing I told you about before, but I've finished something else recently as well. I'm developing some monsters for a project I'm freelancing for, and I thought it would be cool to show my process.

How I do things

As you may have noticed I decided to give the drawing challenge a miss for a bit. The point of the challenge was to get me to draw every day, and that's a goal I've already made by now. Also, since I didn't have any freelance projects yet I figured it would be handy to do a challenge while work was still quiet, just to get me going you know.


It just so happened that in no time at all I was up to my neck in "job" offers, so I decided to take them on instead! First though, I'm working on something big for myself that I want to have finished by the end of this week. What it is shall remain a secret for a bit, but I wanted to show you guys I'm not sitting here doing nothing. Also, I wanted to show something of my work process so I decided to kill two birds with one stone haha. Here you go:

As you can see, the first sketch is usually quite different from the end result! I also keep zooming out to see if the image still works if it's tiny. Please feel free to click the images for a bigger result though. Because I'm very pleased with some of them I decided to upload the final results too, here you go:

 

Before anyone asks, yes they are self portraits so they might look a bit like me haha. This time I'm making it for a good reason though and not just for the heck of it.

30 day drawing challenge: Day 7

Challenge of the day; Draw your favourite word.
Really, a favourite word? Come on now, that's simply no fun at all! So being the stubborn girl that I am I instead chose to do one of my favourite quotes, which made me a whole lot happier.
It's a bit cheeky I know, but I hope it's not a problem. I've been wanting to do something with Typography for ages but I have no experience in it whatsoever, so this challenge seemed like a good place to start. I did some research first like a good girl, and when I had a solid idea I just winged it. I like the end result well enough, and I'd like to do more with Typography. It's kinda neat to find a good composition with letters, it's fun to play with. I kept it very safe for my first time though, I went with a very common fond so I could keep it clear to myself and I didn't play with the shapes too much. I've seen some awesome inspirational pieces all over the web that I'd love to try sometimes though.

As for the quote, I have no idea who wrote it but I stumbled across it one time and I just couldn't forget about it. I think it's absolutely beautiful and something everyone should at least experience once in their lives.

Feel free to click on the image for a bigger version

30 day drawing challenge: Day 6

Yesterday I completed Day 6 of the challenge; Draw your favourite character from a book.

I am a fervent reader, I read a lot. Really, a lot. I don't really pick favourites, I recognise well written characters easily enough but that doesn't mean they become personal favourites of mine. I first thought about drawing a character from Harry Potter or A song of Ice and Fire, since I really admire the way they've been written, but I decided against it in the end. They're awesome books, with very well rounded characters but it didn't feel right somehow. Then I remembered my favourite book when I was a kid; Beyond the Deepwoods, from The Edge Chronicles.
If you like fantasy and beautifully drawn illustrations even a little bit, you should read this. It doesn't matter that it's a children's book, it's really fucking weirdass and awesome. Beyond the Deepwoods is just one of many installments of the series (I haven't even read all the books yet, but I will have the lot in my possesion one day) and it had a character in it that I really really loved. Remembering it makes my heart warm again, and it makes me a little sad too. It's the Banderbear (or de Gabberbeer as it was called in Dutch) I approached this a little differently, I copied one of the drawings in the book and while I was sketching it I thought it was becoming very lovely, so I put some extra effort in it. I initially just wanted to sketch it to familiarize myself with the creature and then make my own drawing, but I ended up putting a bit more time in this than I thought I would. So here it is, my favourite character from a book, the Banderbear.

He looks all big and intimidating, but he's a softie at heart really

Meet Chompski

 Two weeks ago Uni started again for me, and we kicked it off pretty intensely with a Gamejam right off the bat, awesome! A gamejam usually takes a few days, and in that time you get dropped in a team and you try to make a game together. Considering we usually have way too little time in one semester to make even something remotely similar to a proper game, a deadline of a few days is fucking mental and awesome. We had to work with a theme, and our brilliant teachers decided that it should be "gnomes". A game involving gnomes, in any way. My group decided to make a pixel based sidescroller shooter in which you destroy everything in your path. We had awesome people in our team and I think we did really well. In just three days we had a working game, and I'm still very pleased. We even got pretty far in the rankings, I do believe we got second place so that's pretty damn sweet.

I was in charge of the main character, the gnome. I had never made pixel art before, so I opted for just drawing it pretty detailed and then scaling it down. Which worked well enough, I've also discovered that I find pixel art quite appealing. So I think this won't be the last pixel animations you'll see of me, haha.

He doesn't sweat much, for a fat lad.

30 day drawing challenge: Day 5

The past few weeks I haven't been able to draw much, so I had to give the challenge a miss for a bit. I'm back now though, and I'm very enthousiastic!

Day 4 was the "draw your favourite place" challenge.  I just couldn't do that one at this time, I'm sorry. I do know what it is though, and someday I will put it into picture.

I had a field day working on Day 5 though, the challenge said that I had to draw my best friend. That's a no-brainer really, my sister's always been my best friend for as long as I can remember. I didn't use any references, I kinda just started and I think I did a good job. I can see her personality in it. I thought it would be cool to make her into some kind of kick ass zombie slayer character, my sister has a very distinct personality and look to her, so making a character of her was a breeze. I didn't tell her I was working on it though, so I wonder what she thinks of it! Haha.

My sister's a lovely girl, but be careful when you give her an axe

30 day drawing challenge; day two and three

Okay so I started off really good with my first entries, but today and yesterday weren't as much of a succes. It's to be expected really, drawing every day is difficult on its own and I can't expect myself to make something brilliant every day, so I'm not too disappointed.


For the second day, I had to draw my favourite animal. Sounds easy enough right? Yeah well, I don't actually HAVE a favourite animal. Don't get me wrong, I love animals, I do. They're lovely and beautiful and wildly fascinating, but I don't have a favourite one. So instead, I opted for one that would be interesting to draw, an octopus. I had a very good idea for a final drawing too, but the sketches took so much time that I couldn't even properly start it. Ah well, it was fun drawing octopi all day, a bit confusing too with the amount of tentacles they have, but fun nonetheless. This was the best sketch of the day: (picture made with my phone)

Today I had to draw my favourite food, and I can't even begin to describe what a torture this was. I was hungry all fucking day because of this! Anyway, in the end I did manage some kind of result, which is a miracle in its own right because I had to distract myself with other things just to keep my stomach from growling like a mad cavewoman. Much like animals, I'm a big fan of food as a whole, I'm just happy it exists you know? Japanese style food is the definite winner in the category of delicious nomming stuff though, so I made a bowl of udon noodle soup, Jum!

Anyway, tomorrow I'll be drawing my favourite place. What in the--well, I'll figure it out.
Wish me luck!

30 day drawing challenge; day one

I'm freelancing this semester, and therefore I wanted to get myself in the habit of drawing every single day. In the field I want to earn my living some day, it's important that you draw quickly and can finish stuff as fast as possible. Which is why I'm doing this challenge to start off with. For a month I need to finish one subject, every day. Some will hopefully come out awesome, other's not so much. It doesn't really matter cause it's a practise, but I think I can learn a lot from this.

So okay, for day one I had to draw myself. I ended up with this:

I carry your heart, I carry it in my heart.

 I'm very pleased with it actually, I've been wanting to do an emotive portrait for ages and this was pretty close to heart. I can't say that's it's spot on, but I think I got the facial features and the body type right. The lighting was pretty difficult to get right, but I think I managed. Overall, I'm a happy bunny.

Oh and I also made this one a while back! It doesn't really count cause I didn't make it today, but I wanted to upload it anyway because I'm quite happy with it.:

Oh snap, it's a Hanny phone strap plushie. Be afraid. 

 

Meanwhile; in 2010

Like some people say, you are your own best critic. Or worst, depends on the case I guess. I for one, really like to reflect on myself and my work sometimes. It makes me happy, because it gives me an insight of how much I've grown and what I still need to work on. It's a bit tricky to give critisism on your own work objectively, but it's also very interesting so I thought I'd give it a shot! I've only been drawing digitally for about a year and a half now, I started doing it seriously and developing a real passion for it in 2010 and I somehow really felt like looking back at my work and see what I feel about it now, more than a year later. So, are you with me? Let's start then! In chronological order:

 My first time making an expression sheet, I still like this piece to bits! I guess because it brings back some good memories since I had a lot of fun making this. I remember pulling the faces myself to feel how that emotion looked, haha! I must have looked so silly. If I had to do it again, I'd add more highlights and shadows though. I'm also interested as to how it would look if I'd leave the lines out all together or if it would still work with more subtle emotions.

One of my first digital drawings. Do you notice how rough the lines still are and how many textures I used? At heart, I'm a very messy and sketchy artist and I just didn't have the patience to buckle up and give my drawings some proper TLC. I still like the colours I used though, I'm quite fond of this artwork actually. I can see the mistakes now and I've grown into an artist who can spend some proper time cleaning her drawings up so I could do a much better job now, but I can't deny the artwork as it is now has some kind of pull to it too.

Oh yeah, this one! The idea was that I wanted to make some giant big ass robot guy who could easily destruct everything in sight, with a little boy as his best friend. I still like the idea that they're jumping ropes together, and I'm still pleased with how I've drawn the emotion on the boy's face, but it's just been drawn so damn roughly. It's almost more a coloured sketch than a proper finished work, you can see that I'm still very much searching my ground here and making a lot of mistakes. On the other hand, I think the use of light is rather lovely. So kudos to the Hanny in 2010.

At the time, I just wanted to do something with movement I guess. You can see I didn't use any references whatsoever, there's so many things wrong with her anatomy that I'm pretty sure she wouldn't be able to tie her own shoes if she were to excist in real life. The linework is very sketchy and atrocious at points, but at other parts it seems to fit the drawing well. I like the colours and the lighting, the pose in itself is interesting too but boy..so many mistakes! It's quite obvious I really focused on the bits I'm good at so people were less inclined to notice, haha!

Ah, my brave attempt to draw a house...without references. I was becoming a bit more used to drawing digitally here, and I think it shows. It's a lot less messy than some of the previous ones. The subject was way out of my league though! I have the technical insight of a very brave blowfish at best, so I shouldn't have tried to draw a mental weird fucking house without any references, in a night setting...gosh! Anyway, I quite like the night sky in here and again, the use of colour. Too bad the lighting isn't as good.. It's quite lovely up there with the little lights and the tree, but the lower part is just aweful. I must have been getting bored around there and I think I just wanted to finish. Oh impatient insufferable me.

 My first real speedpainting (meaning I worked in one layer, finishing a painting in an hour or so). Ironically, I did use a reference picture for this! Haha, I guess I learned a bit from my previous struggles. The underwater colours are fine I guess, nothing truly spectacular. The brush strokes are pretty rough, but that's okay with speedpainting (it's quite the whole point actually, you just want to finish something as quickly as possible so you end up with rough paintings that have a lot of suggestion and mood). I like the lighting from above the surface though, I do believe I used a gradient and a filter for that, heehee.

Ugh, don't like this one at all anymore. THERE ARE NO WORDS FOR THIS MONSTROSITY.
Okay the flying creature thing is pretty cute I guess, but that's it.

I remember doing this one a year ago for my project groupmates; Quark. I really love making silly little cartoon portraits like this, I think they came out pretty well too! I would do some things differently now though. I'd be a bit more careful with the linework and the colouring bit. It looks a bit smudged and muddy in places.

One hour before we had to give a presentation about our concept, and we didn't have any concept art yet. The project was about psychology and facing your fears. That's all we had at the moment to work with, so I sat down and drew this in an hour. I don't quite know how I managed to make it eerie and cheerful at the same time, but I somehow did.

Ah, now this is starting to look like something! A lot more time was spent on shading and cleaning up properly and it shows. There are still some mistakes here and there, and you can clearly see I spend much more time on the face than anything else (still an impatient git, but a less impatient git nonetheless) Actually, I still really like this artwork, it's one of my favorites. The top half is anyway.

One of my last works in 2010, and my first matte painting. Matte painting basically means cheating like fuck in Photoshop. You take some pictures, you shop them together (you don't even have to be precise about it, just slam that stuff in there) and then you paint over it. Over...it.... I think it looks rather lovely, but I haven't made a matte painting since. It feels too much like cheating, I can see the whole benefit in the mixed painting/photoshopping idea since it's much quicker and it looks quite impressive..but it's just not for me. I need to learn how to draw properly first, then I can cheat my pants off whenever I fancy.

So, that concludes my timetraveling. I do hope it was a bit entertaining to read, and if you've just looked at the pictures that's fine as well. I put quite some effort into writing some damn critisism -and even some jokes- in though, please excuse me so I can go pout in that corner *points*

Finished Sneezer

Watch out for this unhappy camper, cause if he gets you..you are in a sticky situation.


*Disclaimer*: Still not working for Valve (unfortunately), juuuuust for fun.

Sneezer Teaser

This is still totally work in progress, but it shows what I've been thinking about this time round.

I've been hammering the game for ages now and am still enjoying it massively *cough almost every night cough*, it's such fun every time again! Which made me think about what would make the game even better, I know that for Left4Dead 3 they'll come up with new infected again and so I decided to give it a try myself. I came up with two solid ones, and this is some concept art for the first (for which I will make a reference sheet). This little boyscout isn't what he used to be, and is dubbed by the survivors as "The Sneezer".
Take an educated guess why.

P.S: I'm pretty sure nobody's thinking this but just to be safe I want to state that I am in no way an actual artist for Valve, I just felt like cobbling up some special zombies on my own. I hope they don't mind! haha

Shifters; Default

The protagonist for an idea that's just starting to come together, called Shifters. Will probably tell you all about it later! I had a field day with this, I love playing around with colours and stuff *sighs happily* Click for a bigger image!

Howl

This started as an eye practise, but somewhere along the way I started thinking about her as a character. As you can see, I decided to leave most of her face hidden, this because I believe it adds to her mystique. I'm pretty damn happy about this actually, it took all of my patience and concentration to work with this much detail, and I think I just might be getting better at it.
Took about 3 hours to draw, give or take.

Couldn't sleep

 

Due to drinking too big an "infinite gaming time supply" (AKA energy drink) for my smallish body, I couldn't sleep for the most part of yesterday night, so I decided to just doodle a bit for fun. It helped though, when I was done I could finally give myself some rest. Whoo!

Pick-me-up

The feared and creepy eyeball

I wanted glowy stuff, so I crowbarred fireflies in

Yummmm. I made him change colours cause it'll look more interesting this way

This one is new! It's a bird skull. I really like drawing skeletons, it's cool to do.

Flappity flap flap.

Unfinished business

Sometimes I don't have the time or heart to finish something, and I end up having a half finished product or a sketch. I like watching unfinished stuff of other people though, so I thought it might be worth the effort to upload them. Maybe I'll get to finish them one day, maybe not. Who knows huh?

I made this recently and I'm having a bloody hard time with it. A lack of time made me stop working on it, but I'll probably pick it up later on since I'm actually already pretty happy about this.

I drew this without a reference, and it shows haha. There's a lotta things not right about this piece, but I do like the expression in her face. She looks like she just caught you spying on her, and she's not happy about it.

I tried to draw a character I made up, but this is just not how I envisioned her. Which is why I didn't pursue this drawing further. I do like her expression and her face though, so I'm still pretty happy.

I just wanted to practise drawing a skeleton, but I forgot that I was doing this somewhere along the way. I must have wanted to draw some girls or something.

I had fun drawing this, I mainly made it to practise drawing subtle differences in body types. I don't want to end up making every person I draw look the same. I think I succeeded in that, but I don't think I'll finish these girls because I only really like the look of the right one. I think I kinda failed at drawing the other two haha, there is some potential though, I think I'd do a better job now. Less kooky colours and more subtlety.

Ah this one, I stopped with this one because the anatomy just gave me a splitting headache. I didn't use a reference and it shows so much! I like the pose and the colours, and I think the face is rather lovely but the anatomy is just painfully incorrect haha. I'd have to completely redraw this if I wanted to do it properly.

Comfortable

 

Just a little self portrait in the style I'm most comfortable with. As per usual, the hair is the most detailed piece of the whole drawing! It was relaxing doing this, not having to think and just scribble a little bit. Next time I'll be doing something I'm not used to again like a proper student, haha.

Let's try for some realism

This is the original image, I really don't know who this is or where it came from; so if someone knows please notify me so I can link it.

As you can see, this is made in a rather different fashion than you might be used to when seeing my art. I figured that if I really want to earn my livings with drawing, I'll need to show some diversity in my work. Which is why I started practising drawing a nude in a much more realistic style than I'm used to. I decided to go for a naked woman portrait, because I enjoy drawing girls and I don't get to do it much these days. I chose to do black and white because it seemed slightly easier to do than a coloured image, and I wanted to make it an enjoyable experience for myself. Starting with something ultra difficult might have made the hurdle too big for me, so I was really happy when I found the source image. I think it's a staggeringly beautiful picture, her face is very interesting and it proved a challenge. In the end it took me about 7 hours (three sittings) to finish, and I am very pleased with it. I made it in photoshop, mainly in one layer using a normal brush and the occasional eraser. I'm so chuffed to bits with this, I didn't expect it to go so well! Well if you'll excuse me, I'll go and behave like the 5 year old I secretly am and show this to all the people I know. *gushes*