FRAMED

In a good way ;)

Epic cat is complete

Now from the drawing board to the ironing board!

epic cat is epic

...and almost complete! Need to do a bit of work on the ear and the muzzle, add a few whiskers, trim it down and frame :)

This is going well!

Sat in my pjs and dressing gown working on this for the last couple of hours listening to Alanis Morrisette, Queen and Radiohead (I am SO 90s!)

Will definitely have his furry fizzog finished by the end of the day :)

Oliver... more of

Well I wasn't really tired so I pushed on. 1.34am on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, I am teh hardcore!

FIRE! Doo doo doo!

After a faux pas with a candle and a blanket I managed to get a bit done on the portrait of Oliver.

Want to spend the whole day on it tomorrow.

EPIC CAT

Something drove me to do a huge drawing of my sister's cat for her Christmas, and Han if your reading this now; congratulations you ruined the surprise!

Got further than I thought I would today considering work, fun working on a huge traditional piece (50x50cm)

Thanks to Andy Hep for the tip off about the good art shop on the Bridges :)

Progress shots so far :) I have work tomorrow so although I would like to work on it for hours i'd better get some shuteye!

...if these phone drivers ever install...

Drawing, or lack thereof.

This week has not been good (in a drawing sense).

I haven't done any artwork since Saturday, a fact which has annoyed me quite a lot.

Had an uber tech prob with my pc, windows7 and wacom compatability which meant most of Sunday and all of Monday was spent backing up, formatting, reinstalling and messing about with wacom drivers.

Tuesday I was working and due to inlaws staying I was mostly tidying and crashing after a hard day and little sleep.

Yesterday was Andrew's brother's Graduation, congrats Robin for getting your Batchelors in Software Engineering. His folks and half brother and girlfriend were down and a good time was had by all. Shame for Andrew who had to go to work this morning (haha).

So now my day is free and I will be popping down to the art shop for some bits for my sister's christmas present; portrait of Oliver (aka Snoogles/little shit) her 14lb blue-point ragdoll cat.

It'll be a lot of work but not done a big traditional piece in a long time so really looking forward to it!

Technical difficulties

Due to some unforseen technical difficulties I will be unable to update my sketchblog or indeed do any work on my PC for the next day or so. Nothing to panic about, just some software issues, should be resolved by an upgrade tomorrow.

...or so I thought

Well, after looking forward to getting stuck I was immediately taken down a peg or two. Was painting away thinking "this looks great!", had a break, went back to it and just felt woe.

So, no update today cause it just sucked. Going to spend the weekend on the fire dragon again, redrawing and colouring.

Think a big problem for me is line art, my lines are always really hairy and it takes me forever to get it clean. I know it is worth doing, and anyone with any tips would be greatly appreciated. I do have a lightbox and that helps with cleaning up but still...

A weekend of drawing lies ahead of me, which is no bad thing.

If at first you don't succeed...

take a break, get a coffee, start again, read a few mags on the subject and persevere.

The sky sucked on the sky dragon, the sky just looked totally wrong. It was too nice, too serene. Right now it looks so badass and it's going to look so incredible with a semi translucent electrified dragon.

It's good, I'm happy. Gonna be so happy working on it tomorrow.

YEAH!!! EPIC WIN!

Finally I am getting somewhere!

Right, decided my method henceforth shall be; lines: traditional; colour: digital.

Cracked out the lightbox that Andrew built for me for Valentine's day a few years ago back at uni (aww) and worked over some mad comp lines.

This proves that eventhough I feel like crap I can still get stuff done so frankly there are no excuses!

Feeling confident again, which is nice!

Epic sketch fail

Well, it wasn't that much of a fail. Nailed the layout pretty quickly for the sky/cloud dragon; i'll probably go for the second one. I just need to workout the overall design of the beast. I want it to be semi-transparent which might be tricky. I reckon looking at irridescent marine life might give me a hint. The beast should hopefully be sitting in the clouds in ambush of planes which it noms; occasionally geese for a fois gras nom too.

It's like Snakes on a Plane, but except it's Plane in a Snake, and there will be no Samuel L neither.

In case you can't read the scribblings of a knackered and nae too weill artist that says 'Gee, 4 years if art school didn't teach me a thing did it?'

Really looking forward to a whole day of getting stuck in. I am absolutely shattered so my bed is most definately my next destination.

Night night folks, there will be lots of #epicblogrts , livestreams and stuffs tomorrow.

Sometimes you can't be precious about your art

Fitting title as I feel, and probably look like, Gollum.

Was only at work for 5 1/2 hours but it took it out of me but had a mad urge to draw when I got back after a chillaxing borderlands sesh.

The dragon painting is giving me jipp, I think I was too precious about the head and I reckon it's going to have to change and possibly will be based on the one of the insane doodles below (btw that's an A1 drawing board).

9am start tomorrow at me job so as much as I want to sit and paint til my eyes bleed, I can't; otherwise i'll be a total zombie in the marnin.

Might take a total break from this and sketch up the sky/cloud/wind dragon thumbs I did at the weekend.

Sigh!

Weekend thumbs & doodles + dragon

Well I had a jolly nice trip home, feel relaxed and refreshed and had some nice comp ideas for the next dragon. I mainly thumbed and did some doodles while watching "Have I got news for you" with Mum and the cat rolling around on a rug like it was having a fit.

Feel happier about this dragon painting but something isnt right. Contempating angling the dragon's head so it's more looking at the knight on the ledge with one eye, but unsure.

Crits uberhugely welcome and needed. Unfortunately won't be able to work on this much on Mon and Tues but hopefully the evenings will serve me well. Good ol' pay-the-bills job; blessing and a curse.

Anyhoo gonna go and dry my mountain of hair and probably sit in bed doodling, or more likely, play a bit more borderlands THEN sit in bed doodling and then cursing the fact I should have gone to sleep earlier.

Oh wells!

Disclaimer

This afternoon i'll be off to my parent's til Sunday, and of course I will take a sketchbook with me. I think my Mum has a scanner, so if she does i'll be updating this daily; if not it'll be an uber sketchdump on Sunday night.

Just so you know i'm not slacking!

Do or do not, there is no try

Today will be a 'do not' day. Every mark I have made today has sucked. Redone a pic so many times... ugh. That is why there is no sketch for today, because today I suck. Try again tomorrow, tomrrow is another day. We all have up and down days, and all things considered i've done mostly rather well.

Anyhoo, eyes going so gonna go to bed. Catch you!

Shield takes flame

Yeah, not a lot done on this today cause I was at work but i'll dig away at it tomorrow. Thinking my sketchblog shouldn't just be what i'm working on right now but something completely different much like the blogs of McHugh and Kenneth :)

Numpty

Spent hours sketching this fire dragon last night and completely forget to update the blog, numpty.

It's all on livestream if you don't believe me ;)

After all that time I lay in bed thinking 'i don't like that sketch' and thinking about how to change it and make it less parp. So got an idea and going to sketch it out this morning. So today there will be 2 blog posts, although this one is technically yesterday's post cause I am a silly billy and went charging off to bed without uploading.

So here we are.

Sea Dragon Finished!

It's not technically a sketch but I did spend a good deal of my Sunday on it so it'll have to do!

My hand is a lot better, was actually starting to get a little worried about it but it's fine. Also the disorientated feeling has gone, not sure what caused that.

I start my temp job tomorrow and I still haven't been told when I am working, other than when I have to be in tomorrow (but not when I finish, oddly, despite asking).

Supremely pleased! Great crits from Andy Hepworth, Patrick McEvoy and Paul Canavan. Decided that I like using the color mode on brushes now, WHAT!, I hear you cry YOU WERN'T USING IT BEFORE...nope.

Anymahoo, sure there was something I was meant to do tonight but my brain is saying 'nah, can't have been'.

Probably something really important...meh.

Anyhoo enjoy!

Sea Dragon WIP2

I did actually do more to this but photoshop decided to have a senior moment on me and I lost it. Blast.

So... excuses for not posting include; 5th november fireworks and firespinning, injury from falling down a hill and taking my hand out in a gorse bush (foosty finger is healing, got another thorn out today), felt like I was getting an inner ear infection today; properly disorientated.

Tomorrow the sketchblog will get going again! Promise!

Rx

Sea Dragon

Well, not a sketch but a WIP. Think it needs more caustics and the eye is bothering me. Got Jon Hodgson's book 'Fantasy Art for Beginners' in the post from Amazon today, looks a great read and will be reading it shortly with a mug of hot blackcurrant.

Crits would be super :)

My word this is complicated

Well, took things a bit further and from ease and not wanting to move it i've taken progress shot photos of the sketches and line art as it emerges from the pencil. The sea dragon became a little wider than I anticipated, pays to do more thumbnailing, so it's sketched over 2 A3 sheets of 80gsm. Gonna finish the lines tomorrow and scan them in, join it altogether in photoshop and then aim to complete the image by the end of the day. I reckon it'll happen :) Got to get my speed up so it means setting silly deadlines for myself.

Nazi Zombies, new job and dragons!

Well, I messed up just a few days in. Not going to make any excuses, instead i'm just going to carry on and promise myself that tomorrow is another day and more will be done. In other news I got a christmas temp job, which is good since it'll be part time and means i'll be able to pay my rent; always a bonus. Anyhoo some sea dragon sketches, gonna do some comp sketches in a little bit. Hope everyone had a good Hallowe'en, mine was spent watching Sleepy Hollow and shooting Nazi Zombies in the head in Call of Duty 5 (PC).