girls in color

edit: updated!

My biggest issue, I think, is that deep down,  I believe that I'm far better than I actually am. Gonna keep working on this one and will post an update soon as I get the chance.

Sketches of girlzzzzzzz

Some sketches, each of which took me quite a bit longer than I would like. Lesson learned: I have to go back to basics and draw tons of boxes and lines to grease up my eyeballs for seeing angles and proportions much more quickly. Also finished applying for a fall internship with Marvel in their creative services devision. Really hope I can get it, being around professional comic book artists would be a refreshing pace from being surrounded by Pollock-Warhol- Wannabees who paint like colorblind children with underdeveloped motor skills "on purpose". Learning from people who do what I'm trying to do with my life would make the prospect of another lonesome semester bearable, maybe even exciting! So let's hope. Also, the Green Wing is fantastic. Watch it.

Mouse in /Progress/ color-ish

Edit, final: Fixed a few tangent lines and did some clean up work.

Edit, again: Added some texture clipping masks and changed the background color. Still not quite liking something about it.

Edit: My roommate lent me a temporary replacement chord for my tablet, so I was able to scrap this together. Not sure about the background color, and overall something about the colors comes off as messy, just can't place my finger on any exact reasons why. I think the composition overall is boring, so I'm going to be making an effort to avoid static front-facing compositions as much as possible.

Usually I try not to post works in progress but the micro-usb cord for my tablet broke this morning, meaning this is the last update until I get the new one to come in. Was in the midst of coloring this guy and starting some new pieces in order to apply for a handfull of fall internships. So far I'll be applying to Marvel and Titmouse Animation in NYC. Hopefully my experience this summer means I have a fighting chance! 

Los Colores

Edit 8/15/12: Realized, after all of this time, that the face was waaay too wide and asymmetrical. It actually looks like a female version of the mad magazine dude and somehow my brain didn't register that until today. Spent three hours fixing that because I'm a looser who will never amount to anything.

Edit 8/14/12: Decided to try to make the drawing into something that could pass off as an actual composition, and made the eyes less uncanny-valley/dead looking.

After a few days of showing my parents and youngest sister around the city and exploring the White Forest National Park, I've finally gotten around to coloring this piece. It has problems, complete lack of any background environment aside, but I think I'm pretty happy with it overall. I think this style of coloring works well with my line work and can continue to be developed into something cool. We shall see.

Beginning of the End!

Pretty girl! :3

Edit: Nope, not pretty at all. I don't know shit. I suck at this.

It's the beginning of the end both for this drawing and this summer, and I'm not sure I'm content with how I've done with either. The drawing, even in its current incomplete stage, has taken me ~8 hours from just getting a maybe-somewhat anatomically correct sketch to the cleanish but still spotty line-work.  My goal with this one was to use less lines to describe the features of the face/bust, and for those lines to be rendered quickly, cleanly, and expressively- the same way Darrow seems to draw his human faces. I fell short of absolutely every one of those goals. Just getting the level of likeness I've achieved here, which is still not really spot-on, was incredibly difficult. So issue number one: I've yet to develop a go-to way of establishing the proportions of the head.  The linework ended up being an ordeal of zooming in ridiculously close and darkening, redrawing, and erasing stray pixels on each. Very far from putting down, completely erasing, and redrawing strokes over and over until I could get them just right. So, issue number two: my hand is still way shakier than I'd care to imagine, probably a consequence of flapping my wrist around instead of using my entire arm as a pivot. But now that I think about it, using my arms appropriately has always been a problem, even when I was really young. Long ago, I had been placed in a rather odd dance class where the teacher started us off by having us pretend we were birds. While the other kids in the class immediately seemed to grasp the concept of grace and would extend their entire arms up and down slowly as if they were draped in feathers from fingertip to shoulder, my arms remained stiff as a pole while my hands flailed about like they were two fish out of water stapled to the ends of my wrists. While the other kids were graceful, delicate swans, I was a demented kiwi. So I gotta work on line drills, and also figuring out how to get my brush settings in PS just right for this type of linework. Last but not least, what was first intended to be a sketch to be in a gallery of other face-sketches ended up being a many hour ordeal stretched over several days. Issue numero tres: I really need to let go of my pride and concentrate on quantity and not quality for once, and maybe, just maybe, that'll allow me to overcome all of the above problems, which i'm convinced are being held imprisoned in my box of habits by this lock.

Similarly, this summer I haven't accomplished nearly as much in artwork as I had initially hoped. I wanted to figure out a 9-5 drawing routine Monday through Friday through which I would work out all of the setbacks I've mentioned and more, while also refreshing my stale portfolio and learning the basics of Maya. The only things which I have accomplished in this vein have been posted on this blog. Quite a lot has been learned and experienced outside of this aspect of my life, but I would have much preferred it if I had been able to balance advancements in both areas more effectively.