Past Illustration - Line Art / No Colour Allowed

For this illustration I decided to focus on myself as a young whipper snapper being picked on at primary school due to my having an eye patch on for quite a long time. Being ginger and wearing glasses didn't exactly set me off for greatness in the popularity department but hey ho! i'm better for it now!

The Drawing was initially sketched very roughly to get the idea down, i'm a big fan of brush pens so I used this as my tool to draw the final line art. I'm still getting used to the pen and could probably do with a better one (my pentel brush pen is out of ink and i'm broke at the time of writing) but for now WHSmiths own will have to do...

I love the style of films such as UP! and the incredibles, simple character designs with really refined elements and exaggerated facial expressions and poses. This was something I tried to mimic here and is something I want to continue pursuing throughout this course. 

Present Illustration : Full Colour

Lets begin by saying... I hate colouring...

I'm more of a sketch/line art guy who colours in photoshop and illustrator but since we are doing traditional art I shall give it my best shot.

Here I tried to use 1pt perspective to create the scene, I was somewhat successful but I feel I will need further practice to refine it. I am really happy with the overall composition however and feel if i was to redraw this in a digital format I could create quite a nice piece :)

I tried to use different colours for the lines which reflected the element it was drawn for. For example the t-shirt is a thick red line whereas the arm is a pinky brown. I felt this would help create depth and add interest. It was also an experiment in getting away from black line art which has always been my thing.

I went for a exaggerated manga-esque style for this illustration, I was also influenced by ed, add and eddy from cartoon network somewhat after having a moment of Facebook nostalgia earlier in the day. Big eyes, large snarl and the deep and thick manga style brows were used to define my expression. I struggled with the hand placement and this is something I will need to work on, i've always struggled with hands but hopefully i can improve over time.

Above is my illustration friday sketch. I again adapted my style from the past sketch but this time tried to used only pencil to create shading and depth.

The idea was to show me as a kid looking grumpy in my home made bed fort which in turn was my "nest" looking back it needs work but i quite like the idea. Theres an element of 1pt perspective here again and is bit more refined than my present sketch.

I'm quite proud of my shading but I recognise it does need more work.

Overall it's a decent piece but something that could be expanded on, perhaps with biro and a sketchy kinda of style...

Woah! check out the political-ness!!!!

Yeah this weeks phrase was weapon and rather than doing a illustration on the coolest samurai sword ever I decided that I would focus on current events.

I was quite happy with this one, i expanded on my style from previous tasks and I think this is my best one yet. The colouring was is decent, the composition is good and the idea is solid.

This weeks topic was ice, having looked through the blog and seeing mountains of images of actual ice, ice cubes, melting ice, penguins on ice I decided that my creativeness was stronger than than and came up with the idea for Ice, Ice Baby!

I also heard the song on the radio so that helped...

I was influenced heavily by vault boy from fallout 4 and wanted to mimic the style of his character for the ice baby. I think I pulled it off pretty well!

Upon finishing the line art though I noticed i totally messed up the feet and did the toes wrong... :(

VAULT BOY INSPIRATION 

So happy with this one... even though there isn't enough fingers (it's behind the leaf so shush!)

First time i've nailed colouring. I experimented with my coloured brush pens and watercolour pencils. After completing the initial sketch i did a quick once over with a black brush pen and was sat for ten minutes contemplating whether it was worth ruining the image by colouring and I'm so glad I took the chance!

I began by picking out 5 colours of brush pen, yellow/orange/green/dark green/pink. Outside of the pink I chose an analogous colour scheme, all warm colours that suit the topic of harvest very well.

After laying down the initial brush pen colours, i then added depth with my watercolour pencils, complementary shades were used to add depth and white was added to create some lighter tones. Finally the image was finished by going over the black lines with biro to further add some darkness.

I think this piece is a testament to the course and how it is improving my skills is an artist, time to have a bash with some paints soon I think!

Inspiration came from my usual style but also from the game conker bad fur day and the corns that you throw into poo mountain... strange I know but check the link to see what i'm talking about.