Another PT fanart progress

Another walkthrough of my process. This was a pinch hit image for a community gift exchange, so I didn't fret too much over the process. It's a kinda quickie image. It's again the characters Lilie and Femio, and this image kinda gets the two across well.

The original planning sketch (was drawn with an H pencil, and adjusted to make the sketch easier to see).

The "cleaned up pencils;" really nothing more than using a softer lead pencil and putting in the more finished lines.

The inks.

The final image, colored in Photoshop CS3.

April Drawing in October and Eyes

Yes, the title is right. It seems to be a recurring activity: community events that take place in one month will sometimes have an encore event later in the months, usually about six months away. So the April Drawing community is having an encore going on right now. This has been pretty successful for me; I've only missed one day so far. Here is a sampling of drawings I've done so far this month, not counting the ones I did that related to the PT exchange image that I discussed last entry.

Firstly, I have started doing something that I haven't really been doing lately, which is drawing from reference. A number of my pictures this month have been relatively brief studies from magazine pictures or ads. Hopefully, things will get better as I do more from them. Working on drawing clothes a bit more, how they hang on the body.

Next is a pic of my steampunk fairy tale character, mostly post events that I had playing in my head for Dragon*Con 2009, as well as a couple of challenges I decided to act on. The first is to draw an anthro or furry, something I rarely ever do. That one turned out okay, in my opinion. It's a sorta self-portrait as a caracal. The second challenge was to draw it only with pencils; no erasing anything. She's supposed to be a Victorian woman sitting. I think it's very eh.

Lastly, a series of eye studies, copied from instructional material by Bridgman, Leveille, Peck, and Barrett. I was simply in the mood to draw eyes after I saw that my attempt at a siren design was rather pitiful.

Catching up on the last month

It's been a while since I last updated, so here's a sampling of the stuff I've been drawing since the last update, with a bit of random process for one piece I did. Very messy course of events.

First, I did this image in PS to practice working digitally, something I don't do all that much and definitely not from scratch, no scanned art work. It was timed at about 45 minutes. I give it an okay.

Below are various Overhill related images. Beginning with some fox studies to get an idea of how to draw Fionn for the upcoming pages; then some very off model sketches of Mullein and Tsuba and a larger version of a doodle that just worked; a more polished sketch of the two.

Lastly, I was working on a gift for Princess Tutu LJ community's gift exchange for the 7th anniversary of Princess Tutu. My giftee wanted fanart, and I initially latched onto her very clear fondness for evil!Mytho with pretty much anyone, specifically with Rue. I was going for an emotional piece, trying to get across evil!Mytho's malice and Rue's growing regret and conflict about what is happening. Also, how no matter what relationship evil!Mytho is involved in, it was not going to be healthy one. The approach was partially inspired by "Dangerous Game" from Jekyll and Hyde. Only I couldn't quite get it to work.

I began with this sketch, done at Dragon*Con, and I pretty much stayed with it for most of my attempts.

I followed up with some sketches of Rue and moved quickly to attempting some more compositions, tests of facial expressions. These led to the image of Rue below. She turned out well, but I could not for the life of me get Mytho to work in the piece. I realized I was focusing so much on Rue's expression that she had pretty much taken over the piece. That, and Mytho is a pain to draw. I tried a few more sketches based off of the videos on YouTube and attempted a few more tries, but nothing was working.

Since the initial idea was not going to work; time to change approach. Thankfully, my giftee also wanted a pic of Femio and Lilie, a crack pairing that has grown in popularity over the last year. I kept the idea very simple, and came up with the images below. Final version colored in Copic markers.