Huh, first post of the year

I could have sworn I'd already done a post. Oh, well.

First is an image I did for a joint secret santa exchange between Princess Tutu LJ community and the Club-Tutu dA group. This was a gift for Atemozzarella, and I chose this from one of her favorite Princess Tutu pairings.


These last two are images completed for the concept class simulation on ConceptArt. Kept to the guardian theme, but deviated from my last concept post and went with the animal form. I still like the B&W version better than the color. Need to work on coloring.

Quick post of hands and my tortoise guy

When all else fails and you can't think of anything to draw, draw your hands.



An update on the guardian challenge. It was suggested I try a humanoid version of my favorite guardian design, so I opted to make a quick version. This is my only attempt at the human tortoise guardian, and it turned out pretty good.

Final CCS character silhouettes

The final silhouettes for the guardian archetype brainstorm. I added about four to original set, and cleaned them up in PSCS3. I enjoyed doing these, and I'm glad that they read pretty easily even in the smaller size. That was the point of course.


Personal faves.

Blocks and Guardians

Perspective is one of those skills that any one who wants to be a good artist has to understand. I, for the most part, understand this idea. I know about 1-point, 2-point, even the tricky but potentially really cool 3-point perspectives. I can draw little models using it, horizon line and vanishing points and all. That said, actually applying it is another thing entirely. I have a hard time sighting and measuring objects, and these are important when you're doing small objects. Perspective is in play, but not as "strongly" as larger scenes (IMO), but if you don't get the measuring and sighting right relative to the objects in the image, it can be just as bad as getting the actual perspective wrong. Case in point, these two pages I did of drawings of small wood blocks.


In the future, I plan to do more such drawings, but use larger objects. They're easier to sight than 2in. wide blocks.

The concept class sim is back in business after a break of a few weeks. This time around we're working on characters, and we're exploring them with archetypes and silhouettes. Why silhouettes? Well, silhouettes help the artist concentrate on the large picture and to make a character read well. You want the audience to be able to read or recognize the character through his/her/its silhouette alone. The perfect example of this would be Disney's Aladdin; everyone has a distinct shape, and you can tell in an instant from their silhouette alone if this is the Genie, Jafar, or Jasmine.

For the exercise, so far, I'm doing a guardian archetype. Because my world is Asian influenced, steam tech and magic filled, I wanted to draw on the mythology and bestiaries of Asia and China. I also wanted them to be potentially larger than life, practically embodiments of the world the characters live in. I drew upon the Four Chinese constellations with the dragon, tortoise (which is actually a tortoise AND snake), vermillion bird/phoenix, and tiger. I also thought of a large fish, a bipedal tortoise, a kilin/kirin, and a tengu. I have room for six more, so I'm going to do some more research do come up with a few more.

colored environmental concepts

My very poor attempt at coloring those environment sketches. I need to work on digital coloring so much.

Concept art thread thumnails

These are some thumbnails for a mentoring thread I'm participating in on CA.org forums. The thread is a simulation of a concept art class, of sorts. We each pick a world based on certain themes and develop it over the next couple months. The theme I picked is an Asian based world that is mostly ocean and whose technology has not exceeded steam engines. This particular exercise is to pick and environment type and explore sections of it. I chose an academic environment and the above are thumbnails of classrooms, the entrance to the school, and the courtyard/schoolyard/gardens.

Keep an eye on how it goes.