Monday, July 30, 2012

Photos: Street

I'm really busy with various projects at the moment, which is bad for the life of the blog. So I'm taking a leaf out of Joumana Medlej's book and doing some photo posts from our recent holiday. 

First up, street photography:

Ice skaters in Rundle Mall, Adelaide

Buskers in Melbourne

We kept bumping into wedding parties,  Melbourne

Hep cat dog in Sydney

In Sydney

Opposing sides, Sydney

Hotdogs and limousines, Sydney

And Greek dancing, Sydney

Wall of thongs (or flipflops, if you prefer), Manly, Sydney

Flautist in Rundle Mall, Adelaide

Lunchtime, Glenelg, Adelaide

Big and small, Glenelg, Adelaide

8 year old busker, Rundle Mall, Adelaide

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Illustration: Merida

A bit of gratuitous fanart. =) I've been on holiday for three weeks, and while much of my 'free' time was spent uploading photos and a travel diary for friends and family to see, I did spend quite a bit of time on trains; too bumpy to sketch traditionally, so I decided to see what I could really do with an iPad. Since it was a holiday, I thought some Disney/Pixar fanart would be a good way to unwind, as I don't usually do full-blown illustrations of that subject. 

Just before we left I went to see Brave with a friend. It was perhaps a little predictable, but good fun, and very beautiful. So I chose Merida as my subject. I had absolutely no references, being offline for the entire time I was drawing, and I'm not sure how long it took, but it was over 10 hours. I find working without pressure sensitivity for brush size and opacity considerably slows my working time. So it's not the most accurate of illustrations, but I think it's not too bad. 


This was done entirely in Sketchbook Pro on an iPad 2, with a Wacom Bamboo stylus.

 Here's the original sketch that I did in my Moleskine Sketchbook, before I started. I took a  photo of that with the iPad camera, and worked on top of it for a while. 


Here's an animated gif of the screenshots I took while I was working. I've had Sketchbook Pro eat a couple of sketches, so I'm a bit paranoid and wanted a record.


Here I've chucked together a look at the different images I used while putting the whole thing together. Since iPad illustration is still fairly new, I thought it might be of interest. I was using a high resolution file, which gives you a limit of four layers, so I had to keep various things in separate files until I was finished with them, and could export them as a photograph and import them back into my main image. 


  • Merida was the first thing I did. I lie a bit up there – I didn't import her into a new file, that would have meant erasing around all that hair to remove the white background. I actually saved a copy of that file, flattened it, and used that as the main file. 
  • The dog I did have a reference for. I wanted that particular dog, and couldn't for the life of me remember what it looked like – so I played the youtube trailer and photographed the computer screen to use as a reference. I then saved that as a photo, imported it into my main file, erased around it, stuck it behind Merida and merged those two layers. 
  • The tapestry was intentionally naive, and once I'd done the base of the tapestry as part of the background layer I imported it into the main image and overlayed it using a multiply mode. 
  • Finally I saved a copy, flattened everything, and added some lighting to tie it all together a bit more. I used multiply and screen modes for that. 


Thursday, July 19, 2012

Card: Mad Men Birthday

My cousin was having a Mad Men theme for her 30th Birthday Party. 30's an important birthday, and I always try to design something a bit fancier for special occasions, so here's the design I did (It was even more important to be fancy as we're unfortunately missing the party – she moved it forward so that she and her husband can go on holiday.... and now it clashes with our own holiday. =P 

In keeping with the theme I designed a Mad Men inspired card:


I chose to do a portrait of my cousin in a dress inspired by the 'blue 50s dress with lace' that I was told she's bought for the party. I haven't seen the dress, so it's probably nothing like it, but I made the effort. =P 
I'm especially pleased with those lights. My mother walked in when I was just starting them, and clearly didn't believe that they'd ever look like lamps instead of just blobs. The beginning stages of artwork can be so confusing! =P

Illustrator CS4, texture (from cgtextures.com) added in Photoshop.



Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Card: Baby Shower

Here's the design I did for a baby shower card a week or two back. I was unfortunately unable to attend the shower itself, as I was sick, but I was able to put together a card for it:


It's a simple design, but I think it's quite effective.

Illustrator CS4

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

WIP: Rita Hayworth

Here's another look at the portrait of Rita Hayworth. I've spent about 14 hours on it so far. Portraits, alas, have to play second fiddle to more commercial work, otherwise I would have had her finished before now. As it is, she'll have to wait until I get back from my holiday (this is the first of several scheduled posts to keep my blog active while I'm away)
But she's not fast going. All those feathers and sequins. I may end up more insane than I am already. =P 


This is Rita in Tonight and Every Night, if anyone wants to know. And that costume is really bright yellow and midnight blue. I think it looks classier in black and white. =P

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