Monday 26 January 2009

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Happy Chinese New Year!

Chinese-New-Year-Wallpaper

(I hope the kanji for 'Happy New Year' are correct here.)

It's the year of the Ox fyi.
the 'rats' which look suspiciously like a certain couple of gerbils I know, XD" are giving way from the year of the rat to the year of the ox.

This was a hastily made illo for the new year challenged by my frined Ame to do something with only 2 days to do it *since the new year crept up on us!* XD"

Sketched in pencil, coloured in Painter, made into a wallie in PS.
I haven't done any digital painting for over a year and couldn't spend much time on this so it's real rough but hope you like.
Feel free to download it from Flickr and use it as a wallie! X3

Saturday 24 January 2009

Saturday 10 January 2009

Moleskine

In 2008 I started my first moleskine journal in an attempt to do more drawing and explore ideas and characters in ways I wouldn't usually do in my other sketchbooks.
I could only find a really cheap moleskine which turned out to have very poor quality paper in it which is almost impossible to erase from without smudging or damaging the paper. -_-
However I decided to draw in it anyway, and still found it enjoyable so I'm keeping going despite struggling with the paper! ^^

I'm gonna post some of my moley pages here as I upload them, so, enjoy!

06

08

08a

10a


to see everything from my Moley and read notes about the drawings, go here.

Monday 5 January 2009

Project 52

So Christmas has gone and the New Year is already 5 days old, I hope everyone had a great holiday!
Today it's back to work for most people, so to bring a little excitement to your day I'm going to tell you about a project I've been working on for the last year.

In 2008 I made a resolution to learn more about painting watercolours. In order to motive myself I set myself the challenge of painting one watercolour per week.

I decided I needed a bit of a theme for my paintings so that I wasn't flailing about every week wondering what I might paint.
I decided to base all my paintings on the characters and world of a story I'm working on since I was already exploring the story visually anyway.

Previous to this I had very limited watercolour knowledge, and the few I had done were very tight and controlled, I wanted to loosen up and have fun experimenting.

As a result, the first few paintings are total rubbish! XD"
In fact many of the paintings are complete disasters, but here and there I managed to produce somthing I felt pleased with.

Also I was not using the best materials, most of the paintings were done in an a5 sketchbook on cartridge paper, a few were on a4 boldemere watercolour paper *not very high quality paper* My brushes were a mix of old watercolour brushes and new boldmere ones. The paints are Daler-Rowney halfpans and also boldmere tube paints *again the boldmere not very good quality, tho I love the cerulean blue and purple! X3*
I know the old saying goes if you don't use the best tools you can't expect the best results, but not everyone can afford the best tools, so it was either have a go with what I had avaliable to me or not try at all.
So I had a go! ;)

I looked at many watercolour books through the year, and many different artists who paint in different styles.
One of the problems I found was that I liked so many different styles I couldn't settle on just one, and sometimes the styles got mixed up in a bad way I think.
I still don't know which style of watercolours I aspire too even after 52 paintings!

Also I'm still not an accomplished watercolourist, but I hope I've learned a little on which I can continue to build.

Anyone who is experienced in watercolours, feel free to leave constructive critiscm and tips for improving! ;)

Here's the very first painting. 01

I know, I know, it's not very good, but they do get better, I promise! *well a little better*

Here's a little teaser of thumbnails from some of the paintings you'll see over the year.
teaser

Over this year I will be uploading all 52 paintings, good, bad and terrible, shown for your judgement on Flickr.
Once a month I'll post here and show off the best paintings from that month. Also I'll be uploading the very best to RedBubble so you can buy them as prints etc if you wish.

Next month I actually have some decent paintings to show so be sure to come back then!