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My entry for Illustration Friday, ‘Fast.’ Created in Photoshop and After Effects.

Detail

Detail

I approached the design of the illustration as though I were going to animate it. I drew the cut-out character, props and scenery on paper in pencil, and then pen and ink – archer, bow, arrow, tree etc. Once scanned into the computer I colored and textured the drawings in Photoshop and then imported all the cut-outs into After Effects where I set up 2 scenes; one of the archer in the forest, the other of the arrows. Once the scenes were complete I rendered them out and brought them back into Photoshop to create the final comic-styled illustration.

This is my submission for Illustration Friday’s Momentum topic. The top image was colored in photoshop. The lower image is my pencil layout.

‘In the searing wastes of Uffernau, they say the gods are silent…until they are fed.’

‘O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done’…Captain for Illustration Friday

I thought this was a great Illustration Friday topic this week; I had fun :) I’d love to design a tattoo.

‘No Fear,’ Pen and ink and Sakura Microns on Bristol Board, 6″ x 9″

Here’s the pencil drawing I started with. You can also see some of my reference material for this image. I had a lot of fun researching tattoos and knew that my tattoo had to have flames and a skull…

Have a good weekend.

‘Trychfil, Servant of Death, and a Hapless Grub,’ pen and ink, brush pen and Sakura Microns on Bristol Board, 6″ x 9″

Trychfil is the servant of Death and takes the form of a large mantis like insect. In this image, Trychfil has come to take a poor grub to the underworld.

Even prickly monsters like tea…

I finally managed to enter this weeks Illustration Friday (and get something new up on my blog). I really enjoyed working in pen on the piece for ‘Hello Sunshine‘ so I decided to create another pen and ink drawing. Instead of simply using Sakura Microns, I used pen and ink to create more line variations with different sized nibs.

This piece is 6″ x 9″ and was created with Higgins India Ink and pen, and Sakura Microns (for some of the little fiddly bits).

In the photo below, you can see my collection of nibs.

Have a good weekend.

A cat on a rocket. Created with acrylics and pens on Bristol board, 9″ x 9″.

I struggled with this painting and repainted areas several times. I think I struggled because I tried to do some things differently with this piece. I have rarely used black paint so the black cat was something different for me. I hoped too that by using black it would force me away from my reliance on using pens to add detail and line work and that instead I would have to paint my lines.

I’m really trying to improve my brushwork, especially when it comes to laying down fine lines and details. I even bought some new smaller sized brushes, a mix of liners, spotters and rounds of size 1 through 000 (seen below).

Have a good weekend.

The above piece is 4 3/4″ x 6 1/2 and was created with acrylic, gouache and sakura pen on watercolour paper.

I was excited by this weeks Illustration Friday topic and so decided to create something. I have always loved the sea, I think in part because I grew up in a small seaside town in Wales (the town is called Burry Port and you can see some pics of the harbour here, Burry Port on BBC Wales). One of my fondest childhood memories is of going to the Burry Port beach with my Gran, my brother and our Gran’s blue bucket. We would go to the rock pools and my Gran would turn over the stones for my brother and I to catch the crabs which we would unceremoniously place in the bucket and then swish off home…

I also thought that having a specific topic might help me push my color choice in a new direction. If left to my own devices I tend to repeat my colour palette. So I spent some time researching in some of my National Geographic mags until I found these two images. From these images I settled on a blue/orange colour scheme.

From here I spent some time drawing and came up with a tentative design, as shown below, top left.

If anyone has any suggestions and/or tips on how they push their colour palette, please let me know :)

Have a good night and weekend.

Two unblinking Diggles, at night.

I wanted to keep this Friday’s image as simple as possible (so that I could get it done in time) and I also wanted to do a bold black and white image. The Diggle is a design from my sketchbook which I redrew in Illustrator with the pen tool and then assembled the piece in Photoshop.

Another Illustration Friday image, these characters originated from my sketchbook.

The original sketchbook character designs were drawn in pen and I am still trying to figure out the best way to create digital line work that I like and that has that pen quality — perhaps it isn’t possible. Anyway, I gave Freehand a go this time and started the image off with Freehand’s variable stroke pen. From there I took the line work into Illustrator and added areas of color with the pen tool and then finally copied the image over to Photoshop where I tweaked the colours and added the swath of yellow. The colours are bolder than I would typically use, but I wanted to try a different palette.

Have a good weekend.