Foot Practice

Previously you saw me tackling the human body in general, well today it's going to be feet!

It's difficult to draw feet and get them to look good, at least that's what I find. I always resort to drawing shoes on my characters, unless it's the Drawson style, in which so far I think I've only drawn the old version of the feet.

I looked at numerous internet tutorials, including some from Mark Crilley and Draw With Jazza. While I think some of these feet came out alright, I can't seem to repeat those successes. I've still got a fair amount to learn about feet. Perhaps I'll be luckier after getting in some more practice.

However despite all of this, my favourite foot will always be the Ninja foot! I couldn't help it, I had recently watched the 1990's Ninja Turtle movie.

Human Body Practice

I found a YouTube video by the user 'Talart' about drawing the female body. I gave it a watch and was impressed by the method, so I gave it a try myself. I have to say, although I don't consider myself bad at drawing bodies, I do struggle sometimes so this tutorial was a blessing to me.

I won't go into details about how this is done as that's what the video is for, it also goes into more depth than what you could get from this post.

I also repeated this technique and altered the shapes to suit a male body. I don't think this worked as well for I didn't refer to any tutorials for this one, just simply changed things from the female body tutorial). While I consider his appearance masculine, the body just doesn't seem right to me, perhaps it's just my eyes.

One thing I have done differently in both of these is that as a reminder for the future, I have marked all of the shapes with a different colour so I can quickly reconstruct the bodies and see how they should look when completed.

I highly recommend that you check out the tutorial video if you want to learn how to construct the body. And if you're reading this Talart, I say thank you!

The Alphabet Challenge | O

O is for Onyx

At least a decade ago, we didn't have the Dreamworks Trolls film. Instead there was this pre-teen girls targeted television show that lasted one season and I consider underrated. This was about five magical 'Trollz' teenagers who had to save the world from ogres and shop at their local mall.

Looking back I can't be sure what it was that got me into Trollz. Was is the art style? The fantasy element? It's catchy theme song? Whatever it was I was hooked and had most probably seen all of the episodes, not that I can so easily remember now.

Each of the five Trollz, collectively known as BFFLs (Best Friends For Life) is named and colour coordinated after a gem, which might contribute to how they can be easily remembered. There weren't many characters I can remember beginning with O that grabbed my attention until Onyx the goth crossed my mind, and so she was chosen.

Ironically Onyx is the one I think I leased acknowledges as a character. I could clearly see the roles that the other four had in their group and never really understood how Onyx connected with the others. If I didn't know any better, I'd say this inclusion of her in my Alphabet Challenge is a redemption. I can most probably put it down to the fact I never understood anything with a darker tone and most probably the 'goth' stereotype fell into the dark category.*

*Please note these opinions are assumptions based on my younger years and not a representation of my current views or behaviour

Now onto the artsy talk. Onyx was sketched up in a day with a traditional pencils and then a mechanical pencil. Then the next day she was inked with a .2 fine liner and around the edges with a 1.0. 

Since I hadn't used them since K, it felt necessary to return to the felt tips for this entry, despite how limited I am at the moment to just twenty-four colours. Regardless the colours were close enough to Onyx's palette so I proceeded with the colours selected. Everything with this piece was going so well until I worked with the shoes. 

You may notice the grey just about suddenly cuts out on her right foot, this being because I was colouring the blacks in her shoes and accidentally coloured in the wrong section. I put a stop to myself immediately but already know it was too late to change what I had done. Other than that my only mistake was with the spell in her hand and her belly piercing, which should be midnight blue and not purple (although the subtlety of this mistake made it bearable).

The Trollz art style is interesting and slightly complicated to build but it is certainly distinctive and you could remember it for years the same way I have. One thing that stands out is how their noses all seem to be of triangular shape (without trying to sound offensive) almost like an upside down pig's snout! But I guess this decision was made based upon general depictions of Troll anatomy.

Have you seen the letter N? If not you can check it out via my page for the 'Alphabet Challenge' as well as previous entries. Look out for P coming soon!

Doctor Who? Doctor Jodie?!

Now for the past week there has been some pretty big news which some probably saw coming but still takes many by surprise. For the past fifty years, fictional time traveler The Doctor has been portrayed by over thirteen white males but that tradition is broken as of next year as the first female hops on board the cast to canonically portray The Doctor. Good luck Jodie Whittaker!

Here you can see my prediction for a costume design that she would be given. Now I made this the very hour I discovered she would be the Doctor so if there's any information since that contradicts this design, then so be it.

For this design I looked up femenine portrays of The Doctor, both generally and gender-bent counterparts. I also tried to give her something unique as every Doctor tends to have their own trademark, such as the stripy scarf, the fez or umbrella. Perhaps I could have done more with this design but the best I could come up with at the time was this jacket which didn't resemble any Doctors past.

I hope I have done both The Doctor and Jodie Whittaker justice with this interpretation and also hope her official costume will look something like this, just for the sake of making a pretty spot on prediction!

What do you think is to come for Doctor Who with our new female lead? Keeping all opinions respectable, please feel free to discuss.

An Eggcellent Work Of Art

Before you see this piece, I think it is worth filling you in on a bit of my life. Allow me to tell you about what happened a few days back.

It was a lovely morning. Everyone in the household had just gotten up and out of nowhere decided to have Eggs on Toast for breakfast. I had gotten up later than usual this morning, so let my little brother have the first serving. He's never had eggs on toast before and doesn't like the yolk and it just so happens that one of his yolks had burst and started leaking on his toast, at which he was disgusted. 

He picked up the plate and before even leaving the kitchen, realized he didn't have a clue how to eat eggs on toast. So there and then he decides to pick up the toast (yes with the egg still on it) and by doing so, the egg was free to succumb to the laws of gravity and slip off the toast. It landed upside down with a splat on the floor. Once the mess was cleaned up and his egg replaced, the rest of us began what comes naturally when someone is humiliated by an egg. We make more than a dozen of puns, it was only just be beginning of a long torture scheme! (But I made a 'toast' to him for lasting a day with our jokes)

As one of our humorous schemes, I took the egg shells from that morning and made this scene that you will now see below, and showed it to my little brother. His reaction was priceless as I expected it to be.

I don't know why I haven't given life to eggs more often in life, the result here was priceless, although it was rather challenging to make a zombie egg. My only regret is that I didn't write 'Eggspecting' on the pregnant looking egg.

Here's a closer look at the eggs below.

Eggy friends mourning the egg that was dropped

Risen from the dead (or the kitchen floor) and wants revenge!

Do you have a favourite out of the eggs? Let me know if you do or even if you'd like to see these eggs return (not the actual shells of course).

Yes He Studied Photography

And many other things.

That's right, Pete the Spiderman is back and we've gone further back into his years, to the days when he was in school. Back then Pete was rather ambitious despite his rebellious attitude, as you can see he got the idea that he would be able to handle several subjects more than the normal student. But the teachers don't think that would be a risk worth taking.

One thing I noticed is that when I drew the shoes, I think I subconsciously ended up replicating the style of LavenderTowne the YouTube Artist. I do like those shoes and they went quite well with the costume. I also like how uniformed the colours of the teacher are, just blacks and browns (well Tan for the skin which counts as a paler shade of brown).

Meet The Real Spiderman!

Having seen trailers for the recent 'Spiderman Homecoming', I have to say while I think owning a suit like that is cool but for it to be the actual Spiderman really disappoints me. Granted I haven't watched the film (nor did I intend to) but from what I've seen, I can't possibly accept this film's depiction to the Spiderman. So what do I do? I draw my interpretation, how the infamous Spiderman really is, so behold in the one panel comic below, the real Spiderman!

That's right, forget your friendly neighbourhood school boy and meet the probably cranky mutation that is trying to go about a normal life. Spiderman (we'll call him Pete for now), seems to be unemployed and is looking for a career. Does Pete have what it takes to be a photographer, maybe we'll find out some day.

I chose to give him the netted vest since it resembles a spider's web. The moustache is chosen for a similar reason, although to resemble part of the spider itself.

So what do you think of Pete? Are you interested in seeing more of him or are you about as frightened of him as his own dog? Tomorrow he'll be making another appearance in the other singular paneled comic I made for this guy. If you want more of him, be sure to check it out!

The Alphabet Challenge | N

N is for Never forget your references!

Okay, not really. It's Nemo.

If you're curious about the header, then we'll get to that shortly.

I was having a wonder about who to do for the letter N. I can't remember who first came to mind but I know at some point I was considering Nigel Uno from 'Codename Kids Next Door'. However I instead decided to go with Nemo, simply because his film (Finding Nemo of course) was the first film I ever saw in cinemas.

So I sat down and looked up some references for this clown fish, I had never drawn him or any of his kind before. It didn't take me too long to get a decent outline to work with and the next day I inked the chosen lines with an orange pen. Everything was going smoothly as I went onto the next stage in which my watercolour pencils (because what else would I colour a fish with?) got active.

Before applying water to the picture, I got a black marker to ink parts of this piece. And then it happened. I got confused at one particular section of the clown fish and looked up the pictures again. Too late to do anything about it, I realized the biggest patch of white on this fish, right along the middle of his body was coloured in orange! The worst part was it was shaded really well (at least to my opinion, your's may differ). I was gutted with this revelation but kept calm and carried on, not everything you do is going to be perfect. Despite that rather bold error, I really do like this clown fish, and I'm not the only one.

You might not have noticed the lack of white stripe, but you probably won't be able to unsee it anymore. If that's the case then my apologies. If you did notice prior to my confirming it however, then well spotted!

Have you seen the letter M? If not you can check it out via my page for the 'Alphabet Challenge' as well as previous entries. Look out for O coming soon!

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

In the past week, the time had come that my vision of having long hair dreads. It was time to get short with my hair, literally. I got a cut and now my hair is about half the length I think; well it had to be done at some point, I'm growing it back.

I don't genuinely have an emotional attachment to my hair, don't worry. But I couldn't resit my cartoon counterpart giving his hair a farewell, leaving with the hamper like Pingu and so forth. It was a fun drawing to make and rather experimental with the brush pen.

Normally as much as I like the brush pen, it does tend to bring difficulty when I use it for outlining, probably because I'm a bit OCD with my art. But with this, the 'Hair Man', every stroke came naturally and went really well with the rest. I particularly like how the inking has made this character stand out against Droey, I'm always drawn to look straight at him.

Will Droey's hair be staying this way or will cartoon logic grow it back by the next time you see him? That I can't decide yet, we'll see how it goes.

Beware The Block

Beware The Block, Creative Block.

Do not Mock, don't succumb to Shock.

Create or seal yourself in Lock.

Believe not in the Artist's Block.

Okay so the rhyme sounds a bit over the top but I had fun writing that. Anyway, I was struggling to decide what to draw and going through one of those periods where I either didn't feel like drawing or just couldn't focus on drawing; and so we come to this.

This may look better as a piece of digital art so I'll probably do this again in the future with some more dramatic effects, that would suit this down to the ground.

Not much else I can say about this one other than, I was going through a creative strain and pulled through with something, You're guaranteed something better tomorrow  but I hope you like this one all the same. At least now this dark shade of blue finally fits with the rest of the design.

Hubba Bubba, What A Looker!

A few days ago I watched this video in which Alex Hirsch of Gravity Falls but to rest all of those slender and 'sexy' humanised models of Bill Cipher with something that actually fitted the character. I applaud you Alex because canon or not, this is the human Bill Cipher.

I did make some minor tweaks such as added details to the shoes and rolling up his sleeves for some gloves, simply to make the humanized depiction more accurate to the character we get in the show. But everything else I kept just as Alex intended it. And for the Gravity Falls fans you may notice I have replicated a pose from one of Bill's Weirdmageddon monologues.

My only regret is that I forgot to add a shirt pocket in which Bill could contain his pocket watch. But I suppose as he's presumably still a dream demon, that won't be compulsory. I hope you all like this human Bill Cipher as much as I do, and be sure to check out the footage of Alex Hirsch creating this design humself, it was certainly a joy to watch!