John Has A Cake-Up!

Baking a cake can be quite fun! And the results are rewarding, a cake more delicious than can be bought. Droey and Co have tried their hand at baking a cake. With Ida's skills, Droey's precision and Tenvad's intellect, little can go wrong. Or so they thought.

John, ironically the most culinary experienced, is the one who had to rain on their parade, accidentally. The problem with John is that he tends to rush some things and that includes icing the cake. In fact he shot the icing right at the cake, causing the icing to ricochet all over them!

This piece was so delightfully fun to put together! Originally Anne wasn't going to be included but I decided that she might as well and so the awesome five came together for the first time in ages. Additionally the intended result would be everyone working to make the cake, rather than living with the regret of putting John in charge of icing the cake. It just seemed like the perfect idea and gave me an oppurtunity to try something new.

The colouring for this piece is where I got experimental. Rather than outline the perimeters of the icing I would colour outside of the icing and use dot patterns to create a splattered effect. I tried initially for pastel colours but broke away from this, hence some areas being two colours like Ida's hair and Droey's shirt.

You may have noticed that Anne and Ida are not in their usual attire, this is because they are in DIY attire, plus an apron for Anne, which is just as well given the mess that has been made!

Are you a culinary artist or have you drawn any culinary antics yourself? Maybe give either of those a shot, you'll end up with either something delicious or a bit of development for your characters!

Mac's An Unhappy Accountant

I was feeling pretty low at this point and going through a creative block. But nevertheless I pushed on and created something. I looked to a prompt generator for a situation and I got something about an unhappy accountant, I can't remember specifically what it said but it led me towards this idea.

So Mac used to be an accountant before he became a drama teacher. Quaid however was already a dance teacher and happens to notice a rather depressed elf sat drinking alone. Quaid had a chat with the elf and discovered how he hated his job and was feeling very low. His dream to work in acting, he had excelled in drama back in school. Quaid told him how a drama teacher at the school he worked at left a couple of days ago and they needed someone to take over. After a conversation, Quaid helped Mac land a job at the school as the drama teacher.

After this the two of them not only became good friends but announced their love to each other. If you've been following this blog long enough, then you probably know the rest.

I haven't done anything with Mac and Quaid lately so it's nice to give gem another appearance, even if I was at a low point making the piece. That being said, I don't think this turned out so bad, and it serene as a means of keeping me busy until I got my cool back. The next post is garuntee doing to be a good one!

Have you ever struggled with drawing? How do you deal with a creativity block, share your techniques and maybe anyone looking for a method will find their's!

Justice League - Head Shots

I know the film has been out for about a year but I love my DC heroes and the Justice League has my approval. I wanted to draw them all again but this time in the Drawson style. This decision led to me doing just head shots for each of the six members as they appear in the film.

Flash is the only character I gave the traditional circle shape, I couldn't do the whole set without a circle head. I might decide that Flash's eyes are actually semi circular rather than just hidden by the mask, as is the case for his lack of visible nose.

Superman's head shape is identical to Quaid (see Mac and Quaid to receive an example). I think this does him justice (no pun intended) and is a design that could actually suit every depiction of Superman, eye colour permitted.

Cyborg was a challenging design to begin with. I was going to give him an oval head but then I decided I preferred the shape he has in Teen Titans Go and so took that and his nose. His mechanical enhancements are based on his film design, so the design isn't a complete rip off, don't worry!

Aquaman, as he is in the film was my least favourite. I didn't really have any flaws for him but I think it's just the choice of design for him being so different from his comic book counterpart that puts me off. But as a Drawson style illustration, he does look pretty awesome with his triangular head. I don't know whether or not I would stick to this design or change him for the comic book version, we'll see how it goes.

Batman was the simplest of the lot, I think we can all see that. He's got a rectangular head and a mask just slightly wider. From the front he looks a bit like the Lego Batman actually, but that wasn't intentional.

Wonder Woman's design is probably the most interesting. People may wonder what I'm doing with her head shape, it's a diamond. I was looking at the pictures, same as I did for everyone else and diamond just came to mind. I tried it out and I really liked it. I think too many of my female character designs are round headed and so giving someone corners on their head makes a nice change, the never before used shape is just a bonus! I should like to see how her head appears from different angles, it's a window of curiosity.

Who's your favourite of these designs and who did you like best in the film if you watched it? If you've been drawing characters in your style I'm interested to see how you've done it!

Ladybug and Chat Noir - Drawson Style

For a couple of years now I've followed the adventures of Marinette and Adrian as they save Paris from the wrath of Hawkmoth. As far as superhero content goes, I tend to stick to the DC universe (sorry Marvel fans) but this show does it for me. Early on in my Droeys Draws days I attempted a Drawson styled Ladybug but it was never finished. Today I complete the task by drawing the charming duo together at last!

I apologize for the blurry photo, I don't know what was going on with my camera!

When I originally attempted Ladybug, I got as far as a proposed design and picking colours for her costume and hair. Those same colours are used today, but I didn't turn to the original material for anything else, building a new design solely with reference pictures of Marinette. The spots are organised as seen on her official costume, although this comes off a bit 'spotty' in certain areas. I actually forgot half the spots on Marinette's right arm.

For Chat Noir, this would be the first time bar a head shot in which I illustrated him.  The only thing I dislike about his design is that it should be taller. I thought I had managed to accommodate enough space for him but I was still too short. But height aside, the details seem solid enough, it was hard to find references for the Chat Noir costume. The eyes take after Silverside the cat, a Droeys Draws character if you don't know who she is; you can find her in my Inktober series.

This was fun to put together, these two have been long overdue on my to do list. If you haven't discovered Miraculous Ladybug but want superheroes that the family can enjoy, I'd highly recommend this show. Have you been making any fan art lately? Let's see what franchises you support!

I'll Find You One Day

So I once went to this parlour and had the most amazing Chocolate Brownie ice cream ever. To this day, I have never tasted such flavour again. I recently thought I was going to be reunited with this dessert but alas it was not to be. Okay that sounds more dramatic than need be but I put this idea in my head and I didn't hesitate to try it out!

So I have sepia toned fine liners, only I rarely use them. But given my lost flavour was of the chocolate kind, I thought a sepia toned piece would be perfect and so it was only necessary that I use the sepia fine liners.

The experimental part of this piece was mixing the browns and blues; I wanted this piece to be sepia toned but not completely. I was going for the effect that some kind of sepia tint had been cast over the illustration, so brown would be involved in every part of this illustration. This has a nice effect because one of the colours contrast too much from each other. I stuck to blue and green colours beneath the browns though I still included black since it was a greys ale colour. It was towards the end I brought in some yellow to make the sky and the clouds more interesting. This helped the background to look warmer and complimented the lighting set up really well.

The emblem on Droey's shirt is a chocolate brownie, seemed only fitting because of the missing flavour. But I didn't want his spoon out of the picture, so maybe Droey's always wearing that spoon as a reminder of his quest to be reunited with Chocolate Brownie ice cream? Nah, probably not.

The wind effect was something I tried really hard with and while I forgot to add anything blowing in the wind, I remembered to transform the hair and the grass blades to suit. How do you think I did with the wind? Have a go at drawing a windy illustration, share to the world what you come up with!

Pretzels and Newspapers

Okay, this is an older piece and was created within a week after Kasey's prompt video came out. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, Kasey Golden did a prompt video in June and her prompts were 'Pretzel' and 'Newspaper'. I had at the time come to the conclusion that I should do as Kasey challenges at the end of each of her prompt videos and make my own interpretation on the prompts. If you follow me on Facebook, you'll have seen this when it was done but for those who haven't, here my Pretzels and Newspapers piece.

So I was not quite sure what I was to do with this, I felt it would be a bit bland of me to illustrate something eating a Pretzel while reading a newspaper, or to have Pretzels on a newspaper. I did a little research and discovered that Rollercoasters can form a Pretzel, as it is named, and so decided to illustrate someone reading a newspaper while riding this roller coaster. The concept was solid, though I fell my exception was under par this time.

I'll give myself some slack given I've never drawn Rollercoasters and track, neither have I tried one point perspective of this kind, it was meant to have the fish eye effect but I don't think that worked, making some parts look weird. What's worse is that the line art for the tracks is perhaps some of the wobbliest line art I have done since I started this blog, the supports bent a bit too far which further ruined the perspective and I even forgot to illustrate one of the supports!

There was a saving grace for that last mistake however, as I snuck in Agrius Moth seilding a blowtorch, we'll put it down to sabotage! I'm sure things will work out for our passengers and that no harm will come to them though. On board this Rollercoasters are the newspaper reader, Droey Drawson, Anne Natalie and Kasey Golden herself! I thought it would be cool to put her in the rollercoaster as a cameo of sorts, given that this was the prompt that she first conquered. I would have thought twice about this had I known I was going to resort of Agrius sabotaging the rollercoaster to save myself from ruining the illustration!

Overall, despite it's flaws, I enjoyed working on this piece and it was good to excersise the prompt generated artwork again, I haven't done it in so long! Did you do this prompt when it came out? I hope your work made it's way on to Kasey's end card! If it didn't, then you can at least say you got the experience.

Batman Did It!

There's this viral video in which a young boy has drawn on a mirror with lipstick, he has the cheek to blame Gotham's caped crusader, Batman for the stunt! Well good news for him, there's new evidence that has come to light, Batman has been caught drawing on mirrors again!

And it appears he was hoping to frame Joker! Catwoman was not best pleased when she found out what had happened to her lipstick.

This provided me with two challenges, firstly was to draw Batman in the realism style, I refused to back out from the oppurtunity. Secondly this piece would require myself to draw a reflection, something which I have not done in years, and certainly not in my realism style. I did use a reference for this illustration but it was a picture of a rather thin girl than a buff male, so all I could use the reference for was the angles and anatomical features, particularly with the hand. It was down to my collection of human figures on Pinterest that I was able to make the body masculine enough to be Batman.

The Batman design is based on the current Batman in the current film series. The head turned out much better than in any of my sketches, even though I think the right ear was illustrated incorrectly.  Another part of this illustration I love is the reflection, I had the feeling it would take me a long time to sketch out a reflection but most of it came easier than expected.

This takes me back to an illustration of Spiderman I did back in 2016, in which my journey towards loving art again began. Do you draw superheroes? Let's see what awesome superheroes you can bring to paper, hopefully they'll be behaving better than Batman!

Sorry Guys, No Soul Stone

Look out guys, Agrius has found a very powerful gauntlet, The Limited Gauntlet!

So I've created a parody version of the Infinity Gauntlet, with a couple of major differences. For one thing, this gauntlet is silver and the other difference is the lack of a soul stone, do you see Agrius having five fingers?

So what powers does the Limited Gauntlet have? Well let's go over each stone. There's the reality stone, which forces everyone to abide by the laws of physics and disables the power to retcon or reboot the timeline. The space stone prevents teleportation and the ability to move objects telekineticly. The power stone can drain energy, that's it. The time stone keeps things moving in an orderly timeline and cancels out any time manipulation or travel. The big one, the mind stone, stops anyone from thinking clearly and disorientates them.

So what's the point in having such a limiting weapon? Well nobody really knows or has been mad enough to try finding out until Agrius here has assembled the stones! Will the gauntlet grant him absolute power or will it just affect him? He'll find out with the click of his finger.

This piece was a delight to put together and finished up looking so beautiful! I used masking tape to prevent my watercolour pencils from exceeding the box I set as a limitation and this techniques worked really well; I've seen many doing this before but I haven't really done it myself.

Agrius holding a gauntlet like this gave me the oppurtunity to use more than two hands to express his actions, I don't like to leave all of his hands inactive because that can come across as boring. I gave Agrius' gloveless left hand the gauntlet and had his gloved left hand the chance to click. Meanwhile his right gloved hand would clench into a fist to express the power bestowed upon him. You may notice the gauntlet look rather large, though this is down to perspective, his gauntlet hand is close to directly above his clicking hand. To help emphasise this perspective I enlarged the outer line of the gauntlet, hopefully it worked out.

What do you think will come out of Agrius possessing the Limited Gauntlet? Will it be doom and gloom for us or is it a ripoff at his expense? Let me know what you think, and perhaps give it a try at illustrating a gauntlet, I'd be interested to see what you come up with!