The Giant Moth

Tenvad's back! But unfortunately she's got company...

It's 'Hawkmoth'! Oh wait, Miraculous Ladybug beat me to it.

So the idea for this came about one night when I was on my laptop, hence the inclusion of Tenvad. It was during one of the very hot days while I had the cold. Because of this I had the window open, now I wasn't surprised to see the casual moth or two fly in to embrace the light but soon came something I would never have expected.

I head what sounded like the continuous loop of someone flicking through a paperback book and looked in the direction of the sound. There was his moth the size of my palm not actually after the light but some space (namely my bedroom) to fly around! I'll never see moths the same way again, and I was able to get it out again luckily, with some help of course.

Another thing is that I thought I had gotten rid of it but when I turned the light off and got in my bed, it was flying about again, it had never left the room! The light went back on and the hunt continued, after which the moth was finally out of the room for certain.

The news always warns us about certain insects and such but they never actually turn up, whilst the ones they should be giving a heads up about actually turn up, sums up my luck eh?

Well that's everything regarding this piece and I hope it has entertained you.

The Alphabet Challenge | M

M is for Mystery Twins (Mabel and Mason Pines)

I had no seconds thoughts about who I wanted my M to be. It's as simple as that.

This piece took a few days to put together. The first day was actually deciding how I would present these two characters. I wanted something with a bit more action than my previous alphabet challenge entry which is how I was lead to having Mable making use of her grappling hook. But I also had to counter the action with Dipper's curiosity so the best way to present that I felt was the journal. The tree was a simple choice as Gravity Falls has a lot of trees and they are after all known as the 'Pines Twins' by some.

The next couple of days was spent creating the outlines, which were then erased to near invisibility as I was going to try something. It was attempted before in The Alphabet Chalenge's J but it didn't quite work out as well. What I did was apply colour to the illustration before using my Microns to ink an outline. This time it paid off much better and I can say with confidence that none of the lines have bled.

You may also noticed how instead of placing their names around the illustration I engraved their names into the tree, even crossing out the Mason and replacing it with Dipper. There's another name engraved into the tree, I'll let you guess what it says though. 

I am rather fond of this piece and would happily come back to do this one again some time in the future.

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

Hot and Cold

So summer has kicked in and the past week has been excellent in terms of weather. Although a couple of days into this heat wave, something happened...

I was inspired to create this fun little piece. That's right, Droey's back everyone and his absence appears to be due to the common cold. Whereas Anne Natalie (welcome back to her as well!) is still feeling fit as a fiddle and enjoying the summer sunshine.

I've never really had a cold outside of the winter season but it didn't stop me going about my day. In fact, as you can see it's triggered me to become a little more active in the art department. The Alphabet Challenge's 'M' is almost done and I've got something in mind for next week also based on the events of this past week. Another familiar face may be making a return next week as well so keep an eye out for Team Drawson because they're on their way back!

Torso Shapes and Mr. Men?

Over the weekend I had seen a video about using shapes with characters, particularly for moulding the torso. Therefore I did a bit of experimenting with some shapes to create different bodies and even a couple of heads.

Apart from the two in the top right believe it or not, I actually decided to task myself with using shapes formerly used by the cast of 'Mr. Men', where just about the most important element to a character's design would be their shape. You may recognize such shapes as those of Mr. Lazy or Mr. Skinny. One comes from a more recent character, Little Miss Hug.

However because a good amount of the characters share the came oval/circular shape, I did find there was a minor restraint for diversity. But doing this exercise got me thinking, is this just the tip of the iceberg for a batch of humanoid Mr. Men and Little Miss? I wouldn't mind giving it a shot, while I don't usually like to 'humanise' personified characters, it's still a fun experimental practice.

Felix Fisher's Cats

You may recall in the past month I uploaded three character designs, one of which was named 'Felix Fisher'. I also in that week did some experimental character designing to create nine concepts of cat characters. Here they are in colour.

Some of these designs I am particularly proud of for their diversity (compared also to other cartoon cats) and their design appeal. I don't intend to label these as final designs, probably all of them could use some tweaking. In fact some of them could do with some personality. I had a few characteristics in mind with cats like 2, 4, 6 and 9 whereas others like 1 and 8 are designed to stand out.

Does art need to be deep, purposeful and connotative?

WARNING

THE FOLLOWING CONTENT CONTAINS TOILET HUMOUR WHICH MAY DISTURB SOME VIEWERS, OBSERVE WITH CAUTION

Fear not, this isn't going to be a post about me preaching. Instead, this is just an art piece that may not fit the criteria titled above. As you can tell by the warning, this is going to be something that is not normal of me but was requested and I needed something to do. So without further ado, you'll now get to see what happens when you combine the do it yourself utility of a jet-wash and someone who needs to 'go'.

There is literally nothing else I can say to explain myself for this. To those who have been scarred by this humourous image, I'm sorry. To those who have been amused, I'm happy for you. This may be the sort of thing I return to (the act of taking requests, not drawing men taking a climactic poo). I promise the next upload will come across more sensible than this one.

The Alphabet Challenge | L

L is for Lord Fear and Lady Illusion

This fortnight sees my return to the wonderful underrated franchise that is Ace Lightning, with two of my favourite villains of all time. Lord Fear, crippled skeleton from the sixth dimension and his former partner in crime, Lady Illusion. Granted 'Staff Head' does not begin with L but he is essential to Lord Fear so he gets some spotlight too.

It took me five days actually to complete this and is also the return of my coloured pencils! The first couple of days saw me using a mechanical pencil to create the lines which would the next day be inked over. Now this would have been a quicker and easier process if I had access to my Ace Lightning yearbook, which had the clearest and host helpful images I could find. But luckily Google served me well, even when matching my colours which over two days allowed me to finish a coloured masterpiece.

I have in years of past attempted to draw Lord Fear before but this is his best turn out and most likley the best I'll have of him. As for Staff Head and Lady Illusion, this is my first time drawing either of them and they turned out just as well.

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

Some Handy Tryouts

Pretty proud of my productivity in practice, I've been training myself in the art of hands!

Here you can see four of the hand gestures I practiced. My favourites being the first free, although I'm proud to have accomplished the fourth hand marked in ballpoint pen. The first three hands came from a tutorial on YouTube for hand drawing, 'If You Hate Drawing Hands, Try This' I think it is called. I would certainly recommend it if you want the hand broken down into the core three shapes. It has made me a lot for confident in drawing the closed fist hand, and I feel I'll be able to improve hands that are holding staffs, swords or any other prop which consists of a handle.

These hands here are not particularly favourable. The left hand is adequate, my only con with it is that it's not a hand posture that would be used often (at least to my knowledge). As for the right hand, it proved too challenging for me it seems. Apart from the pinky finger, the rest are misshapen but the body of the hand and the wrist are decent enough.

Well that's it for the hand practice I have done this week. I might do some more, I may even practice some feet or another part of the body, in all honesty I do need to improve my anatomy, if only it were something art students were actually taught early on, funny enough I've never actually been taught anything about it, I'm self taught... with a little help from YouTube!

Chibi DC

You may have seen last week that I posted a Chibi Superman, well he wasn't the only one I had drawn.

I had to draw my favourite superhero duo, Batman and Robin. But then drawing Robin meant I also had to draw Starfire, for the sake of Teen Titans.

It was quite enjoyable to draw a Batman looking so happy, and since I was going for the 'cute' theme I wanted Robin to be admiring Batman as the father figure, unaware that there's a Tamaranian trying to catch his attention. Which reminds me, this was all going so well until I drew Starfire's right hand the wrong way round!

This simplistic looking creation is going to really juxtapose an upcoming post I'll be making in the next week, one that I have put a lot of work into which partly contributes to the lack of decent content this week.

Chibi Superman

Probably my favourite drawing of Superman I have ever done. Although not much I can say about this one. I just love the dynamic pose and his happy face.

Good news is now that I should have a bit more time to draw than I have had recently and may be able to get back to the standard of content you saw from me formerly. For the past half a month I've been using the same few pieces of equipment but that's slowly changing now. So I suppose that's why Clark is in such a happy mood!

Colour Schemes and Shape Theory

Last week I presented three character designs to you and here they are again. But this time I have been experimenting with their colour schemes. I'm going to be honest, I don't usually make many colour schemes, I always feel confident with my first one but I try to experiment and explore more.

With such being the case, I will most probably go back and change the colours for Felix and the dog. But the female character redesigned in the bottom left, I'm sold on her colour scheme and reckon no other colours would suit her. You'll notice she now wears a fluffy coat instead of a short sleeve jacket, I wanted her to look more blocky. This is down to applying shape theory to her second design and constructing her mainly out of squares.