Now in an attempt to justify actually having a blog, I figured I should start uploading some stuff unique to here.. I thought, for whatever reason, that it may be interesting to see something of my totally impractical, stupid and convoluted process.
By chance, I started a new picture this weekend, so over the next.. however long it may take me to do this... I will try and upload some progress shots at KEY MOMENTS in my pathetic attempts to DO ART...
Oh yeah, I'm drawing Lumi from Josceline Fenton's webcomic Hemlock. I recently bought the first two print volumes from Josceline (who was very friendly, very nice..) at the MCM Expo, and then had to wait impatiently for the third one to be released about a week later..
Such a lovely series, so pretty! And Lumi is a doll! Hehehe..
(Disclaimer: This image will in no way do justice to Josceline's stuff. If you are reading this, Josceline, for that which I am about to do, I apologise profusely...)
So I started doodling about, not really knowing what I wanted to do here, so it's all very rough. I was drawing digitally as I recently moved house (and also... to London...), and haven't yet brought my scanner up with me..
It's been interesting of late, whereas in the past I'd have drawn an image out by hand before scanning and inking it digitally, I've been forced to work more directly digitally. This was really unnatural to me at first, but I'm starting to get the hang of it..
Don't judge that based on these early images.. They're rough. Just.. just very rough...
Anyways, I expanded out from the initial doodle, again very rough, trying to come up with an idea for the image. I kind of settled on one before realising, this is just the worst framing.. This is awful!
Soooooo...
Thumbnails! (There were more than this)
I scrapped what I had (never be afraid to do this!!) and put a bit more thought into the composition of the image. Basically I lifted the original idea, but made it BETTER..
A decent image should look good both full size and as a thumbnail, knowing this and working at lots of different scales really helps with planning a picture.
So I kicked up the size of the chosen thumbnail, set the opacity right low and worked a layer above, again quite roughly at first, and then refining and refining till I was happy with what I had.
So these are the lines as it stands. (I don't have any captures of the stages in between these.. it was mostly a mass of messy scribble anyways, and we've already seen enough of those...)
I probably won't actually use lines in the final image, I'm still crushing heavily on the lineless style I've been using of late, but its still fun to draw it out properly..
Lumi is a different colour to the background since it pulls out depth across different layers (Background and Lumi are separate layers, and so was Lumi's head at one point... I wasn't sure of proportions so it allowed me to make some little adjustments, get it just right...), and it's easier to keep a handle on what you're doing this way.
I had a bit of trouble getting the background right, and to be honest its a bit wonky anyways, but it works quite well in the context of the image so I'm just going to roll with it...
Also she's in snail shell soooo...
Now I'm a little trepidatious about how to proceed, I don't really do as many full page images as I should, so there's going to be a lot of experimentation and long drawn out stints. Either way, I will try and keep this up!
So... uh... tune in... next time?? I suppose?
Oh dear..
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