I can do cute stuff! Watch me.

So my wife challenged me to draw something cute for my next assignment in narrative illustration class. Because normally I draw robots, dinos, guns, and ships. You know, guy stuff. Well, challenge accepted. 

Here is a step by step of how I created this piece.

I started out doing 20 or so small thumbnails after doing some research and having a fun and lengthy discussion about rainbow brite with some experts in my class. Thinking about composition, shapes, and dividing my image up in the rule of 3rd's I sketched my idea down in pencil in my sketchbook using several reference images. And then went over it in pen and erased the pencil lines. I scanned it in to my computer (image 1) and realized that my rainbow brite and sprite characters were too large. I scaled them down a bit and fixed some lines and both of their eyes.

I increased both the contrast and brightness of the scanned image to make it a nice clean sketch for me to start working on. I don't always do this, but it sure saves a lot of time and frustration to start with a really good line drawing. Making sure the angles, shapes, and everything is reading well. Include a story too.

Now on to putting some value in this image. I copied the layer and pasted it onto it's self. I changed the composite method to multiply. This allows me to keep the line drawing intact while letting me see the paint under it. I used a gradient to give a hint of a sky and to add value to start with(image 2)

In painting anything I usually use the computer program Corel Painter X with a Wacom drawing tablet. It's great! I should probably upgrade to the newest version of painter but I haven't yet. It has a bunch of brushes to choose from. One of my favorites is the 2B pencil brush with the method changed to cover. You can change this in the brush controls. It has a really nice soft edge to it. I use it A LOT! 

I used this brush to block in some clouds and a little part of the happy little earth on the bottom.

For the hard edge stuff I use the scratchboard tool. It has a nice hard edge "thick to thin" pen feel to it. I used this to block in the other values of the rainbow and characters. I use this brush A LOT as well. This part is fun. It's like doing a black and white coloring book. Pretty easy stuff.

 The next part could be about form. Making things look like they have weight or volume in a three dimensional space. I choose a light source to be at the upper right of the piece. This dictates where every specific light and shadow should go on everything.

Using a new layer changed to a multiply, I color picked each value using the dropper tool and the brush and gave it a tiny bit of shadow. Doing this makes every value I pick darker. I usually play around with the opacity on this step because the multiply layer makes everything too dark I think. I also, used the grainy water blender brush to blend and smooth the values together.

Using the same method, I created another layer changed to screen to color pick the highlights.

At this point it's really hard for me not to just jump straight in to color. The important thing here is the values have to be reading really well before you jump into color. Because Value is everything in creating a good image. If the values are crappy hold off on color and fix them first. So I'll spend most of my time here. 

Once the value as awesome! (not to say they are in this image) I turn down the opacity of the line work really low and drop it on the values. Then I 'll go around the whole image with the grainy water brush and blend the values and the line work together. Keeping in mind the edges of everything.

Sometimes I like to put a rough color over it on new layer just to see how it would look and I'll experiment with different configurations of color. If it looks good enough I'll use it.

 At this point, I will go around the image a noodle it for hours and hours. Only in the spots of interest, like the three characters. This is the fun part.

Finally, I put down some glowing/sparking effects of happiness down. I used the variable splatter airbrush for the sparkles and a screen layer of warm colors over the stars and rainbow.  

After that I fill a layer over everything with a warm color and changed it to overlay and lowered the opacity to balance all the colors together.

So that's how I did it. Hopefully this was interesting and useful. Enjoy! I need to go draw a dinosaur now.

Illustration friday-Beginning

This last week in Jim Madsen's digital painting class we had to come up with an illustration from the word "beginning". This word comes from the weekly challenges that illustrationfriday.com hosts. The other requirement was to illustrate it in a scratchboard style. I thought it would be fun to do the last Son of Krypton at the beginning of his life. The assignment was to just be in black and white but I thought it might look better with some simple colors. It reminds me of the old comics from the 50s and 60s that I've seen. This one was a lot of fun. I love doing crosshatching and drawing in this graphic style.

Cartoon # 2

This is another cartoon I did for the UVU Review. The theme was Thanksgiving. I'm having a lot of fun doing these cartoons. Enjoy!

Brains

This is a sample of a recent commission it did. The request was to make him look like the walking dead. Very fun to do! Enjoy!

He lost his stuffing

A painting I did today for my sister-in-law for her birthday. Maybe I'll do some more of these Wizard of Oz characters in the future. This was fun.

And in other news I was recently accepted in to the UVU illustration BFA program. I'm pretty excited about it. :D

I'm also excited for the semester to be over. :D

Gallery of Terror 2012

I submitted this to the UVU Illustration Gallery of Terror 2012. It's just for fun. I used the Sharp Chalk brush in Corel Painter X. 

Happy Halloween! 

U of U vs. BYU

Just something for fun. Who do you think it's going to be?

CD cover process

This is the process I used to make a CD cover for my cousin Bret Slack. He's been working on a jazz music album and wanted me to create the art work for it.

I started with a rough sketch of the gesture in painter. This was only after I sketched some ideas in my sketch book to get the idea right.

Then, on a new layer I quickly drew in the environment and the phonograph. I used some basic photo references for the phonograph and the skeleton to get the details right.

Then, I used another layer to fill the whole picture to appear much darker. And I experimented with the glow brush to see what the lighting should look like. The direction was sort of a night club in the 1920's.

I wasn't really digging the glow brush idea. So, I desaturated everything and put most of the values in. And I rendered out a lot of the skeleton and background.

Then, I finished up with putting the color back in, but not as saturated. I also put in smoke effects and the feather in the fedora. Then, I applied some texture to give a used effect to everything.

Because of school and other projects this CD cover took way longer than I expected. Also, while doing this project my painter application somehow reset itself, and I lost all of my custom settings and brushes!!! Which was kind of frustrating! So, remember to always back up everything!

On a side note: After I remade all of my brushes and set all of my custom palettes, this started showing up after opening files:

I hate this... whatever this is!!!!!!! After I click on any painter or photoshop file this shows up. So, I click on OK. And the loading-into-memory sign comes up for about a second and then this same warning comes up. And it just goes in this cycle until I finally just force quite the application! If anybody knows what this is, I would love to know so I can turn it off!!!!

Dunk Team # 2

Here are some more Verve Sol Patrol dunk team illustrations. I focused more on the gesture and action of what they were doing. I sketched them over and over until they seemed right. This makes for a much easier time painting them. And it’s seems to take less time. These are really fun to do.

Hopefully I will have more done by the weekend.

Dunk Team

This is the first of several images I'm doing for the Suns: Verve Sol Patrol. I would love some feedback on what's working and what's not. More to come.