Life drawing, odds and ends

I'm doing a life drawing workshop in the evenings for the next couple of weeks, so I'll be putting up some poses, like these:

Also a friend asked me to do some specialty potion bottles for his D&D campaign last Sunday. It was kind of last minute rushed, but I had some fun with it:

New year, new pieces

Here is a mini dump of some recent pieces I did. The first is a design for a mountain troll village:

I took a lot of time to think about the trolls, how intelligent they were, what sort of materials they would use, and how their houses would vary depending on the materials at hand.



Early sketches and reference



Front and back views of different house types, a sample interior

I also did this temple - the idea was that it had been built severel hundred years previously by a secular race and was later repurposed by religious fire-worshipping zealots. Therefore I had to create a design for the temple that had a dichotemy to it. I drew it in its original forest, then in its later incarnation where the humans had surrounded it with a seaside town:

I chose a blade shape for the roof because simple shapes tend to better reflect the atmosphere of their surroundings. In the forest it feels serene, in the city it feels more imposing.

I designed the temple with a circular hole in the ceiling. This allowed the sun to shine into the original meditation chamber, and also allowed it to be repurposed as a chimney for the fire burning inside to erupt from, bolstering the intimidating feeling.

Here are some early sketches:

Back in the saddle

I took a week off from drawing for the holiday. I am getting back into things, spent a few hours this afternoon doing an undercity street.

Christmas Fun

A week ago a friend of mine, Kelley McMorris, posted a really cute redraw of a drawing she'd done as a kid. She posted the original doodle from her 8 year old self, then her redraw of it side by side. It was cute and really neat, so I thought when I went home for the holiday I'd try it if I could find some childhood drawings of mine.

I sat down yesterday and redrew "Ivy the Centaur," a drawing from when I was around 13 years old:

I think this is the first centaur I've drawn since I was 13 years old.

It was really fun to do, so I picked a different drawing from when I was 14 or so and did that one today. I think I remember the character was supposed to be a goddess of whales, in human form? Sadly I didn't really document my character creation process very well back then. ;)

"Urscia," goddess of whales

Overall it was pretty funny redrawing childhood drawings, I might do some more while I'm home for the holidays.

Drawing from Reference

I always have a lot of characters floating around in my head, and as I've mentioned in earlier blog entries I like to unwind drawing people. My passion for concept art is about telling a story - usually I like to do that through an environment, but characters have very personal stories inside of them and that makes them pretty fun to draw. I suppose I enjoy drawing women because I am one, and I identify with female characters more personally. I have nothing against drawing men!

While my pencil drawings are usually pretty standard poses and come out of my own head, sometimes I like to get references and often there will be an image that really jumps out at me. I was browsing around this afternoon and found a couple of cool images that inspired me, so I used them as the basis for some quick drawings of one of my characters:

Image courtesy of Tigg-stock

Look at that awesome cape!

Image courtesy of ec-stock

This particular character of my inventing leads a dual life as a noble woman and a warrior. They are simple line drawings with minimal rendering, but taking a break from environments and doing something different from time to time has a recharging effect on me.

I've seen lots of people struggle, and I think it's important to remember when working with reference not feel married to your reference. It can be easy to feel trapped by a reference photo, but it's just an aid in making a drawing. Costume, facial features, even the pose can be changed... the photo is just there to serve as a reminder of what the natural form looks like.

Doodles

I was throwing out a bunch of computer paper from my desk today and took a few  pictures of some more lady doodles. I don't remember who all of them are but there's a Triss Marigold from Witcher 1 and my old KOTOR 1 Revan with the black ponytail in there.

Trying a new style

I got inspired by some pieces I saw the other day that heavily used photo compositing, so I decided to try it out. I like the results a lot. The following pieces I did in about 3-4 hours this afternoon:

Snow practice:

Castle ruins: