wrinkles part 2

Continuing my attempt to understand clothing wrinkles, I grabbed a stock photo from set of Steampunk costume photos from Zeldyn-Stock. The photo I used is 'in storage' and I really should have used this one because the hands are less problematic.

This is a bit better than the first wrinkles test, but there are still many issues that need addressing. I may try again with the photo I linked. Here they are in order. The original is 7.5" x 3" or so.







Listening to while posting: Some sort of violin concerto coming from the radio in the woodstove room where Sweet Enemy is chilling with the cat and reading some Hugo Award-winning stories from the seventies.

wrinkles

I spent a couple of hours today working on copying a photo to try to get a grip on wrinkles on clothing. I can feel how it should go naturally, I can nearly understand how things would work on a pose I made up. Not quite, though. Something is missing and I still need more work on it.

Here's the picture, though. It's a portrait of Anke-Eve Goldmann in her winter riding gear. I'm not posting the original image as my mistakes (the eyes are a bit high on the face, for example) would be more glaring, but I am linking to it in case you think I've traced. Of course, that would assume that you thought it was too good ;)

First in pencil:



I then traced the pencil, transferred it to Bristol and inked it with a Pigma Micron 01:



I then scanned the inked image and colored it digitally:



There are a good deal of things that need work on this, but there are enough good moments to keep me going. More drapery to follow.

Listening to while posting: "B&S" by The Bobby Hughes Experience

Animal Week 2011 # 4: Chimpanzee

I used a random number generator to figure out which page and image to use and here he is, one of humanity's closest relatives! All I can think of is a radio piece I once heard about Alpha Males in primates. The conventional wisdom is the alpha, being the toughest, passes his genes onto the females. However, many times, he's too busy defending his territory and the lesser males... er... get the jump on him, so to speak.

There you go. The hardest part of this was trying to work cross-hatch shadows on the bare skin into the hair without the shadows looking like hair. Not sure if it was a total success.



Now, I'm off to finish another drawing I'm working on. The pencils look good, let's see if I can't screw up the inks.

See you... in the Future!!!

Listening to while posting: "Love Song" by Ofra Haza (on Soma FM's Secret Agent station)

Animal Week 2011 # 3: Seals

Arjan chose #5 in his comments. The fifth animal in the book is the seal and DANG that was hard. I won't claim complete failure, but it was nowhere near a success. Today's animal has two because I didn't like the first one and tried another.

It was a lot of time invested int these two little drawings. The initial drawing of the basic shapes went well and I was happy. I'll tell you, though, rendering a mottled, gradiated, subtly shaded and wet furred animal in murky water is difficult (for me at least). The white whiskers were also a pain. That's what I get for letting a Netherlander choose an animal for me ;)



Listening to while posting: "Never Gonna Happen" by Lily Allen

Animal Week 2011 # 1: The Hippopotamus

I'm the kind of person that needs goals, tangible goals to learn. So, in an effort to improve my drawing skills, particularly in inking and shading, every day this week, I'm doing an animal from Akira Satoh and Kyoko Toda's fantastic book Animal Faces. It's out of print but, a great resource for drawing.

Each drawing will be approximately 3.5" x 3.5", drawn in red pencil and inked with a Pigma Micron. I'll post the image immediately after I finish it take any criticisms you'll dish out and any suggestions you might have; my only stipulation is that you point out one thing that does work.

There are twenty-four animals in the book (with eighteen different portraits) so, if anyone wants to throw out a number between 1 and 24 that isn't 13, that will be the animal for tomorrow.

Here's today's, the Hippopotamus:



listening to while posting: "Tokyo, I'm on My Way" by Puffy AmiYumi (I can't get enough of this song for some reason. It drives Sweet Enemy nuts and I think I'll go upstairs and sing the refrain to her right now!)

hey, bud.

One of the things I'm going to try to do now is practice drawing at least a half-hour to an hour ever day. By practice, I mean drawing something that gives me trouble, not something for fun. Yesterday, it was Faces That Don't Look At Least A Little Bit Like Me. Most of mine do. So, I grabbed the flyer for the UVM Lane Series I had hanging around and drew the most interesting face I could find. Then, I tried to extrapolate on that face and draw it in another aspect. I think this worked pretty well. But, it was a nice clean headshot to work with. I think I might make him the villain in the new thing AndreZero and I are working on. If AndreZero agrees...



Right now, with all of my 'free time', I'm working on getting advertisers and stuff for our 24HCD. I've also written a Welcome Comic featuring the Strongman from the poster. It's working pretty well. Six 5.5" x 8.5" pages. Hope they like it!

Listening to while posting: "Meatball" by Atom and His Package