Illustration Friday: Wheel

So what do you think of my goofy little sketch for this week's Illustration Friday:Wheel?

This one was done on my iPad very quickly. This time I was able to use a stylus that I had gotten instead of my finger which was much more comfortable. I got the cheapest stylus out there so the nib is too thick for my liking but it will have to do for now.

Run, Hamy, run! 

Illustration Friday: Edge

Here's my quick sketch for this week's Illustration Friday: Edge.

This is a digital drawing but it's a bit different in that I started it on my new iPad with the Procreate program. It's pretty cool that I can create a drawing just about anywhere and then instantly send it to my computer's Photoshop program. Ahh technology.

It will take some getting used to though because now I will have to learn how to draw really well with just my finger instead of a stylus. The bird drawing below is my very first iPad sketch. I'm pretty excited at all the possibilities with my new toy but I've been feeling the urge to reconnect with some old-fashioned paint and paper. Stay tuned.

Illustration Friday: Snow

Why hello there! Christmas is almost here and there is still so much to do! Here's much submission for today's Illustration Friday subject: Snow. I created this little guy as a Christmas card and as a silkscreened ornament. He's cute don't you think?

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and I will see online soon. : )

FK IT DUDE

This weekend is going to be a busy one. Lots goin' on. If you didn't have anything planned you might want to see me on the Langley Studio Art tour. While I man my table and chat visitors I will be preparing for Christmas. There's not much time left you know.

If you wanted to start this weekend right I suggest you go see FK IT DUDE which will be showing at the Hot Art Wet City Pop-up Gallery on 752 E. Broadway. This multi-artist show will be an homage show to the cult classic "The Big Lebowski". I don't know about you but I love that movie and when I saw the call for submissions I jumped at the chance to create something. 

I did a mixed media piece on cradled board that let me use a little digital painting and a little encaustic work. My piece references one of my favourite characters, "Jesus Quintana", and his love of a shiny bowling ball. Although John Turturro's part is quite small in the movie  it's just fantastic.What's your favourite character?

Digital and encaustic

I polished the encaustic so it was really shiny.

Illustration Friday: Burst

"She couldn't hold it in anymore and burst into sorrowful tears"

A quick sketch for this week's Illustration Friday: Burst

Illustration Friday: Secret

"Michael wondered why he never noticed the secret little door in the old tree before."


Here's another digital painting I tried for this week's Illustration Friday: Secret. Any thoughts?
I use Photoshop Elements and it doesn't have the pen tool and a bunch of other functions I would like to use. Have you ever used it?

Illustration Friday: Hurry!

This week's submission to Illustration Friday's: Hurry!

I think doing these weekly posts have been just great for experimenting and learning how to illustrate on the computer. I'm still trying to find that style to call my own though as there are so many techniques I would like to try. I think my watercolor and my reductive work is the strongest but I would love to hear your thoughts. 

Supergirl three ways

For today's post I thought I'd show you some techniques I've been working on. I'm still trying to teach myself how to paint in Photoshop and the top image is of my "Supergirl" painted digitally in oil with a brush that I created myself. I also carved out the image tonally first like I do my reductive monotypes in printmaking. So I started with a deep brown canvas layer and gradually wiped it away to create the highlights and tones. 

I'm pretty happy with how painterly I was able to keep it and figuring how to create my tones makes me feel more confident about moving to digital painting.

The image below is traditional watercolor on paper and it was very fun and fast for me to do. I keep reminding myself that there was a time when I wasn't confident with watercolor either and that it took time before I found a technique that worked for me.

This version below is a digital watercolor and I still don't think I've found a method that I like just yet but it's slowly getting better.  What do you think? Which one seems the strongest? Which one looks like a "Lori" piece? I want to hear what you think.

Illustration Friday: Sight

Here's my submission for Illustration Friday: Sight. Maybe I should save it for when the topic Teeth comes up.

The weekend got away from me and I didn't get a chance to color this one. I did this drawing in my sketchbook and scanned it into Photoshop. I want to try and colorize the sketch and add layers to it. I didn't understand before why illustrators seem to draw and then scan their images versus drawing right into a program with a tablet. I figured you would be very restricted to the scanner size but now I know....it's faster and much more comfortable. I find drawing with the tablet has a lot of advantages but it's still very different and I tend to get cramping in my hand and arm. I've tried holding the pen in various ways but it's still not as natural as a real pencil on paper.

Check back and see what I end up doing for the color.

*After post of color version*

Illustration Friday: Kernel

Here's my submission for today's Illustration Friday: Kernel

"Charlie realized that he might have put too many corn kernels in his cheeks and thought they might burst from his mouth."

The goal for this digital painting was to see how fast I could do it. I'm still practicing with Photoshop and I'm trying my hardest to find a way to use the program so it works for me. I did this little guy in an hour. I think I'm getting better, slowly but surely.

Any thoughts?

Taking myself to school.... Photoshop that is

 I've been pretty proud of myself lately for finally submitting to the Illustration Friday weekly topics. I had put it off for so long because I didn't think a week was going to be long enough to come up with an idea and execute a finished piece. I finally convinced myself that each  piece didn't have to be publish worthy and that I could even just submit a sketch. After I eased up the pressure I've been able to create some images faster than I thought I could. You can find my Illustration Friday collection started on my Flickr here.

Besides actually just attempting the weekly topics, I've been trying to keep my submissions as digital pieces so that I can finally learn Photoshop. I'm a bit too old to have learned the program in school so everything I know on it is self taught with the help of a few online tutorials. I really want to paint in watercolor and oils digitally but the program is really too huge for me to have figured out how to do that. It's been pretty frustrating and for last weeks topic: vocal, I decided to try the image in digital watercolor and in traditional watercolor to see how each one translates. What do you think? What are the differences? Which one looks more fresh?

I'm going to keep trying to figure digital painting out with the help of Lynda.com courses but so far it still doesn't give the same level of satisfaction that a brush to paper does.