Nov 21, 2013
Soldiers sure carry a lot of gear. And cammo. I doodled this young guy on the streetcar and painted it in PS when I got home. It's really, really small! Only about 2"x3". I only had a .1 pen on me. More subway sketches on the way!
Showing posts with label Illustration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Illustration. Show all posts
Sketching at the Royal Agricultural Fair
Nov 18, 2013
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It's November and that means Royal Fair time! I look forward to this event every year to spend time drawing animals up close that we don't often see in the big city. This time I shared my pirogi-fueled drawing adventure with 2 great artists - my old friend, Philip Street, and my new friend, Lynn Dana Wilton. We even bumped into the talented Rachel Kahn doing some of her fabulous watercolors. As always, the Royal was a fun place to draw and a great learning experience. Looking forward to next November.
Toons on Tap: "The Wolfman" -- I won a book!
October 23, 2013
This was an amazing Hallowe'en-themed session with two great models - a fortune teller and of course the Wolfman. The poses told the sad story of the Wolfman and the makeup and costumes gave us lots of opportunity to practice expressions and drapery.... ugh, drapery! :)
All 3 of my pencils died, taking my sharpener down with them, leaving me with nothing but my old nemesis: the evil brush pen....I have been dabbling in brush pen for years only to have produced but 1 decent piece of art. I didn't do too badly this time but my hats go off to people who've mastered this difficult medium. |
| click to enlarge |
At the end a big surprise! In a room of such talented artists one of my drawings was chosen to win the evening's prize! Wow!
The prize was this fantastic hardcover book "Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos". I got to talk to special effects makeup artist Mark Boyer about Gogos - apparently he is the Norman Rockwell of monster movie art. If you're as big a fan of old school monster movies as I am you would really appreciate this book.
Thanks, Toons on Tap!
Collector card for Rocket5's Phantom PI game
October 22, 2013
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| "Make Famke Dance" card for Rocket5's Phantom PI game |
Toons on Tap: "Game of Thrones"
September 15, 2013
All Dahl'd Up Art Show at the Gladstone Hotel
June 17, 2013
What a great show at the Gladstone! I was so honoured to be asked to put a piece in the art show put together by my producer Tammy Semen. So much wonderful art! The theme was Roald Dahl who happens to have written my favorite children's book ever, "James and the Giant Peach". I picked my favorite scene which is when the gang arrives in NYC just before they land atop the Empire State Building. I thought it would be simple but, well 6 characters and a down-shot of a city turned out to be a fine challenge. Lots of fun! :)Telus Panda Production Notes
June 13, 2013
Here are a few of the doodles I did at Topix to better understand pandas. I gathered a ton of reference photos and footage before I started but Topix turned out to have the largest collection of reference material I've ever seen. I made quick photo collages as desktop wallpaper and drew all the time - on my breaks, while waiting for scenes to load, etc. I took extensive director notes because I don't trust my own memory and I wanted to do the best possible job of interpreting the director's ideas. I have otter notes too!
Here are a few of the doodles I did at Topix to better understand pandas. I gathered a ton of reference photos and footage before I started but Topix turned out to have the largest collection of reference material I've ever seen. I made quick photo collages as desktop wallpaper and drew all the time - on my breaks, while waiting for scenes to load, etc. I took extensive director notes because I don't trust my own memory and I wanted to do the best possible job of interpreting the director's ideas. I have otter notes too! 
Costa Rica Sketchbook
June 12 2013
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| Sunset, Manuel Antonio |
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| Rainstorm, Corcovado |
The first one of our family I painted back at the hotel as we had all left our cameras behind to make it easier to swim in the gigantic Pacific Ocean. The sunset looks ridiculously exaggerated with cotton-candy clouds but I assure you it's understated compared to the true scenery which had an unbelievably grand stretch of pink sky reflected in the water, and facing it, a rainbow! I kid you not.
The Osa Peninsula is incredibly remote - it takes hours by muddy, partially-submerged road to get there, an area where the trees are filled with flashes of red wings and screeching sounds of wild Macaws and jaguars still prowl the rain forests like ghosts. The ocean is much too wild for swimming - aside from sharks and rip tides, waves as tall as houses crash onto the beach and giant storm clouds threaten with rolling thunder and flashes of rain. The awesome sight is just impossible to capture on a tiny postcard but picture the dark clouds pulling rain like a curtain across the sky over the pummeling surf. Amazing!
All Dahl'd Up Art Show at the Gladstone Hotel
June 6, 2013
This week I'm super excited to have a piece up in the "All Dahl'd Up" show at Toronto's Gladstone Hotel. The artwork is all created by animation industry pros from around the city. This year's theme is Roald Dahl which should bring in many favorite stories from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to my favorite kids book, James and the Giant Peach. Stay tuned - I'll post my artwork when the show comes down!
Toons On Tap: Film Noir
Feb 28, 2013
Oh, my! It's been a while since I posted anything. I've been busy focusing on my still top-secret job at TopixVFX - hopefully I'll be able to show some work soon. In the meantime, I've been doing lots of analogue sketching to take a break from long hours in Maya.This week I had a chance to attend the 1st anniversary of Toons On Tap costumed gesture drawing. This week's theme: Film Noir with models extraordinaire Sion Irwin-Childs and Charlie Quinn. The evening was fantastic though my drawings.. welllll...a work in progress! I have some new priority items on my 'learn to draw' list:
1) men's hats
2) women's shoes
3) guns
Wow, I have zero practice at drawing weapons! I suppose I just don't think about them at all, which I think is a good thing. :D But it would probably be a good idea to draw a few just to understand better how to draw them. (BTW - the dude at the bottom is holding an old-timey phone, not a gun!).
Thanks, Toons On Tap for another fun evening of great models, great tunes, and super fun drawing.
Capuchin Cappuccino
October 24, 2012
Painted this capuchin with a cappuccino in Photoshop this week -- get it?
hehe.. ya, that's pretty much how my brain works.
I had to do some research to render that cappuccino foam. It was delicious.
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| Capuchin Cappuccino - click to enlarge |
Toons on Tap: Cowboy session
May 2, 2012
Toronto has a fantastic new life drawing venue! Acid Animation presents:
Toons on Tap costumed gesture drawing sponsored by Labyrinth bookstore. The amazing models are dressed up in the week's entertaining theme, the music is great, it's licensed, it's all-ages, and it's jammed with talented local artists. What could be better?
I started off with my iPad using Zen Brush - what a cool app! It's a bit slow for fast gestures like these but I could always try drawing smaller. I switched over to grease pencil to draw a bit bigger.
What a fun evening! I can't wait to see what their next theme will be.
Digital Painting on my Ipad2: Black-headed Nightingale Thrush
March 19, 2012
I was looking for a new subject to test out Autodesk's much-praised SketchBook Pro iPad App.
I spotted this adorable bird in a photo by Michael Woodruff. Michael's bird photos are incredible. This one was taken at the Quebrada Gonzalez Station, Braulio Carillo NP, Costa Rica in 2008.
I wanted to caricature this little bird's earnest singing pose, his bright orange accents and his perky 'haircut'. I took a few liberties with the proportions but the end result is a bit more faithful to the photo than anticipated.
I'd really like to get faster so I can produce more of these little paintings. Oh, and next time I have to remember to work in a higher resolution! This one's only 600 px wide. Fine for a sketch, but not much good for print. Next time!
iPad sketch: Bird Toon
March 2, 2012
Our backyard bird feeder is my equivalent of TV with my morning coffee. The birds are always entertaining as they squabble over key positions. It's high time I drew some of the feisty little guys.
This is a little iPad sketch I did using the beautiful Zen Brush app. It has a very simple tool set: choose your paper, choose from 3 inks, and that's it. If you make a mistake, you can start again, or use the 1 undo! The line simulates thick & thin brush work even without real pressure sensitivity. I used a Nomad Brush Stylus, which adds to the illusion of real ink wash.
Mouse Pilot Painting finally done!
A while back I took a terrifyingly informative Digital Painting course with the intimidatingly talented young Bobby Chiu at Schoolism.com. I learned all sorts of tools and tricks that made Photoshop seem much more powerful than it already did. Are you sensing my fear yet? haha.. I was eager to try out some of the techniques I learned from Bobby on a drawing of my own, but that ended up taking quite a lot longer than expected!
This little 'Mouse Pilot' is a modest beginning but hopefully I'll do many more now that I've gotten the ball rolling.
Here's a bit of the back story: My first line of attack is gathering reference. I always gather way more reference than I probably need, but it's enjoyable for me and I really find it useful. For this one I needed ceilings and fans, pilots and paper airplanes, and mice - lots and lots of mice. I especially wanted to try showing a bit of subsurface scattering on the ears. I chose a hybrid of cartoony and realistic posing and rendering. I experimented with keeping the left ear turned away as it should be and decided it looked funnier this way, even though it's technically incorrect. I started this in Brushes on my iPhone, moved the PSD to Sketchbook Pro on my PC to use the lovely drawing tools, then switched to Photoshop to paint it.
Ipad sketching with Auryn Ink and my new Nomad Brush
Jan 3, 2012
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| Holiday set-up with poinsettias :D |
For Christmas I got a new stylus called the Nomad Brush. I think it's pretty awesome as it has a real bristle brush made of conductive metal threads. I've had a lot of fun with Auryn Ink. It's a very easy to learn if you have watercolour painting experience, which I do. If you don't you may find it frustrating because it's quite realistic! ONE undo - which is one more than you get in real painting, hehe... but there's an actual 'drying' timer that acts like an hourglass showing you how dry your paint is. Once that ink is dry, the undo no longer works...
One more problem: no-eye dropper! So, if you're used to being able to sample a tone you will have to just eyeball it & recreate it. Not the best for workflow.
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| 1st sketch in Auryn Ink. Nice paint physics and blending. |
This is my very first stab at using this program -- it's just a quick sketch but I can tell you I was thrilled with the way the colours flowed and dried like real paint. It was lots of fun and I recommend it highly.
Check out my video demo of this fast, intuitive and inexpensive app.
Check out my video demo of this fast, intuitive and inexpensive app.
Digital Painting on my Ipad2: Bunny
Still crazy about ArtStudio for Ipad and my Logiix Stylus Pro stylus. I'm game to try other programs but these tools are really working for me right now.
iPad sketches
October 22, 2011
I'm growing more comfortable these days with doodling on my iPad. It's a bit different than the cushy Cintiq + Photoshop tools I'm used to, though many of the skills are transferable. The lack of actual pressure-sensitivity means that line width variation is entirely fake -- you can choose a line width along with taper variation in advance, but on the fly the only way to achieve a thick-and-thin line is by trickery -- either draw fat and peel it back with an eraser or build up the line gradually. Alternatively to using the eraser, you can eye-drop a BG tone to feather into the line, but that means losing all the lovely layers you might want to change later. It's much nicer having the BG separate from the drawing layer(s) so you can move them around later as I've done here, or change the BG tone.One key to making field sketches easier, digital or traditional, is to learn to draw faster.. I find it hard not to overwork my drawings when there are so many tools available. I'm hoping to do many, many more pages of doodles and get looser with my digital drawings.
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