All posts tagged Art

Drawrch #8

Martin · 3 years

My eighth illustration for Drawrch is back to cartoons. I wanted to do something simpler than last night, but it still ended up taking a fair amount of time to finish because I spent so much time brainstorming.

I really like the colors for this one. They came out just how I wanted as the vision came together.

And yeah, I know drawing someone in a VR headset is kind of a cop out for a month-long drawing challenge about faces, but hey, it's my project. I'll do it how I wanna!

Time-lapse below, as always.

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Drawrch #7

Martin · 3 years

My seventh illustration for Drawrch, and the last for the first week - whew!

I started working on this one with the intent to just scribble some lines to layer values and get it done quick, but then I got caught up in painting it and next thing I knew, I'd been working for over an hour. It's not the best portrait I've ever done, but for not having done a portrait in probably 20+ years (and the first one I've done in Procreate) I don't think it's too bad.

The proportions are a little off... the eyes are too big and the mouth is too small. It was good practice, anyway.

I used varying sizes of the Parapuna brush for everything but the underlying sketch. The image was a random image from SketchDaily.

Time-lapse below!

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Drawrch #6

Martin · 3 years

This one's meant to be something like the Monopoly Guy (Rich Uncle Pennybags) - getting the last laugh as you land on his expensive hotel-laden property.

I originally wanted to do something a little more realistic and a bit more experimental, but as the day wore on and I slowly got through all the other things I needed to get done, I ended up settling on something a little more in my comfort zone.

The tapered Baskerville brush is back, and I'm a lot more comfortable with it. I ended up working around some of the weird chunkiness that can happen with shorter strokes by just planning it out better, and really only had to worry about it in the teeth.

Time-lapse of this drawing getting made below!

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Drawrch #5

Martin · 3 years

This is my fifth illustration for Drawrch - almost done with the first week, whew!

For this one, I used a tapered pen, but instead of the Baskerville pen I used one called the Studio Pen. I didn't really like how thick it got with so little pressure, but it wasn't too hard to control.

I also utilized Procreate's ability to do bilateral symmetry, so filling out the two sides of the drawing was pretty easy, and I only had to add a few asymmetrical details here and there, mostly at the end.

I'm not super happy with the colors now that I see the image on my computer, but that's what I get for working on my iPad in the dark, I guess. It looks kinda like a character portrait from a C-list video game.

Anyway, if you want to see how this one was made, here's the video:

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Drawrch #4

Martin · 3 years

My fourth illustration for Drawrch!

I've always loved the art style of playing cards, and so I thought I'd do a less conventional view of one of the queens - having a beer!

I draw this while looking at a playing card, but the profile view is entirely my own. It's not perfect, but the proportions are decent. I went with tapered lines again too, though it's a bit less obvious than the last drawing. It actually caused a few issues with the geometry of the bottle and the finer details on the bottle's neck label - I will have to find (or make) a brush to use that can handle those types of details without breaking too hard from the sharp edges of the main brush.

Here's how this one came together:

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Drawrch #3

Martin · 3 years

For my third Drawrch illustration, I wanted to try something a little different from my normal cartoons.

Usually, I don't draw with tapered lines. I love it when artists use them, but I haven't practiced it much myself, so I have a hard time controlling the width of the lines as I draw. Concentrating on regulating the pen pressure isn't something that comes naturally to me; when I work with physical materials, I almost always use a gel ink pen, and I press uniformly hard.

My lack of experience with tapered lines also means that I often have to spend a lot of time thinking about where lines should begin/end, where they should taper off, where I can get away with splitting broad strokes in two, etc.

So I thought I'd give myself a small challenge today and draw with tapered lines. I used a brush called Baskerville, which creates very sharp edges. It also has some extreme stroke smoothing that took a little getting used to.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and I'm looking forward to spending more time with this brush. It may become a part of my standard brushes.

As always, here's a time-lapse of my progress creating this illustration:

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Drawrch #2

Martin · 3 years

I am not going to do many drawings with this level of detail for Drawrch! But I have to do one every now and then just for practice.

I'm not particularly good at rendering lifelike faces, and I draw this one without a reference. It's not meant to have realistic proportions, but it is meant to look more real than, say, my first Drawrch illustration.

Here's the time-lapse of this one, which is probably one of the longest time-lapses I've made in Procreate so far!

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Drawrch Begins!

Martin · 3 years

I'm going to try to do a new art project this month, which I've dubbed "Drawrch".

I think I'm going to try to draw a new face each day? No set style or anything, it's all just for fun.

Anyway, here's the first one - and a time-lapse of its creation, of course!

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Standing on the Precipice

Martin · 3 years

I've been kind of wanting to do another month-long art project for a while, but every time I start one it immediately begins feeling like a burden every day.

It's weird, because when I'm actually doing the work, I'm in the creative zone and genuinely enjoying myself. But the brainstorming leading up to each piece - especially on days that are busy - can give me low-level anxiety.

So March begins tomorrow and I might just start a new project. We'll see how I'm feeling then, I guess!

Digital Art & NFT’s

Martin · 3 years

A few months ago I heard about NFT's, and for a week or so, I thought the idea was quite exciting. As an artist, being able to sell my work digitally, to a worldwide audience, and also get a residual cut of subsequent sales sounded great. It still does. But since then, I've learned a lot more about NFT's, and now I just have concerns.

I've seen way too many other artists have their art stolen, minted as NFT's, and sold without their knowledge or consent. There's no authority to watch over who mints what, and minting outfits don't seem interested in policing users eager to help them make a quick buck. Naturally, there's no authority over the underlying cryptocurrency used to buy these illicit NFT's as well, so fraud runs rampant and there doesn't seem to be much anyone can (or will) do about it.

There's also the matter of the ever increasing amounts of energy being wasted to crunch cryptocurrency mining and transactions. Aside from the blatant theft of other people's work, it's one of the worst aspects of all this.

It's a shame because NFT's could be a big deal for digital art in the future. But the problems currently outweighs the benefits, in my opinion - so much so that I'm starting to worry a tiny bit about posting my art online, as I'm afraid it will end up being ripped off and sold without my knowledge.

I've already seen images that I've created and posted appear in random places online, and I can't imagine that situation will improve when there's a buck to be made.

It seems like every other week there's a hot new set of NFT avatars generated by some programmer artist's algorithm, made to have common configurations and rare ones, selling for thousands or millions of dollars.

My question is, if you want to have a rare, unique avatar created by an actual artist, why not just do the old-fashioned thing and commission it?Y

You'll probably pay a lot less - and you won't be participating in the dumpster fire that is the current NFT market.