All posts tagged Art

Drawrch #3

 Martin · 4 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 · 4 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 · 4 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 · 4 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!

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Digital Art & NFT’s

 Martin · 4 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.

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Having A Disco Ball

 Martin · 4 years

I've been spending most of my game time the last week working on Disco Elysium - which has opened up and turned into a much bigger game than I expected it to be.

On top of all the crazy, interesting, and funny stuff this game has to offer, it's also quite beautiful. Each area is painted with a smattering of colors, in a rough stroke that fits nicely with the grittiness of the game's world.

There's a fair amount of washed out browns and grays in the main areas, but they are accented by dashes of color here and there that help make the more important points of interest stand out.

I've been admiring these massive paintings as I play. It's just really nice.

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Inktober #31 – Risk

 Martin · 4 years

This is my final illustration for Inktober 2021! This one was for the prompt "risk", although I think the real title ought to be "I hate drawing hands".

If you watch the time-lapse below, you'll see a couple of misfires in my sketches before I finally settle on what to draw.

First, I thought I'd draw someone playing Risk (the board game). I thought it would be cool to see the thrown dice tumbling toward the viewer and the board below. After getting started on the sketch though, I just didn't like the way it was looking.

Next, I thought I'd draw a baby reaching up and trying to stand. I don't really like drawing babies though, because the proportions are difficult to get right, so I scrapped that one quickly.

Finally, I settled on the sketch for the finished drawing, but not before considering another idea my wife had about a creature taking off their human mask, revealing a werewolf, vampire, or some other monster underneath (it's Halloween today, after all). I liked that idea a lot, but I didn't feel like doing something so complicated, so I pushed ahead with the hands.

The idea behind this is the risk one takes whenever they express their true feelings towards someone else. It makes me think of my wife - we've been together much longer than when we got married, and it always amazes me how a relationship like that starts with such simple but powerfully charged gestures.

Anyway - there's a time-lapse of this drawing's creation below. If you've been following along with me as I make these each day, I appreciate it, and hope you've been enjoying them!

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Inktober #30 – Slither

 Martin · 4 years

This is my thirtieth illustration for Inktober 2021, for the prompt "slither".

When I started making this one, I wanted to add a bit more texture to the walls and the tentacle, but as I added each layer of light/shadow, I started to embrace the simplicity of it. In the end, just a little bit of airbrushing was all it needed.

Just one more to go and this year's Inktober project is officially complete! Time-lapse below:

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Inktober #28 – Crispy

 Martin · 4 years

Here's my twenty-eighth illustration for Inktober 2021, for the prompt "crispy".

Being a fan of Rice Krispie Treats, my mind immediately gravitated toward drawing a batch of those for this prompt. It seemed boring to draw a bunch of lumpy squares though, so instead I dipped into what seems like another one of my trends for these types of projects, and drew a bucket of fried chicken.

I made a batch of Rice Krispie Treats tonight for dessert, and they were yummy.

Time-lapse below!

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