Acheulean Beatboard

Piece from almost a year ago. Posted on the Instagram account back then; did a couple slight revisions the meanwhile, mostly having to do with just balancing the faces and head shapes surprisingly enough. (I can see why most artists avoid doing the downward-angled head at a slight turn from center. I think though that this was drawn before I had a more solid undersketch system down, or of establishing the feature distances on a character's face.)

Beta Euthynus, reworked illustration

A reworked piece that was originally from... I'll say 2015, because why not. Reworked it again last November from scratch, and then reworked the character on the right just now. Redid the facial expression on both drawings entirely, reworked the bottom right pose a little. The original from several months back is on the Instagram account somewhere, for anyone wanting to dig through my old drawings to make the comparison and laugh. (Hell, the original Original is probably on the Blogspot account here somewhere.)

Beta Euthynus sketches illustrations and WIPs

Because Mr. Chris Palmer has really appealing shorthands for character faces.

Beta Euthynus Chimera Duo

Two characters that have gotten the most drawing mileage from me this past year. Skipped the greytone stage and just hit the colors as I would 2-tone, adjusting opacity on the layer as needed. Along with a host of other drawings, this one's gotten a few reworkings; but I need to make a point of just saying "~Fin~"and throwing it out there after a reasonable time instead of after months or years. Personal habits needs to overlap with professional.

(And, the Viking pic from last week. Reworked older bamboo mat painting from several years ago, revisions done in Photoshop. Not entirely happy with it, but when am I ever going to be, amirite.)

Beta Euthynus 5, plus sketches

Tone studies are killing me. Should have probably picked an easier environment to render other than the bridge of a spaceship. Part of the reason I'm doing these is to get the mind geared towards thinking about the lighting and environment when coming up with a composition; that and to try to vary from shot to shot the amount of space and distance being used. In short, to get away from close- and medium- and to feel comfortable with long-angle shots to convey the mood and acting. The challenge of having a somewhat detailed environment (which includes lighting) is to not shortchange it and to see it through to the end. Tends to make the work bottom heavy, since rendering the background's probably the last thing I get to before the tone work.

...Some sketches of our character during Happy Hour:

Beta Euthynus 4

Bit more comic panel approach to sell the idea of passage of time.

Beta Euthynus 3, plus sketches

Next installment. This suffered a few retakes, namely the girl's face and the gorgonopsid's general line of action in the chair. Redid the latter as a reverse S shape, which made it a little more pleasing to... well, my eye.

Some sketch pages from several months ago:

Literally the last page in the sketchbook.

Beta Euthynus 2

Second page. Plenty of layers that were toyed with and thrown away in the making of these illustrations.

Beta Euthynus 1

Part of a series of cleaned and toned vignettes during the Halloween season. More to come. (The backlog of illustrations needing color is adding up.)

Color and Tone Studies

(Am finding whenever I do color pieces, any sort of dreams I have afterwards are way more involved and detailed, almost to the point of exhaustion whenever I wake up. Was it Picasso or Van Gogh that was said to have suffered from epilepsy, which in turn is speculated to have contributed to their unusual color palettes and shape choices. If that's an accurate portrayal, I can see the merit in the concept. And how disturbingly prescient Zamyatin was in We.)

Some color and tone studies from these past few weeks. First one's from a story that's been rattling around for awhile; second and third are more Halloween themed that I'll probably color over the next few weeks. Am sure I'll spot mistakes in the meantime, but I partially blame the Hitachino Nest for uninhibiting enough me to post these.

("...uninhibiting enough me..." No occifer, I'm not drunk.)

~ More Storybook and Random Sketches...~

Might as well start off with something that I won't cringe at in a few weeks' time:

And now, the cringe-worthy stuff. An attempt at telling a story. Also, words in the margins, when legible:

No surprise that UFO documentaries were on the playlist while I was drawing these. Still feeling I've got a bit of hit-and-miss with the drawing end of things, esp. the faces. These are cool-out pages from after work, and afterwork usually has an amount of mindless Youtube playing in the background while busting out in the sketchbook; so that may have something to do with it, the distraction and all. I think the trick is to not have anything visual moving in front of you on a monitor, just the audio. Plenty of the Unsolved Mysteries soundtrack and narration that fueled the above, for better or for worse.

Have noticed that I tend to have at least two panels that are fairly close in pose or composition whenever doing these things. Probably the need to do something other than a first pass that's subconsciously nagging at me; "Redraw that again, y'big dummeh!" My subconscious apparently being Redd Foxx. Which would explain the recurring theme of naked ladies.

.............................................

The above from the last sketch book. Didn't upload it for some reason even though I scanned it months ago. Perspective's doing two different things between the Archetype Woman and the background; which is partially on purpose. Probably would need to push her pose a bit more to sell it as an upshot if I were going for something more literal, like a comic panel. As is, I'll settle for it being a lame Klimt/Mucha thing.

 Channeling the spirit of Marina.

Looking at the last sketch page of the Slumberhexen from the last post, I've got some ways to go before I can hit faces consistently. This one feels a bit better.