The Dragon's Intruder

A personal piece that I've been working on for a while. I had fun with it, and I'm pleased to have it finished. Btw, just in case you didn't know, I love dragons. I'll be uploading it to my website soon @ www.dibbzilla.webs.com along with another piece I worked on a few months ago as a character/creature design.

Dragons and Sketching

I've been trying to continue with doing some gesture figure drawing every day. Even if its only 1 drawing, just to still do it every day. One day I pushed myself to do 50 of them, but on average I strive for about 10-20 per day. Now I'm using them as a warm-up exercise before jumping into the more enjoyable sketching/drawing/painting. I know a bunch of professional illustrators do something similar and I can already see why. It keeps the brain on track with the human figure, as well as gives your artistic mind a wake up call to say "Hey! We're going to draw now! Wake-up!"

Here's what I've got to show for.

Gesture Drawing

Here are some Gesture drawings I've been doing from some photos. Some of these sketches you'll see are of the same pose but circling around the figure. Those photos are from a book that I got from the bookstore called 'Art Models 5: Life Nude Photos for the Visual Arts" ... meaning that there have been 4 versions before it of course. It helps a lot to understand the human figure from all angles.

SKETCHING!

Hello everyone. With all the family members visiting New York State, it was difficult to get any artwork done. Which was fine because family is important. But now that things are moving back along I've had time to draw. One of my co-workers is interested in my drawing a portrait of her daughter, so I decided to do a test sketch of a black and white pencil rendering to show her an example of what I could do. Seeing as I don't have anything like a black and white portrait in my portfolio. I have to say that this test portrait was interesting in a good way. Its been a while since I've done a portrait let alone a pencil rendering.

Here's what I've come up with.


btw, I think I need a new printer/scanner. My scan program didn't work and I needed to find/download a new free program. Anybody know of any decent (and free) scan programs that I could download? Thanks.

Family

My uncle is very sick right now and hopefully getting better, but things aren't looking the greatest for him. With family from out of state that has been visiting New York for the past few days, and most staying for a few more days to come, things have been busy to say the least. Illustration seems to have been put on hold for a little while longer. But I'm still persistent.

Check back later for updates.

Life

Just wanted to let everyone thats watching out there know that I've been going through some difficult life changes. So its been a struggle, as life tends to be, to get things back on track and working towards illustration again. I have some ideas coming up, and things that need to be finished. Hopefully I'll arrive at finishing up my already started projects.

See you soon, and happy drawing!

Headless Horseman!

HALLOWEEN!!!! It is time for Halloween, so I thought, with the idea from Maria, that I would paint something creepy for the upcoming holiday. So one day while watching the movie on tv of Sleepy Hollow, starring Johnny Depp, I knew I wanted to illustrate the Headless Horseman. I started painting it and sort of put on hold the other projects that I had in progress. Reorganized my to-do list, and this is the progress so far. Hopefully I'll finish it in the next few days. Any critiquing is welcomed.

Help Please!

Ok, so the above picture is a detail of the Rusty Panda that I've been working on for a while now. First off, painting Rust is a challenge, let alone a rusted form that wraps around like a tube (aka legs). Anyway, my challenge right now that I'm stuck on/confused at is the glowing teal colored path on the leg. What I'm trying to convey is that the path would be like a valley. It would be like a ditch for the teal path to follow. Meaning the center is deeper than the edges. But, I want the center deepness to be glowing. Aaand thats my predicament. I'm afraid that with a center that is the highlight it makes it look like a rounded out object, like a hose sitting on top of the skin. And I don't want that. Please, anyone who has insight on how to create a ditch type path, with a glowing center.... I need advice.

Thank you!

Panda Progress

As I've started to come to a more solid looking Panda, I wanted to sketch out ideas for the little girl. It took a while to understand the features of a young girl, seeing as I haven't drawn one before. So I gathered a lot of photo reference and then started to draw from them. A few turned out ok. Here's what I have for the concept sketch of the little girl for now. Any critiquing advice is welcome.


As for the Panda, he's coming along quite well. There's a lot to him so I'm just now starting to zone in and start working on some of the details. It's nice to see his muzzle and parts of his face finally taking the form. Still quite a bit of work ahead of me.

Wolf... Now with Claws!

Ok, so I had some advice from a friend, Jamie Douglas, to add some claws onto this beast. So here it is again, with added claw feature, not sold separately. Should start doing sketches for the main character, the little girl of the story fairly soon.

Ice wolf and Panda

I tried painting a wolf, and I'm not sure how it happened, but I think he turned out looking a bit cold. Nah, I meant to make him an ice wolf. Its a fictional species of wolves that I thought up that live up in the mountains. There's more back story behind them. Its part of a story that I'm creating for a bigger final illustration to eventually be painted later this year.


This next drawing is another character that will interact with the ice wolf in the final painting, in some way or another. It's my idea of a living Rusting Panda bear. I've started painting this in photoshop. Will wait to post the final painting of it tho. After the panda I will need to sketch out some ideas for a little girl who the panda will protect.

Publicity!

Sending out lots of advertising postcards and envelopes with resume and Job Inquiry letters to companies. It has been hectic gathering all the supplies and information to get it all done. But now its time to mail them all out! ... tomorrow :P

More sketches and illustrations to come.

Dragon logo!

So I decided to put a proper logo that I felt suited me onto my stationary sets for illustration business. And I thought, what do I love that will never fade that I could illustrate? A Dragon! So I drew up a few designs (after thinking about it for days), and finally came up with this after painting it in photoshop (while tiny bugs were crawling on me, yuck!).

Developments

Hi. I have some sketches that I've been working on. They'll eventually develop into some fully painted images. Working on some character/creature creations. The wolf is already started painting that one in photoshop. More on the way to come.

-Alex

Graduation Cleaning

After the trip I made to Bali its been hard to get back on my artistic wheels, but I have been sketching some. The ideas are starting to flow again. I've mostly been taking the time to clean up my room, and organizing a place to actually have a mini studio. I needed to create a proper place to draw, let alone paint. Once a drawing and painting area are established, ideas should start to develop much more readily.

Bali

Hello everyone. Just for an update, I have been on holiday in Bali, Indonesia for the past month. The place was great, had a wonderful time! But now that I've taken a break from all the chaos that is illustration (and schooling) I'm ready to get back on the horse. Probably going to start small and work from there, so don't be too upset if the first few posts are just of texture samples or just simple sketches. Need to get back into my groove.

Sincerely,
Alex

Faery Inspired

The last image that I did for college classes. A last illustration that I decided to do for my personal focus class. Just a faery sitting on a bench. Went with the six wings because i find it to be more intriguing some times.

Graphic novel assignment.

4 pages of a graphic novel for my Character illustration class. Possibly the only assignment I had fun with. Yet put less amount of time into in ratio to the size.

copyright 2010, and all that.

Assassin Starting

So for our newest project for Digital mixed media, it was sort of a vague assignment that dealt with something to do with us and how we create illustration. Mine was simply stated that i create illustration of a fictional and imaginative nature. So for my illustration i wanted to do a portrait of an assassin. Which i found at first to be a bit difficult considering the limited amount of information being told in a portrait. Here's what I've come up with for a rough sketch and a color comp. I'm really liking it so far. Would almost say forget the photo ref, but I want to push the best lighting that I can get as well as textures for clothing.

I'm looking forward to the final. It's gonna be great!

Growth Monster done!

The growth monster is finally completed. I changed the face on the kid. The nose and cheeks weren't working before. The nose is much better now I feel. Am still trying to transition into painting more subtle shades. A more realistic approach instead of the graphic harsh shadows and harsh direct lighting that we've been told to do from freshman school year. This is the part of the progress.

Landscape Ahoy!

This landscape piece incorporating a figure is, for class, completed. But for personal tastes, it still has a little ways to go before its done.

Landscape with a dryad.

P.s.- Thank you Katie Anderson for posing.

Character Scenery

My scenery background for our Character illustration class. Its of a space rock on another planet.

Corbetts Glen for Digital Mixed

For digital mixed media we went to Corbetts Glen, nice place, and were supposed to draw a landscape from life. Well, I took a bunch of pictures as well. From those images we're supposed to create an illustration out of it including at least one figure or animal that should be taken photos of at a different time to try and match photos and lighting settings and then put them together. Here is the picture I'm working with (have cropped it from the full photo) and then the sketch that I'm working with so far. Photo shoot for the figure should be taken care today. I'm going to be placing in a female Dryad into the settings. Hopefully it will turn out good.

Star Maiden update

Updates on the Star Maiden I'm doing for a personal piece with my Portfolio Prep class. Changed a bit since the the rough sketch, but thats because it needed rearranging. Final sketch and color composition.

Wizard and apprentice

Here's what I'm currently calling the final product (for now). Hope you like it, Chad.

Secondary characters

This is the main character (currently just posting the final sketch) along with the line up of the secondary characters. The main character Sydra, her husband (both aliens who visit earth to harvest resources but don't), the little kid (yet to be named), and a new alien race bent on taking over earth.

Now I need to put them together with height lines. They were supposed to be 3/4 views... but I'm not too worried about it. It's already done before i found out.

Terry Pratchett fake book cover

This is an assignment for a class I'm taking, Digital Mixed Media. We're supposed to make a book cover for a fake up-coming book by our favorite author. I chose Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series. I've decided to do it on a Wizard and his young apprentice.

The process. I started in acrylic paint mostly using just browns to develop a ROUGH layout of forms and shapes. Then i took it into photoshop and started building upon it. Trying to still retain the actual acrylic painting (mixed media) I've duplicated the paint and placed it on top of the digital but on a very low opacity.

The last few progressions I've blocked in some clothing and started adding highlights and shadows. very simple so far.