the watchmen page 1 bastardized

ok well today i started drawing my picture for this winter break. i laid down some lines just to get everything into place. then i started to get into detail. i sorta went through a depression phase today. i was trying to draw it and it wasn't coming out as good as i wanted it so i started to feel like i will never make it in life. the one thing that i'm good at other than coming up with a billion and a half ideas is drawing and i'm not even that good at that. then i began to overthink and actually believed i would fail at every aspect of life if i don't get myself together. no skill, no career, no fame, no woman and no respect. so to make myself feel better i watched burn after reading, laughed, and went back to the drawing. still gotta work it. the pic is a lil too big for my scanner so i'll either scan it on wednesday when i go to campus to help dittrich or i'll just take a photo of it. oh and this what u see here is just my edit of the first page of the watchmen. i'll stop typing now because i've made yet another wall of text and my dog is resting his head on my leg, crying and begging me to walk him. hope you guys enjoy it!

dippin' dots

so i played around with photoshop elements today. did what i could with it. first i laid down a flat skin tone for the girl in blue. i tried to render the skin but kept failing. even tried opening it up in corel painter essentials but it was more of the same. so i left it to what u see now. i'll still work on it. just need pointers on how to render skin. hint. hint. funny thing happened after i laid down the color. when i made the photograph that i traced her from visible again, since the opacity was so low, she looked like she got a really nice tan. i actually made someone look better. afterwards i tried my hands at several photoshop tutorials. one of which worked. the first one was an attempt at rendering wood. failed. the second one was an attempt at making a starry sky. failed. the third one i took a different route. when looking up tutorials, i looked up ones that were done using photoshop elements rather than cs3 or 4. and that's when i found the tutorial for dots. while looking at some of the more recent covers of the comic book "runaways" i noticed christina strain uses the dots filter quite often. i always wondered how that could be pulled off. so when i saw the tutorial, i jumped at the opportunity. the instructions asked for a photograph so i pulled out one of my female reference pics. after the tutorial, i noticed the pic seemed a little incomplete so i played around with the different blending modes for each layer till i got what u see now. i think it was a good exercise and though i would not likely make another pic like this again, unless it's a practice, i still think the technique can be put towards other things such as what christina strain does. i also thought it was fun and hopefully i can utilize it in something else one of these days. lemme know what ya think!

so i was given access to draw ball 1.

draw ball 2 is left open for the public. but draw ball 1 is for ppl that the moderator thinks is good enough to draw on. so i guess i'm good enough. all i had to do was draw something and if the moderator likes it then i'm good to go. but odd things happened while i was drawing. what i was drawing was the backside of one of my female references. and as i was drawing, i noticed red lines appearing on the right cheek. eventually those red lines went on to form lips. i drew a question mark next to it and the lips were erased. so i get rid of the question mark and continue drawing. things were normal until my background colors disappeared. i wondered if i was allowed to draw on draw ball 1 so i wrote "am i in?" but i didn't get a reply from any moderators. so i kept drawing thinking maybe there was a glitch that got rid of my background. then suddenly a good heap of skin tones disappeared from my figure. i wrote another question thinking it was the moderators but still no reply. so i shut down that window because i gave up on the drawing and tested out draw ball 1. and waddya know i'm allowed to draw on it. but i was so worn out from the other drawing that i didn't have it in me to make another one as good as that one. so i did a really bad line drawing, wrote "meh" and left the site.

shooping around

was just tracing one of my female reference pics. i'll color this. and keep the blue lines. and if the lines on her legs and feet seem extremely thick and questionable, don't worry i'll fix them. i just wanted to quickly get the contour in, as thick as they may be.

oh and i completely forgot how to make custom brushes. i knew it for a while and actually did it before but it suddenly slipped my mind. help me refresh my memory.

stuff

it is really hard to get anything done when i'm constantly being distracted. people always bug me to do things that are completely irrelevent to what i want to do. one day i'll decide to put everything aside and focus on drawing but unfortunately i'll be told to do practically a list of chores that would eventually wear me out and by the end of the day, i'll be struggling to work up the energy to at least pick up a pencil. i think one of my resolutions this year should be to take a stand. that way i wouldn't feel so pressured.

anyways, i think the first two drawings are self explanatory, as bad as the first one is, and the bottom one is a rough draft of my big project. i'll have to move a few things around in the preliminary and final piece. i'm thinking i should color it with either gouache or watercolor or both and then try my hands with digital. before digitally rendering it though, with the traditional medium, i want it to look finished enough to work as a piece of its own. for references, if i can't find stuff online, i'll ask my friends to strike a pose or five. i paid a lot of attention to the composition. i wanted to not only make the piece work with the placement of the objects but also with transitions of color (you can't see the color yet because it's all in my head!!!!!) as well as trying guiding the eyes throughout the page and keeping the viewer's attention inside the piece rather than leading the viewer from one end to another and then showing him or her the way out. or even worse, getting the viewer's attention on one thing and not moving at all. and one worry that i have is the size that i want for the pic and the size of my scanner. when i do more sketches, i'll explain myself some more because not only will you understand what i want better but also, i don't want you to suffer anymore with this wall of text. lemme know your opinions please!

it's been about 5 or 6 days since my last post.

don't worry kids, i'll upload stuff later today. i've just been both busy and lazy. don't get me wrong, i've been drawing. but i really didn't feel like scanning them in. really long process. but later, when i wake up, i'll show u guys my new stuff from the old year and current one.

btw, happy new year guys! hope you all enjoy every waking moment of it. live it up, accomplish your goals and be happy!

i've decided on what i'll do for my big project. it'll take some time to do so i'm really gonna have to focus. i'll upload my preliminary later. it's really rough so don't expect anything dynamic. but i payed a lot of attention to the composition. i'd explain it now but it's really late, i'm tired and it would also be really hard to follow along with if there isn't a picture to view. all i can say is that i sorta borrowed from james jean a little. in terms of composition and methods that is, not subject matter.

i think i might also post some observations that i've made while staring at james jean's work for hours on end. i think what i've encountered is something you'll all find interesting. that is if ya'lls aren't already aware of them.

anyways, again, happy new year, have a good one and i'll come back later. so, later!