Hair Apparent

I'm enamored of big masses of black curls the way some of the younger guys are wearing it. It's really sexy in a big hair kinda way, and I'm trying to channel it to draw in a very current way. I have been for a while, and today I'm not sure I was successful getting the look I wanted, but I do have drawing I like a lot.

Here's the linework for the entire drawing, which I liked as a full painting (which I'm still refining, as rough and immediate as the rendering is) but looks remarkably different as a line sketch. His body was influences by Kaylan Morgan a bit, whose long lean lines are pretty streamlined. I never thought I'd ever go for the twink look, but I guess there's a first time for everything. His long lean frame also reminds me of my friend Andrea...

Side Eye

I was trying to experiment more with that brush that seemed so revolutionary yesterday, but I couldn't get anything I really liked out of it, as opposed to how I felt about it barely 24 hours ago. But what I did get, is a nice new drawing of a face not from any references! I'm sure I'll be repairing it later when I've had the time walk away from it and return objectively, although I think the hidden eye is already a candidate for reconstruction...

New Brushes

I didn't want to do anything serious tonight so I experimented with brushes I barely use (as in, I may have tried them the first time I got them). The Nagel Series 40 watercolor brushes seems mostly dry, but the number 8 brush seems to have a sort of splattery spread that also affects the colors so that they sort of  blend. I need to remember to use this more and maybe add it to my regular watercolor arsenal (which, believe it or not, really has only 2-3 brushes that I use for all my digital watercolor work).

This was based on a photo of a Polish model, Pawel Polvent, who has an unbelievably beautiful body with so much definition yet still so fluid and not stiff at all.

Joey and His Friend Heron

Joey and his friend Heron took refuge by the pool, far, far away from their wretched hotel room and its voracious bedbugs.

Sweater Weather

A friend asked me to photograph him in a risque way, so I finally just got him to do the sweater-reveal pose. This is a sketch of the pic I selected from the lot.

About A Boy 10

More work on my Roman-nosed model...progress seems slow, yes, but I'm going at this as I feel. Sometimes working for the sake of working just won't be worth it in the end.

Holiday Scribblings

Playing with a card idea for the coming holiday. I've actually finished it, but I'm wondering whether to release it sooner or when I've actually used it for gifting...?

About A Boy 9

Continuing the new painted direction. I like painting like this - you don't really need to think. Or rather, I don't. I'm just doing what comes naturally... as opposed to the watercolors, where I have to figure out every step of the way that it has to look like natural watercolors. This just happens, and it's fun, and expressive, and natural to me. And I'm glad I'm decided to do this style again.

Decembeard

I got an idea for a holiday beard drawing, and it's just too easy to draw. I feel like I should try harder in creating a naive style, but why force it if this is the style that emerges so immediately? It's not quite mine, but it IS mine when I try to draw this way... This just came way too easily.

About A Boy 8

This is what I hate about portraiture - the agony of redoing a sketch over and over, because one thing isn't right that leads to a domino effect, and pretty soon what you thought was right is all wrong. I feel like I'm starting all over. I don't understand how some people  get a likeness in their initial line sketch, then fill it in with shading to perfection. My shading changes everything (or rather, reveals how bad my original line sketch was). Ugh. So I scrapped the line drawing and decided to paint. What I can't delineate in lines, I can hopefully accomplish with color.

Gigli 2

I noticed how the rough sketch I did yesterday, in prep for a cleaner line rendering, didn't seem so bad as is. I'm wondering now if I should take it into the direction I had originally intended. So today, instead of cleaning it up, I just played with the sketchiness. I rather like it this way. I should draw more imaginary faces, as opposed to copying real ones.

Gigli

Last year I bought a vintage Romeo Gigli coat and it's almost exactly what I was looking for: a clean, simple oversized shape... but at a fraction of the cost of a new, runway coat (which wasn't even available. You should have seen me hunting down the Neil Barrett versions.). Plus it's vintage - no one else will have it! This is going into my Stylist series of drawings.

Sorbet Course

I need to not do much before jumping into my next project - I really don't seem to have the creative energy for another one of my series just yet. I need to veg. So I decided to just doodle.

About A Boy 7

After finishing all the other sketches I had on my pipeline, I figured it was time to revist my drawing for Andrea, but time often allows you to see past mistakes you could see before, so I had to retool quite a bit. Still working on it, and it's a bit late for yesterday, but here's the current state of it.

Where IS Heron?

I've been very remiss on updating Heron's exploits on Facebook. But I seem to have been more on a fashion binge. Will have to rectify that sitch!

Siki Im AW 2013

So here's the final tableau of the the various element sketches I put together for this particular runway show.

Visit my Behance page for the individual final elements as well as closeups.

Digital Wet

One of my Photoshop trucks is using the blend brush along with a wet edge watercolor brush to create fields of wet-on-wet effect watercolors. This composition stymied me when I started putting the figures together, but it needed a background to tie some of them together.

Bunneh

Sometimes you don't want to draw at all, but the requirements of this blog are that I do, and at least 1 per day (even if they don't always go up on that day). So have a bunny. He's feeling pink and free...

New Framework

I needed to redo that framework of this portrait. It wasn't working for the final layout with the other elements, which is part of the problem of composing pieces digitally after each individual item is rendered. If I were doing this normally, I would paint everything all together in one layout.

Caper 6

Those legs needed redoing. There was something a bit too loose in the rendering, which should be loose but resolute. I dunno if that makes sense. I often repeat the strokes of a drawing until I get the right feel in a stroke. That's the good thing about digital art - you can retool it endlessly (also a bad thing when you want to finish).

Caper 5

I went and visited a fellow artist at his open studio event yesterday, and we talked about our processes. It was inspiring to see all his work, as he is one of my favorite fellow illustrators in the community I'm part of here in New York. This encouraged me to continue with my fashion illustration and see if (hopefully) develop, in terms of both my technique and my career. 

This piece isn't quite done, but it's pretty close. Inspired by my friend's own artwork, I decided to try and make more 'random' watercolor effects on this piece to simulate a more wet-on-wet kind of bleed and diffusion. The legs are still not as right as I'd like them, so that might be a reason to tinker.

Storm Reimagined, Final

So, this is what I've devised as a full costume sheet for my costume design. It shows enough of the details. Some of the said details seem superfluous to me, like all the style lines on the black outfit which I prefer just clean without seams, but it's more modern to do it that way. But I've included the action shot that has no visible seams for the most part, as when drawing it, it's such a pain to do the seams. Plus I wanted to show how the cape attaches and forms from the side of her breasts towards the back. right now it comes form her skirt, and there was something awkward about how her cape skirt is so damn long, it looks like she's wearing a wedding train and might trip all over it.

Storm Reimagined, Details 4

I finally have a croquis I like that I can work off of. And because of that, I feel better about how the style lines on this outfit go, and can design the back properly. I probably shouldn't go crazy on it but I do need to make sure it's what I want to put out there.

Storm Reimagined, Details 3

I rather like the body on this. Costume details not done yet, though.

Caper 4

After working so much on refining the likeness, I ended up with a head far too big for the body (although to be honest, the proportions are still very much fashion proportions so it's a tall body). Still I feel I made good progress on the portrait, so now it's on to the outfit, which I totally redid. Coloring comes next!

Caper 3

Working hard on this face... wish I had familiarized myself with him more. Maybe I'll have a look online and see if what I'm painting holds up.

Storm Reimagined, Details 2

Still trying to figure out the construction of this design. Haven't settled on something plausible yet.

Max's Siki Exit, 2

I think this might be done. I just went at it after I had posted, and I'll let it sit for a night before I rework it, if I do.

Max's Siki Exit

Max takes on a runway persona when he does his exits. He told he he really gets into the vibe of a show. I wanted to bring back a bit of the sketchy vibe I did for last season with this by adding a vignette of his full figure.

Caper 2

At the back of my mind, using Photoshop tricks like nudging or cutting and pasting linework seems like cheating, but I have to remind myself that I'm a digital artist, and these are the digital tools at my disposal. I'm still using my own hand for lines and painting.

With this portrait, for instance, I'm so unfamiliar with the model Noma's features (this is my first time to draw him) that even with a photo reference I'm way off the likeness and you can see gaps in the lines from where I cut and nudged things. If I were using natural media, I'd have to erase the whole thing and redraw, which always fills me with fear I will erase what's right about a drawing. The forgiving quality of digital work is what draws me to it, as overworked media aren't a problem. Overwrought work, however, is still a potential issue...

Decomax 8

Now that I've accomplished the portrait with the makeup, I now want to finish up the piece, or at least the fashion illustration, and there was something really nice about just leaving it an outline without the coloring layer turned on after I'd added a few more lines to delineate the pose.

Lucho, From Memory

My friend Robbie asked me who my favorite male models were at the moment, and I forgot to mention Argentinean Lucho Jacob. He's got that swarthy Frenchman thing down, with his unruly mop of hair cascading over his forehead.I'd love to see him in more things. I looked him up on the net, got so entranced again with his photos, that I decided to draw him without referncing any particular shot. It feels like him to me.

Storm Reimagined, Details

Now to suss out the construction for this design. While its made for a comicbook character for print use, it should definitely be made to be seen on a page. But I also like teh idea of inserting a bit of reality into how the construction would work, because that sort of stuff is what makes clothing so fun for me: how it's constructed for the body to look and fall a particular way. Although I'm suddenly not too keen on the shoe part of the outfit - while I imagine it to be part of the legging, it looks too much like a summer sandal from the side...