Happy New Year!!

Here's hoping 2014 is a good year for all of us!

Hair Again Today

I was noting how hair in current fashion reminds me of hair from the 70s (specifically Jacklyn Smith Breck hair) and I was trying to draw it in a way that looked current (but I don't think I succeeded - I think my style of drawing affects it and makes it look old. Anyhow, I was concentrating on drawing so much that I forgot the time and didn't post in time. So I'll have two entries for the end of the year! This is technically for the 30th.

Tristan and his friend Heron

Tristan and his friend Heron had planned to go horseback riding together for months, but Heron was under the impression that there would be two horses.

Hela 2014

Well, almost 2014. I had an idea in the gym while doing cardio, of a slightly updated headdress for Hela, Marvel's Norse goddess of death. But it hasn't gone where I thought it might go as a design, so I might just abandon this.

Julian and his friend Heron

Julian and his friend Heron had planned on a dramatic, wave-swept photo shoot, if only the waves would stop shoving Heron out of frame.

Trench

I love how easily this came about - sometimes a change of materials spurs inspiration. or at least makes for fun sketching.

Gone Missing

I seem to have been more remiss than I thought - I seem to be missing an entry for the 23rd. And here I thought I was caught up with Christmas. Oh well, I hope it jut meant I was too busy enjoying the holidays.

edit: Found it - I actually drew my Christmas wrapping designs based on the few I had done, but I just plum forgot to upload it!

It's a Von Trapp!

We watched The Sound of Music (in its entirety) tonight, Christmas night. I'd never seen the whole thing before, or for that matter, knew the full story! Yes for whatever reason, all I could think about is the meme I saw and posted on Facebook, showing Admiral Ackbar saying "It's a Von Trapp!" Funny how I knew enough for the meme to make me laugh but never saw the original.

Merry Christmas 2013

Got a bit caught up with Fishmas, so I'll have to upload a sketch later. Hope everyone is having a lovely holiday!

edit: Aded my late entry!

Mystery Boxes

I've been wrapping presents but the gift wrap theme I had originally come up with is not inspiring enough for me to continue, so now I'm stuck with some gifts wrapped in kraft paper but without a direction. Hmm.

Falling Asleep At My Desk

My friend Erwin and I went out for dinner at a nice restaurant with good reviews, and we were underwhelmed, to the point that we fled, opting out of dessert. Andwe were still hungry, so we went out for ramen... and now I can't keep my eyes open!  I definitely ate too much - fell asleep even just waiting for this blog post page to open!

Merry Fishmas, Part 5

I'm running out of edible sea creatures to feature.

Merry Fishmas, Part 4

Not as funy as the others, so maybe if I come up with a better one tomorrow I'll replace it come Christmas... er, Fishmas.

Merry Fishmas, Part 3

It's become a mini meme. I can't seem to stop!

Merry Fishmas, Part Deux

So this happened, too.

Merry Fishmas

My dear friend Rainer, who is cooking Christmas dinner for us, has decided on a seafood theme and is calling it Merry Fishmas. I decided to make a somewhat frightening visual to go with it.

Oversized Overcoat Overboard

I'm obsessed with finding an oversized winter coat with just the right silhouette. I really shouldn't be looking since I have no cash, but it doesn't stop me from wondering if there's the right deal out there to justify more debt!

Retro Reboot

I last worked on it in 2012 but since then I've upped my digital watercolor techniques quite a bit, not to mention my initial lines in 'pencil' in Photoshop. My "About A Boy" series was supposed to delve back into my older PS techniques, but even that was smoothened out a lot by my use of the mixer brush. So I may have to reboot this drawing completely and start from scratch? Who knows?

Hattie

I did a little sketch in a note I sent in a letter, and decided to take a pic of it before sending it off. Sometimes the quickest doodles are the best. That's supposed to be me in a hat I just bought, and the note was to send the check for it.

What Now?

I always get a bit lost when I finish a piece that was an extended effort. And while I'm happy to move on, I'm not sure I'm happy to start something big again just yet.

Leialoha The Duck

My friend Senen and I came across a reference to "Leialoha The Duck" in a Marvel comic or comic magazine, and wondered if it meant Steve Leialoha, who was either an artist or writer in Marvel at the time (we're talking the early 80s). I think there might have been a sketch of a feminine duck, but I'm fuzzy on the details. I don't think either of us ever found out why he would be a duck but it doesn't meant we can't imagine what it might mean.

About A Boy 15

Bored of the progress on this yet? Because I think he's done.

Stormy

Just wanted to doodle, nothing more than that. Well, okay, I wanted some sort of cape statement, but not enough to render it all really well. :)

About A Boy 14

And among other things, I concentrated on his ear today. To the point that I think I did it so well it probably sticks out a bit too much (pun intended). So I may have to tone it down in terms of the whole drawing.

About A Boy 13

I'm really starting to get a bit too granular, but the more I fix, the more there seems to be things that need fixing - I've just spent hours retooling his nose, eyes and lips nonstop, and then fixing and reverting his chekbones. And I think I'm going waaay too clean - I had originally intended this to have chunky colors, but I think I may have been using my watercolors too much and now everything is super smooth!  I blame Photoshop's mixer brush.

About A Boy 12

Starting to get into details like the muscles in his neck. Funny, before I paid any attention to their shapes and forms, these parts were merely areas of shadow with some volume hidden in shade. Now I need to flesh out the muscles (or attempt to at least) while keeping the color character of the shade, which is really quite rich in varied tones.

Ink Doodle

Trying to explore more brushes and see if I can use them for future work. This one turned out better than I expected, and the various brushes I tried did inspire an older 70s style illustration look. I may have to explored these brushes further...

Que Sera

I don't always know what I'm going to draw. In that sense, it's such a crapshoot, it's a wonder I can make anything at all. But putting one line down then another, influences the lines that follow, and pretty soon the drawing takes a life of its own. Like this one - I had no desire to draw this, it just happened. Well, I suppose when I put a line down I think it looks like something, then I make the other lines follow suit, until it looks like something else I might pursue, Then pretty soon, you either have a piece you love, or you wonder, how exactly did I get here?

Chester Coat

One of my Japanese websites featured a coat called the Chester coat, and I just love the styling in these because everything is oversized and relaxed juuuust so. So I sketched one of the ecommerce shots.

About A Boy 11

Reduction and addition. Over, and over, and over, again.  Ah, the portrait painting process. My proportions are always so off, and it's when I start laying in color (or depth, in black and white) that I can tell where miscalculations were made. And boy were there a LOT! So while reconfiguring the features, some of the painting has to be redone (and redone, and redone...). But I worked on this for hours, fixing and retooling, so I think I'm coming up on the home stretch. I should be finished with this soon, I hope.

Hair Apparent 2

I'm kind of in love with my skinny overly tall model boy with the mass of hair. He's like 20, 6'3" and super lean like some of the boys I've been working with. And I think he's done.

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...