Summer Brushes 2023 Test

Kyle Webster has released a slew of new brushes for Adobe, and I liked a few so I thought I'd test them out. The one I drew in black looks very digital to me, like something youd see in an iPad drawing out of Procreate, but I can work with it. While the other oil paint-y one is giving me Steven Stipleman vibes!

Stylized Silhouette 2

Still not quite getting it. I think its in the stylization. I feel like these are too cartoony.

Stylized Silhouette

I had an idea to do a man in a black turtleneck and black pants, but in a very styled elongated silhouette and loooong crazy fingers. This isn't quite right but it reminds me of what I was going for so I can work on bringing it up to the original vision.

Pavlovian, Done

I definitely retooled a lot, narrowing the body down, rejiggering the chest, finding a technique to show his bugle in the white tights; and really finally deciding on the hand that was showing. I think this was a previous hand position that I thought wasn't good enough, but after I drew a couple more different versions I reverted back to this, then refined it. Well, not too refined—the look of this piece is piece-y and not completely done done, y'know. Anyhow, it's also DONE. (well, for now, lol)

Pavolvian 8

I found some old porn of retired porn star Donny Wright, and I always liked his body hair which to me was the perfect amount. So I added some here and changed up the hands again (still unfinished), but now I'm thinking I should go back to an older version.

Pavlovian 7

 

Not sure what to do with his hands, so these are options.

Pavlovian 6

I decided to finally finish this guy off, and after 3 years almost, it's interesting to revisit using the Baddass Brush again and work it on this drawing. I changed the face. I have a different handle on faces now than I did in 2020 when I started him, so it's interesting to develop this further.

Creeping 2

I tried to imagine the kid from yesterday but me being me, I started refining the man until he started looking more like one of my ideal model types. Not sure it's an improvement, but I do like the technique I got going on here.

Creeping

I feel like a creeper. When I see people at the gym I find myself observing them to study how to render details. Today's was a kid's hair—he had long curly bangs and I wanted to understand how to render hair like his so it was believable. I don't think he saw me staring and it wasn't sexual, but now one is going to know I;m actually studying his hair patterns. It's like the time a black couple were walking towards me on the sidewalk, and I got intrigued by how the woman's bodice was designed, so I looked at it to try and figure out what the clothing pattern was...and the guy thought was I staring at her boobs and yelled an invective at me.

Big Bow 11

I decided a few weeks back that I was going to abandon the watercolor conceit and render the bow in a goache style.So I've had the file on my radar for a while, and I decided to re-examine it and see how I wanted to finalize it. Lots of things I've learned sicne I started this drawing, that I now wanted to implement on the face of the model. So I did a pass on that, some bits on teh body, and redid the bow. It's a temp finish until i can sort out my references, because I really do want it to look like taffeta.

Anime/Manga style

I LOVE watching anime, and I enjoy reading manga, although I don't collect manga enough to say I'm an otaku that way (although I've read the entire series of Bleach and XXXholic, so I have it in me). So when a friend said an agency wanted someone who could draw manga style, I didn't have anything much to show but whipped these up in the morning. It's not perfect, but for less than an hour in an unfamiliar style? I'm happy with it.

Re-Boss-ing 3

And these faces seemed like a good idea at the time, but I wish I had made them more even! Adjusting now. This guy has an intentionally wide-eyed look—I was trying to ape Nordic looking male models and vary up my faces. Not my fave, but I also like it because it's not my normal face.

Re-Boss-ing 2

When I was doing the series, I had so many figures to do that I would move on to the next as soon as it was okay enough, but in retrospect, the illustrator in me knows I could have done better. So here's me doing it better before posting. Fixing back legs on both, as well as the front arm on the left guy.

Re-Boss-ing

I'm going through a lot of my older work to prep it for uploading into my portfolio. First up, some old Hugo Boss sketches. I decided to go into them and rejigger a few of the things I did wrong, since things live on forever on the internet, right? This one in particular involved an adjust face as well as an elongation of the torso, which looks seamless here so yay me

Lean & Sketchy 2

I decided to leverage the first pose more (although to be honest I drew the back pose first) and see if I can reverse engineer it to be a series of undressing/dreesing up poses.

Jump of Fashion 3

I like this face better but now I'm not sure if I like this entire pose. Hmm, there's something about whether or not this would, as I'm not sure about these arm positions with the legs.

Craig, Live

I finally went out to a life drawing session again after 3 years since the pandemic stopped it all! I went out to draw Craig Donaldson, a model I had 'met' online a few years earlier, but never got to see when he would pose in NY (even during the pandemic). I'm afraid I'm super rusty at it after all these years, and I was slow at doing the stuff I used to be able to do, so most of my sketches in the longer poses are unfinished. Ah well, need to get back into the swing of it!

Jump of Fashion 2

Trying to refine the pose and face of this drawing, but not using any reference so it's trial and error.

Jump of Fashion

I wanted a companion pose to my Leap of Fashion sketch from a few weeks back, and this is the initial positioning sketch.

Lean and Sketchy

I went shopping in Soho and saw a mannequin that was standing straight on both feet, except that it seemed to lean a bit to its side. I thought I'd recreate that pose, but I was also just sketching dynamic poses. So it's a mixed, doodley bag.

Flatness 2

Not sure where I will take this but testing out the flat color fields as silhouette.

(Not So) Sore Neck

The drawing evolved as I added more details, so now the original sore neck title doesn't work. But while I like how the face evolved, I'm not sure I entirely liked it. Does that make sense?

Alien Marbles

I read an article online about how small, spherical metal balls discovered at a meteor crash site might be evidence of alien technology. Or some alien's misplaced marbles, I surmised.

After Atong 6

I finally decided on a Christian Dior Couture blouse from the recent Paris show this past week, and while it's altering my original vision, it appears to be working for me.

Stipleman-ish

I had the great honor to go meet and visit with Steven Stipleman, a legendary WWD fashion illustrator from back in the day, and it was such an overload of style and technique, I was inspired to try and translate his strokes into digital techniques. This was just a quick trial.

Sheer, Wet Briefs

I wondered if I can use my digital ink techniques and render a pair of wet briefs. After a few tries I'm not sure if they look wet or just sheer, or even like >shudder< shiny lurex. Oh well, back to the drawing board. Maybe I need a model to get wet for me?

Flatness

I was thinking that since I have my technique down for the After Atong piece, I wanted to see if I could make a men's version. But I didn't really get very far. The shadow technique for the face is there, although I think I want a different race for the model.

Belgian Companion

I discovered this brush in my lists and I thought I'd try it out. Not really much to it.

After Atong 5

I decided to trot this out and try and finish it for First Friday on my Facebook group, but in doing so I went hunting for a new blouse to put her in, and as a result, I had to figure out her body underneath all the layers. And so here we are.

ASOS Pose 2

I liked the long connecting back line and played down the other marks. This could be a fun minimalist piece.

ASOS Pose

I still find myself perusing ASOS's website because they do a lot of dynamic poses, and this one of a guy stooping a bit with his hands behind his back was interesting and worth doing a sketch of.