The birth of the "Head of Uuhlj"

I was at the laundromat recently without anything to do while waiting for my laundry to do it's thing when suddenly I pulled out my sketchbook and started doodling. As usual, I started out sketching a bunch of not so great drawings that looked really bad, but after enough tries I eventually came up with a sketch I liked and would later wind up painting...

"Head of Uuhlj"

Jim Pavelec's new demon book "The Golden Ones" was finally distributed, and since I donated enough to his Kickstarter for it I got a copy. It's a really amazing book full of some very impacting, and creepy artwork. It made me really want to sit down and take another stab at designing my own demon, and that's what I had in mind when I did the following sketch...

1. Initial Drawing

1. A tight drawing leads to a tight painting, so it's good to really put the effort into nailing the drawing. Looking back, there are a few things I could have described better at this stage, but overall I was happy with what I came up with.

2. Flat colors, hints of form

2. Here, I laid in some flat colors to help me separate the creature from the background. I knew I wanted this painting to have strong shadows, with a feel of emerging from the darkness, so I filled a layer with a dark purple to unify the colors and to give me a good base from which to build up my lighting.

3.

3. At this point, I'm starting to figure out all of my forms and I'm trying to introduce some color variety so it has more life to it. Trying not to get too detailed.

4.

4. Here, I introduce a spotlighting effect. This is where I decided that I would leave the lower half in shadow and illuminate the top half. I'm really thinking about the mood I want to get from this piece. I also hint at the lighting off camera with the red in the lower left and the glow in the upper right.

5.

5. Pushing the lighting, trying to describe the tumorous forms on his face, borrowing a trick I saw in Donato's Mechanic tutorial video. I also decided this needed to exist in an environment, so I came up with the idea to add a staircase to help lead the eye up and around the piece, and I echoed the staircase in the background to give the piece some depth.

6.

6. Since my environment is mostly blue/purple and along with the help from Stephen Najarian who gave me a paint-over critique, I came to the conclusion that red just wasn't working for a back-light, it just didn't make sense in the environment, so I in some bluish bounced lighting into the shadows, to make it feel more like it was a part of the setting, plus it gives a good hot/cold dynamic between my highlights and shadows, also added some colorful glow to the steps. I originally called this piece DONE when I reached this point...

7. Final

7. ...but then I got another really helpful paint-over critique from Sam Flegal, who encouraged me to punch up the colors and contrast in my values. I also got a lot of feedback saying that he should be more wet and slobbery. So I took another couple passes at the piece and I'm really glad I did because I think this new version has a lot more impact than before.

I mentioned on my Facebook that I had something special in store for this guy, but I'm leaving that for the next blog post, so come back Friday and check it out. Thanks for stopping by!

From the Sketchbook #5: Shining Force

Here are some sketches I've done recently of some characters from Shining Force.

Marionette

Domingo

Darksol

3rd week of studies

I'm really happy with a lot of the stuff in this batch, particularly 15, 16, and 17. These studies are turning out to be a lot of fun and I feel like my work is already improving from them. I'm going to give a warning ahead of time, the start of the next batch was a little rough due to the holidays and some traveling, and some aren't so much studies as much as me staying productive. I'm still making the effort though so that's the most important thing to me. Anyways, enjoy the new batch!

From the Sketchbook #4

It feels like it's been a while since I've drawn anything on paper. I didn't know what to work on so I decided to dig up an old piece I did of this same character of mine and give it a make-over.

I'm going to fully paint this guy and I hope to post him up sometime in the near-future. Along with it I'm going to show the past image I was referencing from to show the difference, and I'm even going to show the very first time I drew the character, about 4 years ago. It should be a fun post so keep an eye out for it. Until next time!

From the Sketchbook #3

Been so busy working on finals lately that I haven't done any sketching in a while. I really need to get back in the habit of doing so. Can't lose sight of the fact I still have to practice. Here are some recent sketches I managed to make time to do...

 

I've got a lot of ideas for what pieces I want to do in the future but I'm having a little bit of difficulty deciding which ones to stick with at the moment. I may be leaning towards a specific idea, but you'll find out what I've got in store in soon enough.

Reviving old ideas...FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!

Sometimes I get really pumped up to make some new artwork, only to find that once I sit down to create, I have no inspiration. No cool ideas. Nothing. It's sad but it's true that sometimes I can't think of anything good to draw, and this can interfere with the quality my sketching. Thankfully, over the years I've built up a nice storage of ideas in my sketchbooks that I can play around with and tweak to make even better. When I look through my old sketchbooks I always get surprised. I get surprised at how bad I used to draw and how much better I am now in comparison. And I also get surprised at how much I still love some of my past ideas that I never got around to fleshing out. I've decided that in effort to build up my portfolios a bit more I'm going to dig up some old ideas from my sketchbooks and try to pump some life into them. Here are a couple of sketches I'm considering working out:

So next time you're looking for something to draw, take a look at some of your old sketches. You might remember a great idea that you forgot about :)

From the Sketchbook #2

Here's a new addition to my sketchbook. I was on a long car ride into the mountains of upstate PA and I decided to entertain myself with some drawing, but being in a moving car presented some...challenges. Since I knew it would be very difficult to keep a steady hands at all times, I decided to embrace the wobbling around aspect and decided to draw something that looked mutated so I wouldn't have to worry about getting the shapes and proportions just right. I really like what I came up with and I plan on adding to it in Photoshop, and maybe painting it up entirely.

I know it's kind of weird seeing such a creepy drawing from me right after the adorable AWWWW-fest bunny painting from the last post, but I say, what's wrong with enjoying both? This drawing also gives a bit of a hint as to what the next Inspiration Spotlight will be in a couple days. It's definitely a strong source of inspiration for this drawing, and to many of you who know me, it won't be a surprise at all

From the Sketchbook #1

I've been doing so much digital work lately, I've been wondering if my traditional chops were going to crap or not. Well to be honest, for a while I had a really hard time drawing ANYTHING in very well in pencil and it began to depress me. It gave me mixed feelings about doing so much digital art recently. I love watching my digital skills get better and better but I always want to be able to maintain my traditional skills as well, they always come in handy. After a long sketching funk. I've finally done some stuff I'm happy to share!

Here's the first page of my brand new sketchbook. A lot of people always say the first page is the scariest but I've never understood that too much. I like to think of it more as a fresh start, there are tons of pages are ready to be filled and I just want to jump right in!

The top left piece was somewhat inspired by a creature found in the first Silent Hill game. It's not exact, and I wasn't looking at any reference at the time, but I was definitely thinking about Silent Hill when I starting drawing that guy.

For the bottom drawing I just started drawing the eye, with no real direction in my mind at the time. As I drew I decided I wanted the eye to be sitting inside of a really saggy eyelid. Then I thought about how this guy would blink, so I added a very scrunched upper-lid that folds back like a hood, I then tried adding interesting shapes connected to the bottom of it and it started looking like a worm or a caterpillar so I just went with that idea. I curved the body around to add some interest, then decided to hint at an environment behind him with the plants. I'm really happy with this one and I plan on taking it to finish as a creature design piece for my fantasy portfolio.

For the top right drawing, honestly it was just something I drew to fill more of the page. I don't really know what it is, just a cute little face I guess.

As you can probably tell by the "#1" in the title, I plan to make more posts showing my sketches in the future, I'm really gonna try and push myself to draw with a pencil more. Stay tuned for more posts From the Sketchbook.