Hey there!
Must’ve been two or three weeks since I’m back on this platform. I was cleaning up the spider webs and dusted my shelves that were left here since my temporary departure. Though aside from that, I also have resurrected this profile finally. I’m giving out my artworks from this void of time in near isolation with the dedication they deserve, I don’t want to throw them all out in one pile, but slowly release them all. That’s the reason why there’s still more coming! Yes, I have around 4 more things to publish here that will soon follow, one at least, by the end of the day.
I’m sitting here, chewing on a gum, drinking grape juice and listening to jazz while I’m writing this reflection and I was looking forward to it. I understand the worth of those journals when looking at the long term; you get to know yourself once more when looking in the distance, you come to understand what you did and maybe even realize some mistakes… and I’m not counting the typos into that. I guess I shouldn’t try to tease some projects of the future without explicitly telling what it is so I can empathise months or even years later what it was when it never came to exist in the first place!
So from now on, I will tell everything I know about any upcoming artworks in planning. The only exception to that are birthday presents and surprise artworks that will definitely happen.
This half of a month was definitely encouraging for me. I know, to properly revive this channel, I had to socialize, and not to just wait for things to come at me. And in that way I definitely feel more associated with my profile. I am trying to reach out to many artists here on this platform and try to support them and leave suggestive and constructive feedback and thank for even the slightest support I get from artists with the little time I have… (but not for all the llamas… I just don’t have the time for that, sorry, I love all of them though
But now for the art… I certainly do not want to say things about every deviation I published, but a few picks that stand out for me the most…
Artwork
Starting off with my first ever portrait:
Redemption? Not really. It’s Pathetic Desperation
The result of a course by the wonderful Hardy Fowler, a great teacher and definitely a great enrichment to my life as a hobbyist. I liked painting this portrait, not only was I able to draw the roughness of the Character that is Max Payne, I also really like how I get the facial structures right, the eyes and lips are my favourite, I don’t even know how I did it that way to be honest
. I will definitely continue with portraits since they tell as much about a character as a full body piece without the face. This and since I love painting eyes.
Samurai
This one is actually a really old one from January I believe. It was not really fun though… I tried to paint a character on as few layers as possible; three layers in total, being: Background, Sketch, and Paint, the result; gawkiness and painfully precise brushwork, slowing me down way too much. I realized, you have all those tools in your program, so you might as well use them… and master them.
Smoking Cat
My favourite grumpy cat, Jasper was honoured with this awesome portrait. I am very proud of this piece and I hope I’m not sounding too self-praising here. i know this headshot has got its flaws, the skin is not pretty real looking and I could’ve spent more time on the hood. But overall this one was just fun. I even loved doing those smokey effects and – of course – the eyes. I had in mind that this could be a tattoo template, even the linework on its own could’ve sufficed for that. I will work more on jasper’s world and create stories for it in my head, he’s one of my favourites after all.
Creature Project: The Charger
This is the best example that preplanning and playfulness in execution pays off with a wonderful result. Planning the right physique for a creature, imagining the environment it is in, what it hunts and what enemies it has to face are things I never come to think of before in my design sessions. And little did I know, was it essential for the creature to actually feel alive.. Only then comes the paint, the colour, the lighting, the textures and accents. A great showcase, that I – again – can thank Hardy fowler for providing a course for.
Upcoming Work & Planning
As for now, I will still upload the rest of artworks after I add some little polishing to them. In the meantime I have finished the Kulu Ya Ku character sheet I posted a simplified monochome version a few days ago.
An artwork currently in the making is based off of Kaviir – a character that will soon show up here. I’m not too confident about this piece as for the moment, I felt I rushed the inking phase and now have to painfully clear those mistakes I made… never rush things, you will always regret it in some way.
Also, I found out that a quite old character design sheet (Mable the moth) has drawn attention from
who highly encouraged me to actually finish her design in a decent way and frankly, why not? I have a set piece already in my mind, the pose won’t be too complicated and her character is yet to be established anyway. So that’s on my to do list if I won’t be packed with things interrupting my drawing process… (ehem, school, ehem)
Shoutout
Here I’ll present you the awesome artists I found in the past month, who I think deserve to be checked out by my watchers.
I stumbled upon cloister’s tremendous work when searching for other creature designs after I uploaded my Charger. And I must say, this artist definitely knows what he’s doing! I never have seen anything like the creatures he creates. All of them seem alive, all of them have their role you can tell simply by looking at them and all of them are so nicely rendered, they become truly alive on the canvas… a really, really experienced artist!
All of my shoutout artists usually have one thing in common, they have a unique style and Nad is no exception to that. She is a cartoonist with a very good sense of colour which enables her to create lovely sceneries that feel alive and lived in! But the most stunning thing about her art has to be her dedication to detail… usually cartoony and realistic does not fit well together, but here, it rocks! I can’t say it enough, it’s just awesome!
Here’s someone who shares my love for hyenas since Shenzi, Banzai and Ed from the Lion King have appeared on the big screen. banzai captures the madness you would expect from a desert dwelling scavenger with no lack in sense of appearance and showcase. Definitely check her out if you share your interest in hyenas with me! You won’t be disappointed…
There’s always someone who pushes my ‘fuck it, make me feel down!’ button. Matt here, he hammers it. Whereas I love the wonderful colours in Nad’s paintings above, I always get drawn to the dark, the mystical, the abstract and sometimes horrifying things out there. Matt Barley, as a true master of linework, manages to melt his ink in a painting, letting it float in mid air and make things look deadly alive.
And that’s it for this month’s reflection…
See you at the end of Mai,
Souvie