The first is a gift for a good friend of mine, TheTazza, of her character Tex. Tazza is a friend of mine in my Fine Arts program, and she is an awesome person as well as a talented artist. This is her belated Christmas present.

It was drawn with nib/dip pens that my sweetie got me for Christmas. I’ve never used nib pens for inking before, so this was a real treat! I have used fountain pens before, but that was mostly playing around with caligraphy. This “dipping” thing was very new to me!

Here was a page of practice scribbles I did with it, trying out some of the dozen or so nibs that Dennis got me, before I started on the picture of Tex:

Tex himself was done with only one nib, and I only very rarely went back over a line with it. It’s amazing the amount of variation in line you can get with a nib pen, especially for someone like me who’s used to technical pens.

Right, onwards!

This is just a little unicorn I sketched back in October at the height of school insanity, just to make sure I still remembered how to sketch. I just liked some of the lines on it.

A weird Alien Dignitary or summat that I sketched a couple of months ago. I thought it looked rather neat. Originally done with blue mechanical pencil, but I tinted it in Photoshop.

This sketch was done over Christmas break at my mum’s place. I was trying to do something productive rather than just sitting around watching TV. I used a photo I found on the Flickr Commons for reference for the dress (it was over 100 years old and in the public domain; I can’t seem to find it again, hehe!). I loved the corset belt thing she was wearing; it looked so cool. I had fun inking her hair. I still need to work on noses, though.

This is a picture of Celes from FFVI that Dennis told me to draw when I was asking for ideas. I had a lot of fun with it, drawing in all the details and trying to get the pose/anatomy right. It’s still not perfect, but it’s better than I’ve done freehand for a while. F pencil, tinted again in Photoshop.

And that’s it! Hope you enjoyed. I hope to get another post up soon showcasing some of the work I did at school last semester; we’ll see how long it takes me to get around to that. Happy New Year!

I was playing around with shapes and trying to make some interesting stereotypical characters from them. They were very small; these guys are only a couple inches high. I really have to do more fooling around with shape and style. I love the results. =)

A nice looking character I sketched one day, then inked. She has the tentative name of “Candice”. I really like this style, putting the emphasis on the nose and the large eyes. I used it once before on a quick character I named “Donny”. The only problem is that I’m not exactly sure how it would work in other views; so far the profile view is the only one I’ve got to work. I did a few sketches in different orientations, but they didn’t work out so well.

I did a quick sketch of the Candice character in a full-body shot, to play around with clothes. Instead, it turned into playing around with body proportions and blue and purple pencil. I also drew another profile shot of a generic head in that same big-nose style to use as a template and just to cement it in my head a little more. I need to draw more cartoony stuff, it’s a lot of fun. =) You can also see in the bottom right-hand corner a picture of a flan, from one of those Final Fantasy games, as the dessert it’s named from.

And last but not least:

A lady I spotted from the window of a bus the other day. I’d like to sketch her again and do her better justice, she had such a wonderful smile. I was planning on working on this sketch a little more than inking it experimentally to see how it turns out. Maybe I’ll still do that!

That’s it for now… just a bunch of sketches from the past couple of months.

In non-art news, I was accepted to college for this Summer, so I’m hoping that hanging around on campus and doing a lot of random sketching like I used to will mean I’ll have more to submit and on a more regular basis. Let’s hope so anyway! I’m so darn excited about it. =)

It got me excited about the characters again. When I started my first attempt at the game I was really drawn towards Penelo’s character. I don’t know, there’s just something about her sincerity that really appeals to me. Her design is pretty neat too. Anyway, I was surprised to see myself pulling out my sketchbook and drawing her, since I really haven’t been drawing lately.

So I spent the rest of the evening drawing her, pulling up reference images on Erl (my laptop, what a godsend!), with sweetie occasionally glancing over and commenting on its progress.

Anyway, before I ramble anymore here’s the picture.

Okay, here’s the rest of the rambling.

It brought back a lot of wonderful memories and feelings of what it used to feel like to draw. A mixture of elation, frustration and productive focus, as well as being able to share it’s inception with someone else. My best friend used to come over when we were in highschool and play Final Fantasy games and I would sit behind her, watch, and draw. I was at my most prolific in those years, and I really enjoyed it, and doing so on Saturday really made me feel in that zone again. That’s something I haven’t felt for a long time.

I took a lot of notice of how I did things this time, because I’ve been having so much trouble with drawing that when it becomes easy I really want to remember why so I might be able to do it again, or more often. I started with a really rough and scribbly sketch of a pose, then I fleshed out the anatomy a teensy bit, then I started sketching in the shapes of the costume. It was when that was worked out that I went in and started cleaning it up, erasing the scribbles and fine tuning the lines and adding details to make it look cleaner. But of course some things, like her face and her hands, I had to erase and re-draw at least a dozen times before I could come up with something I liked. Ah well! Practice practice practice…

But I think what really made it so easy this time was simply that this wasn’t coming from my own head. Whenever I sit down to draw I freeze up, because nothing’s there. Then when I force myself to draw, even random things, it turns out looking like crap because I don’t know what I’m doing. There’s no planning, no forethought, because I simply don’t have any ideas.

But with this picture, all the ideas were taken care of for me. I just had to redraw it. Granted, redraw it in my own pose and from some really annoying references, but the main thing is that I didn’t have to sit there and make up anything. And it made it so much easier, having all that pressure taken off of me. I knew what I was going to draw, and someone had already done all the hard work for me. I was just doing the fun stuff, the drawing.

This amuses me, since a lot of what people find is the most satisfying and fun part of drawing is the creating, the throwing random thoughts and ideas onto the paper and creating something new and exciting that was nowhere else but your own brain up until then. I used to have that too, but it’s gone now, and forcing it doesn’t make it any better. For now, I’m glad that I can at least draw, even if I can’t create.

I’m sure the creativity will return with practice. Everyone says that it’s a muscle that just needs to be flexed. For now, maybe I’ll work more from reference, or do more character drawings from movies or games and see what comes of it. Well, it’s an idea anyway… maybe I should just have my sweetie over for more gaming. I bet that’s the secret!

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EDIT: Right, forgot about this:

I threw some quick colours on there to make the costume stand out a little more. I got the majority of my references from the website Creative Uncut and their Video Game Art Galleries which is an awesome resource for anyone who’s studying game or concept design, or who simply likes games and the art that makes them. There’s a lot of great stuff there.