Pencil Lines

Agh, sorry it’s been a bit of a while since my last post. I suppose school/work has taken up more time than I thought it would!

I’ve been doing a few fun things here and there throughout the last couple of weeks. Been doing school stuff, which is fun, been doing some silly web-building/designing projects at home wherin I make a complete fool of myself and multiple others for the glory of another (you’ll hear about that shortly!), been helping a friend move, and watching numerous silly Disney shorts (mostly Donald Duck because he’s mah faaavee) on Youtube around also trying to keep up with my blogroll on Google Reader and devART to boot.

But really, it’s mostly school and working on the weekends that’s been taking up all of my time. I get, if I’m lucky, one day a week to myself that doesn’t involve either of the two, and usually I try to spend it socializing, which leaves little room for anything else!

But, I have been getting a couple little art-y things done, so I thought I’d share them. First, the ones that are a part of that website project I was hinting at…

So I was chatting a couple weeks ago with Losmios, aka. Mia and one silly comment lead to another until I was in the midst of coding up an ultra silly fan page for her (Beware!! That link is poison for the eyes!). I ended up working on it for about three or four days straight over my weekend until I was literally being kept awake at night due to crazy coding dreams. I decided to take a bit of a break from it, which I am still in just because I haven’t found the chance to get back to it. I hope everyone that wanted to contribute hasn’t grown bored of it too in my absence…

Anyway, other than doing the website and all the coding and everything I also wanted to contribute some Mia fan art, so I sketched up a couple of things. Here’s the first:

This intellectual piece of work was sketched directly in Photoshop CS and coloured in about an hour and a half. Because I’m all slow and out of practice with Photoshop stuff, hehe! Also, I was having issues with the pressure sensitivity on my tablet, which I still have to go and fix…

Anyway, yes, that was one of my oh-so awesome tributes to Mia. Here’s the second, which is in decidedly worse taste:

Oh joy. The quality is overwhelming me.

This one was done with markers and watercolour. Yes. and I deliberately tried to make it look bad, though I’m sure I could have done a worse job if I tried. I did too good a job of staying in the lines. It’s a hard habit to break!!

Yes. So those were done last week. Since then I haven’t done much by way of drawing, usually just the odd scribble here and there that I don’t like and don’t really want to share. =) But today the awe-inspiring Michael Sporn uploaded some original Bambi storyboards and model sheets and I just about died from happiness. I have previously attempted to draw Bambi on a few occasions in the past, but never have I had such beautiful references. So tonight I sat down and tried my hand at drawing baby Bambi.

These sketches are a mixture of direct reference to get the form figured out, and attempting my own poses. I’m sure you can tell which are which.

I could use more practice, and even now I’m feeling an urge to get back to it. I just wish I had more creativity in terms of poses to draw from! I’m seeing even now that the urge to make his legs shorter/more proportional in real world terms is great, I really have to fight that and stick to the proportions on the model sheet. Also, I tend to make him too stiff; I need to loosen up, though that’s been the trend in my artwork for a while. Always too stiff! Hehe!

Sketching Bambi is a delight, though. Not only is he outrageously cute, but he also has those beautiful, long, thin legs that I absolutely adore. The rhythm, angles and negative spaces made by thin and spindly legs has always been like crack to me, which I love to explore. Hmm, maybe I should get back to sketching. One page is hardly enough!

They were drawn with blue pencil, by the way, but I tinted them in Photoshop in order to make them more visible. I’ll have to experiment with drawing him in other media. Maybe a darker, softer lead might be fun to try… or even brush pen when I get a little more confidant!

Anyway, go explore Michael Sporn’s splog; he has tags for his stuff, here’s the one for his model sheets. They make me squee with joy! Oh, if only I could draw like the Disney animators of old…

Right, I’m off to sketch. =) Turrah!

It’s my sister’s birthday soon. I bought her a scarf I’ve been meaning to mail out to her, but didn’t think that was enough of a present, so I pulled out my stash of Super Sculpy and got to work on a little present for her.

I need a lot of work with sculpting, hehe! I took a ceramics class in grade nine of highschool and loved it, but haven’t done any since; well, except for this little guy who I sculpted earlier this year.

I figure it would be easier if I had a proper space to use to sculpt (right now I’ve been doing it on my bed on top of a piece of cardboard), if I actually used tinfoil and armatures (haven’t tried that yet!), and if I had the proper tools (I used an old 3H pencil to detail this one, since I had nothing else pointy enough to use). Tools are expensive though, and I don’t really have the time (or, like I said, the space!) to give sculpting a real go.

Instead, I just have time for sculpting little things like this:

Sorry for any poor quality, I’m experimenting with The Gimp on my laptop. Still not that proficient. =)

Anyway, it went through a couple permutations. I started it thinking I’d just make something extremely small and simple, something more lego-esque, made out of simple shapes. But the more I fooled around the more detailed it got until it was too big to support itself on its own legs and had to be lying down instead. That’s when I decided to make it cute and sleeping. I don’t know, maybe my sister will use it as a paper weight!

I think it turned out really cute, despite the dirtiness of the clay by the end of everything (thanks to that freaking pencil I used to detail, especially around the face). I wish I had some kind of paint, any kind, to cover it up, but all I have are watercolours, and somehow I doubt those will work.

I hope it actually looks like the pony is sleeping and not, you know, dead. It was a bit of a fear as I was sculpting it, and only half way through it did look a little morbid.

Right, just a quick update. I have some sketches lying around, I just haven’t gotten around to scanning them. Soon!