Head Study

This one took roughly 5-6 hours! Dunno if it's indicative of how far along a drawing should be after 5-6 hours, but that's how long it took me, haha.  Done with conte on newsprint.

Head study

Did this head study, and I wrote a lengthy write up of it over on my tumblr!

You can see it over there: Art of Andrew Sides Tumblr

Pinup sketch

Been REALLY busy with a big freelance project I can't discuss at the moment, but here's a little something I made during a work hangout on Google.

Also I'm tumblr now!  I'm one of the last dinosaurs to be on blogger, I feel like.  I'll still keep this updated best I can, but I won't lie, it's WAY easier for me to keep tumblr updated.

Here's a link for everybody to follow through to: asidesart.tumblr.com

Frog King

I've been super busy with freelance stuff, which is great! Except it leaves me little time to devote to atelier work or personal projects at the moment (at least for the next month, at least.)  But I've been continuing to experiment with some painting techniques in Photoshop.  Like this Frog King!

It's the same sort of method I've started to use on the Orc portraits, and that I've begun to use in gouache - close knit tiles of value and hue to suggest form turning.  If I need to break up a hard edge I create noise along that edge (as evidenced in the nose area of the frog.)  Doing a noise filter over it all helps blend it a bit further.

Stog the Pitkeeper

Here's the latest finished Orc portrait...Stog the Pitkeeper.  This time around I really utilized a tiling technique to put in swatches of color and value to build it up, I think it came out really successful.

Lunch Doodle

Quick little thing I did during lunch...

Head drawing

About 40ish minutes, conte on newsprint

(click to see a larger version)

Detail shot of the current orc portrait

Detail shot of the in progress Orc Portrait.  I've been experimenting with the tiling technique I've picked up from my studying at Watts Atelier on this one, and I've been liking the results I've gotten.

Color Comps for the next portrait...

Plus the finished inks.

Newsprint drawings from February

Working on stuff that's in no state to be shown yet, so here are some skull studies, and a nice 30 minute head drawing.  I've been experimenting with using a soft mop brush to knock back and soften my tones after I lay them in - it's a good effect, it doesn't blend it and destroy the tones like a blending stump, but it softens everything and unifies it a bit so I can go back in and sharpen focus by drawing over bits and pieces and sharpening the edges.

Luchador!

Done for the Daily Drawing challenge group over on Facebook.  I've been pretty busy so I haven't had a chance to work on these as often as I'd like, but how could I pass up a luchador?

Decided to try out doing some tiling for painting and just letting the values and colors optically blend with each other instead of trying to blend them myself - I'm terrible at that with digital work (don't know how other people pull that off,) but the tiling system works well for me.

All in all it ended up being a neat little exercise and enlightened me to some things I should be mindful of when I do it again in the future.

Gorath Spearsnatcher

Finished the second orc portrait out of...12? 14?  This will likely be the last one shown in its full until I get the book done and out.

So the main difference between this one and the first one was I tried to avoid the process I did of flats+multiply shadow+overlay/color dodge light layers, and instead just work the colors right from the get go with the appropriate values.  I must be absorbing more information than I thought, because even though I struggled with this in the past this time around it was much easier.

Ink with photoshop.

Orc Portraits

Here's some recent personal stuff I've been doing as part of an idea of a digital book I'm kicking around. A series of portraits of Orcs, which is really an excuse for me to draw some appealing but ugly guys and work on my handling and understanding of light and color. I originally toyed with the idea of doing it all digitally from start to finish, but having actual ink work in the piece REALLY makes it sing, so that's the method I'm taking for these.

Finished piece, and color study for the next portrait.

Atelier Studies

These are from the end of 2014 - going back through to get passed on Head Phase 1 now that the guild system is implemented at Watts, plus it's been helpful to revisit this stuff and see how much better I am after taking some of the higher courses.

Conte on newsprint.

Back to the grindstone

As it's become painfully aware each year, holidays are terrible for me when it comes to productivity and keeping up with stuff. So like clockwork, at the start of a fresh new year I need to play a bit of catchup and get back into the swing of things.  So let's start!

I just came back from a trip to London and Paris for the holiday with family, and it was a blast.  Prior to the trip I picked up Graphic L.A., so throughout my time there I was trying to incorporate some of those thought processes in the book into my landscape sketching while we walked about.  There's some successes here and there, and some flubs, but I like the exercise and I'll probably continue it.

Done with ballpoint, pentel brush pen, and markers (kept to one value at first, then opened up to a light and dark value.)