Space themed! :D Yay!

Another contest! Due the third thursday of for this contest here! I love science fiction and hopefully that'll show in the final piece. If I don't win again, hey, I'm getting my process down pretty well. Starting out I thought I just had to make a few sketches, think about a plethora of ideas that I'll never complete and then paint.

WRONG.

It takes a process.

So of course I always start out traditional but I have found ways that digital has helped me, especially with value and color planning. This first image was the beginning to an end. I like that space ship and the character slowly creeping off into the unknown land.

Then after this I added more to the story. Can you see the little guys near the bottom? Very rough sketch (I'm miss my tablet! poor broken tablet...) but I just really wanted to know where that light was going to be and how dark the mountains should be against the night sky.

Will update on this piece! Illl probably change a dozen times before the finish, but I'm as confident as I can be in where the work is going. ^_^

Only one contest this month...

 I didn't do the Jack and the Beanstalk contest :( but I'll do the next one! It is space themed so I feel that I must!

I did however complete the Diverse contest (but may not have turned it in on time! gosh I'm bad with deadlines this month!) and here is the process for this piece.

I decided to mess around with photoshop again by creating a pencil sketch/digital sketch. Fast forward through more thumbnails and I got this next image. I think still think this is the best drawn here. If only I could just re-draw the final...but alas the contest is over. ;)

This next color sketch didn't work out as planned and ultimately I hate it. What it did do for me was make me backtrack and plan the colors a bit more.

Again I used photoshop to mark out these colors in the original sketch. This was helpful! I think I may start doing this with my color pieces from now on. Saved me a lot of mistakes and some (SOME) frustration haha.

Aaaaannnnd the final. Again, it could be better! My painting and drawing are rocking in some places but crashing in others. Moral of this story...KEEP PRACTICING THE CRAFT...and make deadlines.

So I have a long way to go

I've been wondering if I should try mixing digital with traditional again. I did that with the experimental portfolio, "The Boy and the Changing Being" maybe I could explore that again with this piece. 

Anyway, this was for the 3rd Thursday contest. I didn't win this one either, but now I look back at it, definitely wasn't fun enough, or finished enough. So of course I add it to this blog. Maybe I'll do better next time. 

and the final...

Definitely think I could go darker on the right side. Still, I think this piece wasn't fun enough for kids. I'll try for a little more light hearted scene next time for the Jack and the Beanstalk spread. 

Discovery Draw It Again

Like every piece of art I make I had many hiccups so I needed to hold my breath while submitting it to the contest. I think it was fairly successful but it could be better!

In the meantime, here is the process...

I always start with thumbnail sketches, but I already posted those on my other website for the 12X12 month. Here is the sketch and the color sketch. I think the problem lies within not making a full, fleshed out sketch before making the color sketch, a mistake that I managed to avoid in another piece for another contest. I'll post that later.

Only a few pictures taken. I think I may need to upgrade to video to just to make this look recent, I kinda feel like I'm going old school here. Anyways, here are the images that I did manage to document and will be going for a more update look in the future :)