Mr Sleepyhead - Character painting

Rendering with inked outlines

The decision visually was to not have any outlines for the character, and of his background. My reasoning behind this is to create a softer look.

This has been a complete shift for me artistically, as much of my art work is outlined in ink.

For this book, I really want the story to feel welcoming, warm and cosy. 

The idea behind the book is about a bear going to a place of comfort and rest, his bed. And of the routines to slow down, close your eyes, and sleep.

 

Hopefully I have captured that cosy-welcoming feeling in these below images.

 

Rendering without inked lines

Rendering close ups

As always, thank you for visiting. I hope to post up soon the completed painting of Mr Sleepyhead, the bear.

Mr Sleepyhead - Make Over

Maurice Sendak bear study

Mr Sleepyhead bear, I felt, wasn't doing it for me (visually). And this was confirmed further when I stumbled across a recent bear drawn by Maurice Sendak. After doing the sketch of the Sendak bear, I realised that my bear head needed to be more square-like.

So, out with the old head, and in with a newer variation.

Mr Sleepyhead version 2

Mr Sleepyhead - rough color flats

As always, thanks for visiting. Take care.

Snuggly Monster

 Part 3, Attitude with Gratitude

My daughter made this very cool, snuggly monster. And it also smells great, peach at the top and strawberry at the bottom.

Very grateful for school holiday programs.

Mrs Snuggly monster also climbed a tree with my daughter, our favourite tree. Just around the road from where we are living. Grateful for trees. Aren't they the best.

Take care, thank you for visiting.

Mr Sleepyhead - Color study

 

Mr Sleepyhead - color inspiration

A color inspiration for my children's book, a color palette taken from Golden book ‘Duck and his friends’, illustrations by Richard Scarry.
I eye dropped color samples from image, and did a very basic color lay-up, in Photoshop.  I found this very useful as it eliminates unnecessary details and, in this example, helped me to see relationships between colors.

Mr Sleepyhead - color version 1

With my chosen first page, I did a quick color mock-up, based roughly on the colors from ‘Duck and his friends’.
Done in Photoshop, just flat colors, no shading.
I also did a black and white preview of image, just to check that the different elements are contrasting nicely. Hopefully no muddy colors.

Mr Sleepyhead color variations

From there, I used a great little online tool called ‘brandmark’. This quickly generates many color variations based on your uploaded image.
There were some nice examples generated of which I wouldn’t have even thought of trying.
Find link here. Definitely recommend this great online tool.

I changed the hand (reaching for clock) of Mr Sleepyhead (see previous post for example). My wife commented that it looked a bit too cartooney – which I agree. 

More to come soon. Thanks as always for visiting 

Change in seasons, Lego and a Bug

 

ATTITUDE WITH GRATITUDE, No.2

With a change in seasons, it is still nice to get outside before the coming winter. So, climbing a tree, one of Indi’s favourite things to do at the park, a must do activity before dinner. Saw this strange – magical looking insect too, on one of the tree branches. Brave enough to touch it as well!!!

Never too young, or old, to start Lego, for all of us. So much fun. Very grateful for Lego instructions. 

In the pursuit of recording moments like these, we have put an A3 sheet of paper on our lounge wall, and attached images, labels, anything - that reminds us of what we are grateful for. To remind us, look, what beautiful things there are, all around.

Hope to post up soon some more content for Mr Sleepyhead, my childrens book.

Thanks for visiting. Take care. 

Mr Sleepyhead - Roughing it

 

Some thumbnails, on post-it notes, nice, rough and small enough to get the ideas flowing quickly.

Chose one of the rough thumbs, refined it (at a bigger size). 

Inspiration also came from some classic Golden books, to get ideas of objects that would populate Mr Sleepyheads world.

Not necessarily related to my story, this sketch was just to explore Mr Sleepyhead in a different environment. Also to work out how his body shape works, sitting down :)

 

More to come soon, refining that chosen rough further with some color ideas thrown into the mix.

Mr Sleepyhead

Mr Sleepyhead rough concepts

After completing a 32 page picture book for a competition in 2020, I had decided to do a smaller children's book in page number count. The main reason, that I would have a quicker turnaround time to complete the book. 

 

Therefore this book will be 13 pages of an actual story. This doesn't include things like the title page, dedication page and other pages that will need to be added.

 

I won't go into the story at this stage other than to say, its to do with a sleepy bear who needs to go to bed.

Mr Sleepyhead - Concept 1

There is only one main character, a bear.

I saw him as a classic looking bear. The look of the bear was derived from my extensive collection of pre-loved books, from such great illustrators as JP Miller, Mary Blair and Maurice Sendak. 

Research ideas for Mr Sleepyhead

Concept 1 model

Hope to put up some more for Mr Sleepyhead soon :) Thanks for visiting.

A New Journey

In 2020, during the Pandemic, lots of things were down, the job market for one thing. Finance was tight. I am sure like a lot of people, it was an incredibly hard time. Out of work, countless submission's of CV's and cover letters later, I took some time out, to do a children's book challenge. At first it seemed counter-intuitive. What, do a month long book challenge whilst your out of work? What about the bills? Your family? These things weighed heavily on me. But, I had to do this challenge.

 

So what happened? A seed of change begun. I started to ask myself, what am I trying to say in my art? What do I really value? See, I have been doing fan art for years. And I really do love this stuff. But I was starting to question the longevity of it. How could I possibly entertain creating this type of art and make money from it? It wasn't my original art to sell, and it just didn't feel right to do so.

I was in a calder-sac, a dead end. I was lost.

 

Now on holiday, Christmas of 2020, with my beautiful wife and daughter, in Wellington. Just rocking around a mall, I happened to come across this pop-up second hand bookshop. The books are free. Crazy, right?  Shuffling through a stack of books, I came across one I hadn't seen in years.

Copyright Maurice Sendak

Where the Wild Things Are.

Sure it was tattered, had marks and dog-eared pages. But I didn't care. I loved this book. The story, the colors, the monsters. Max in his sailing boat. Pure bliss.

Here is where it started to make sense to me. Children's books. I have always loved Children's books.

Why had I not put two and two together? Slow learner I guess.

 

Fast forward to 2022, and my collection of Maurice Sendak books has grown. Also, I have now amassed quite a sizeable quantity of pre-loved classic children's books. Classics by the likes of Bill Peet, Dr Seuss, and Golden Books (mainly 1950's to 1970's), as examples. 

 

And, I have finally returned to the drawing board. Wanting to craft my own children's book.

 

In my next post, I will hope to update my tentative beginnings, of this adventure. 

I imagine that going forward, this blog will start to change too. Not sure what that means at the moment, but I do welcome the new journey.

Copyright Maurice Sendak

Apologies for the word count in this post.

Thank you for popping on in. Take care.

Attitude with Gratitude

 

Lately I have been trying to adopt an attitude of gratitude. 

To stop, observe, and take in things, which though may seem small, are actually amazing gifts.

Just this weekend past, I was having some daddy-time with my daughter, hanging out in the botanical gardens. 

Such a beautiful place.

And my daughter, so full of life. Adventurous, sassy, determined. And always up for a giggle. How lucky am I?

I am learning to be more grateful.

Indiana & Bear illustration

 

This was an image that I inked up from an initial inktober drawing I did, over the 30 day drawing challenge. I wanted to see how I could push an image in a direction that might 'inspire' a story, possibly.

I also wanted to explore how different color schemes can evoke different feelings for your characters. These above images are just some examples.

What follows below are three images, rendered slightly differently. 

I ended up choosing the 3rd image. 

To see my inkotober challenge, click here 

As always, thanks for visiting. Take care

Inktober 2020 - What I learned

 What I learned in Inktober 2020

After 31 days of rushing to the art-board and drawing yet another image, my two characters for a potential comic - I said to myself, why am I doing this? Why? So I started to take some basic notes to answer that very question. I realised, I had to to be conscious enough to see some improvements. What was the measurement for improvement? For me it was not enough to just submit an image only. I had to see an accumulation of my efforts rewarded.

 So, what follows are my observations of what I learned in Inktober, 2020.

1. Define/practice on x2 characters only

I decided from the get-go to illustrate in inktober only x2 characters. By doing this I

1. Eliminated the feeling of being overwhelmed with where to start. Because I knew I had to make the x2 characters work with the daily prompts, half the battle for me was already settled.

2.  Because I was constantly drawing the x2 characters I really started to get a feel for them. And my confidence grew when drawing them. I also found out what I didn't like - where on some days the characters became too cartoony. Overall, by the time Inktober was finished I had amassed a great deal of drawings. These drawings will definitely benefit me when I get around to doing up a small comic of these guys.

2. Using limited inking tools

In past Inktobers that I have done, specifically digital inking - I really tried an array of digital inking brushes. Which was good in some ways. A real chance to try them out. But more than not, because I was trying so many brushes, I wasn't able to pick up on the nuances of a particular brush. Let alone persevere with its limitations also. And as a result of this, I wasn't able to track progress. So, I used only x4 pen's for the whole challenge. They were

1. Zig Mangaka (Kuretake Brush pen)

2. Tom Bow ABT N15 (Brush pen) 

3.  Zig Art & Graphic pen (Kuretake Brush pen)

4. Artline 200 0.4mm (fine tipped pen with dead line weight) 

The go-to pens for me were numbers 1-2. The Zig Mangaka (1), which I only found days before the competition, is awesome. I found that you could keep a steady line, almost bring the pen to a stop, and then push it around and get a lovely smooth transition. It also gave nice fat-to-thin tapering effect. Number (3), Zig Art & Graphic pen was almost running out. But I found out you could get some nice textures as a result. So lesson learned - don't throw pens out until they are well and truly gone.

3. Where to place areas of black

It was rather by accident, but my wife had left a compass out on our drawing desk. And I thought to myself, drawing a circle might help along the composition for this image. Which yes, it certainly did. And so there a now quite a few images which have a circle (filled black) for my images.

So, the circle shape is a very pleasing element. It also helps to guide your audience to a particular section of your image - and create a hierarchy or focus. 

4. Not to be perfect

Perfectionism is such a beast. It can silently come upon you and then devour and destroy all your creativity, within minutes.

For me, doing Inktober is as much about getting better at inking as it is about pushing through to complete an image - no matter how (eek), ugly or imperfect one image maybe. And I certainly created my fair share of eek pictures. But what I came to appreciate was I could see why something wasn't working. And I still had to go through with it, say its done. And then upload it. Pat myself on the back, and do another drawing for the next day. And it was the next day where I found you had to overcome the beast of perfectionism. Because now you had a failure in your mind only a day earlier.

Lesson learned - fight the beast. The more ugly you do, the more resilient you will become and bounce back to hit those good/great and amazing images.

DON'T GIVE UP!!!!

5. Composition and the use of extra elements

This is something I am always struggling with. I think some days I've got it, then, damn it, it gets away on me.

Composition is challenging for me as I often go straight into the pose of the character/s without often thinking also about how other elements will work in a pleasing way, within the piece. And so often what will happen is, I will be stuck trying to add elements (like fire, wind, smoke, etc) with the characters.

These above poor babies (my imperfect offerings) - sad face, are for me, compositions which, with the added extra elements just weren't doing it for me. The one at very far right I laboured over. I used the black mountain (which is hard to read I think) to help frame the x3 creatures. However I feel that this then competes with the dark area at bottom left (which I initially thought might help frame for the bottom x2 characters). I just feel that overall the image doesn't read well - it's a little jarring and confusing. So to make myself feel better, here are some images of which I feel have good composition. And also good use of elements.

That's it. Survived another Inkober challenge. Wahooo!!! Until next year, 2021. Bye for now.

If you, yes you, dear visitor. Have read all the way to here. Thank you. Really - thank you.

Please check out my instagram account here for all new stuff. I upload there more often.

I hope you have learnt something, or enjoyed this read. Have a great day/night.

Book Competition and what I learnt

For a month and a half, I had the opportunity to submit illustrations for a book competition. Whilst I was unsuccessful, I had learnt a lot of things during the process.

What follows are key points that I learnt along the way.

1. Follow your gut

Due to time constraints of my daily life (daddy-daughter days, family commitments and looking for work), I had to find a way to maximise my time. And whilst definitely planning a head was a key factor, my attitude of backing myself was critical. 

What I mean is, to believe in your ideas and then move forward. So much of your efforts are underpinned by your beliefs. Beliefs like, can I do this!!! When I was developing thumbs for the story, I was constantly thinking if it was the right idea. And as much as ideas can definitely change, there comes a point where you need to just 'seal the deal' and back yourself. 

I still believe that even after not successfully winning the competition, I did the best that I could with what I had done. This choice to follow your gut (back yourself), to me is critical.

 

2. Allow your art to breathe

This point definitely complements the previous, but what it does is allows you to see your art with fresh eyes. Been able to step away from your drawings, even for a day, a few hours, really helps to re-set your vision. Obstacles that came up, and there were many, are managed by simply having a break. Many times I had serendipitous moments where an idea had formed - away from the drawing board. Away from the pressures of not getting it right the first time. Which is a crazy way to think. But oh-boy, have I had to learn that the hard way.

Much of creativity flows organically. And not necessarily all in one shot, at your desk drawing. Take breaks, often. Breathe.

3. OneNote, your friend

Ok, so there was some intensive planning too. Plan to plan. The last two points mentioned above definitely aided in releasing levels of anxiety. Planning however is the 'how are we going to do this'. And thats where OneNote (Microsoft) comes in. Its just awesome.

Some examples of the awesomeness of OneNote.

• Ok, lets breakdown how many days I have to complete this competition, OneNote. 
• Where do I find out how to best setup margins and crops for a dummy page. I need to make a note to remember this, OneNote. 
• Must remember to re-read the script and then have it ready for dummy pages, OneNote. 
• Don't forget to schedule for the rendered two page spread, OneNote.

Ok, hopefully you get the idea. Planning the project is critical. How to best plan, organise and just remember things, OneNote.

In closing, I really felt a sense of accomplishment at completing a submission for a story. Certainly if I had more time I would change things, but overall I was confident of what I had produced. And ultimately it has reassured me that I would love to continue working towards the children's book market. Who knows, maybe even sell my own children's book one day?

 

Research to layout drawing process

Research

For any type of research, I have a basic methodology.
To note, because I already have a style in mind, which fall's into the 'Classic Golden Age of cartoons', this now helps to eliminate the thousands of options otherwise available once you go to Google Image search.

So with that established, I was looking for a Lion character. I found Tex Avery's 'Slap Happy Lion' to fit just the look I was after.

The above image shows the 'sample' Golden Age cartoon character and my quick study (top right).

Forms and Silhouettes

All I am interested in doing is observing the forms and silhouette of the character. I observe that the Tex Avery Lion has little eyes, big nose, big muzzle, big hair and small ears. All these varying shapes help to inform my decisions of things like proportions and negative spaces. And ultimately, the cartoon's appeal. 

Appeal

And this appeal is something I am learning more and more about as time goes by.
I have found that if you also do a google search for a clip art cartoon, say in this example, a lion - this will show very clearly the difference between a generic bland type cartoon (clip art) and the more exaggerated - lively type that I believe is present in Tex Avery's Lion. 
Appeal is everything. 

Don't be a slave to reference material

The Tex Avery Lion reference is only used for a 'quick' study. And I mean like 4-5 minutes at most. This timeframe trains me to see forms, silhouettes, negative spaces between forms, etc. And its these observations which then get translated quickly again into my own research sketch. This sketching element is very important as it takes what I observe (essentially thoughts) and brings them into action (now through my pencil). And as I draw, I build up a rolodex of forms/shapes that I can now use for my own drawing.

So in closing, it ultimately removes my needing to religiously follow the reference material. And as a result, it allows me to discover eventually my own style of art. 

Get that expression sorted

For my Lion's sad expression, I referenced John Kricfalusi's 'Cigarettes the Cat'. Again I did a quick study using all the above methods.

Here I made some notes as to what happens to the facial forms when you are sad.

I also made a sad face myself (physically), and observed what my muscles were doing. I could feel my bottom lip coming up. I could also feel my bottom and top lips coming together and squishing outwards. Doing this also adds to that rolodex of information that I mentioned earlier. Which informs my decision making for my own Lion drawing, coming up next.

Layout drawing - Sad Lion

Armed with A4 sheets of photocopy paper and a red/blue pencil, I start to draw.

As per Preston Blair's lessons, I started with the cranium. See here for the lesson I am talking about.
Because of the above research methodology, I am now ready to focus on my character. With the eyes and mouth of the character, I can start to explore and push the forms/shapes with confidence. Having done the ground work in research, I can now really push and exaggerate the forms to what I think is an appealing character.
What follows are my results.

The x2 sketches were stitched together and then cleaned up with on-going additional changes in Clip Studio Paint, for the blue lined finished layout drawing.

Now I am ready to ink up the layout drawing.

One more example of a layout drawing - Panda character

For this character, his pose was excitement.
Having done a previous drawing of the Panda been angry, I was able to reference from this to keep on model going forward.
You will notice I did a one-off facial expression test which I later rejected as I felt it lacked the 'appeal' I was after.
I also did up a very quick full body model to understand the overall silhouette of the character. The head size is way off - way to small.
Reference gathering for this Panda was more arbitrary, with me simply googling Panda animation. However I kept the researching to only 5 or so minutes.

I will post up these Panda illustrations soon.

Words that - Disney books

Words that - Disney books

To find inspiration/ beautiful draftsmanship

Often when I am starting an illustration/character design - one of the first places I will go for inspiration is here, with these books.
Besides the fun and energy contained within each of these books is the draftsmanship of the drawings/illustrations, which is just next level. Something for which I aspire too as an artist everyday.

I was fortunate enough to have these books as a child and as a result have very fond memories of the pictures. Even today, I can still remember certain images which have been etched into my mind. Goofy spiralling down a ski slope, Donald Duck losing his mojo at the kitchen sink. Great stuff.

These next set of images I found online (original's), found here comicartfans.

Ren toothache inked in Illustrator

Ren Hoek - toothache_illustrator inked

As promised, here is an overview of my inking, using illustrator for the above Mr Ren Hoek.
I have decided to do this in maybe a few posts. The reason is I wanted to cover the following;

1. How to make the brushes in illustrator. And where I learn't about the brushes (this post)
2. How the brushes actually operate in illustrator and some other helpful pointers
3. The thinking and planning behind line weight in your inking

I cannot go further without giving credit to an artist called Andy Griffiths. It was at his website (Toonskool.com) that I found his tutorials on inking and the subsequent brushes to create for inking in illustrator. Unfortunately at the time of writing this post, his YouTube channel and the Toonskool.com site are not available. Which is a real shame. It looks like the only online presence I could find of Andy is on Facebook, Toonskool. Hopefully he will come back online soon.

Creating x3 brushes for inking in Illustrator

Essentially these x3 brushes do the major lifting for the above inked piece.

Name: Thin-fat-thin brush

In Illustrator, do the following;

Choose the ellipse tool, choose fill (black) and stroke to none.

Drag the ellipse out until you get a slightly elongated shape.

Make the shape as thick as your stroke will be (see below image).

Drag the shape just created into the brushes palette

Choose create new art brush

In the dialogue box choose 'tint'. This allows you to change the color if need be (see below).

Next, double click on the brush tool (Paint brush tool) to bring up Paintbrush tool options. These below options are what Andy uses for the brush. This deals with the smoothing of the brush.

Congratulations!!! First brush is now created. See below image for what it can do.

Please note: This technique of inking does not depend on a pressure-sensitive tablet. You simply draw a line and illustrator tapers thin to fat to thin - hence the name of the brush. 

You can also control the thickness of the overall stroke once you have laid it down by going to the stroke palette. This is another great feature for inking in illustrator. See below image for stroke palette dialogue box.

Name: Flat end brush

In Illustrator, do the following;

Use the pen tool to make a triangle shape.

Like the previous brush keep it small in size and keep the triangle shape straight.

Fill black stroke to none.

Next drag this into the brushes palette and apply the same settings as in first brush above (choose tint/ and then tolerance and smoothness).

See below image for final brush effect

Name: Double blunt end brush

In Illustrator, do the following;

Choose pen tool and create this type of shape.

Next drag this into the brushes palette and apply the same settings as in first brush above (choose tint/ and then tolerance and smoothness).

See below image for final brush effect

Save x3 brushes to Brush Library

To save the brush, select the brush and then choose Save Brush Library from the Brushes panel menu. A window will appear - navigate to the Brushes library of illustrator. You can create a folder also and name it specifically. Once you click save - done.

Next time you start illustrator the brushes will be there to use. 

If for any reason they can't be found you can also in the Brushes panel click on the 3 lined icon (right top side of panel), and from there choose 'Open brush library'. Here you will see a list of brushes - and the set you created.

Next post: 
How the brushes actually operate in illustrator and some other helpful pointers.

Painting in Artrage 5

This is the final image created in Artrage 5

I vigorously laid down colors with the oil brush. For choosing colors I used the eye dropper tool on this below reference image. Apologies as I can't remember exactly where I found this image online.

I then chose the palette knife, flat edge, and blended the colors into each other. The settings of the palette knife you can find here in this below image.

The palette knife in Artrage 5 is really cool to use. You can get some really lovely textures. Also as far as digitally rendering goes, Artrage very much mimics a traditional look.

See the above background with my created Ren from Ren and Stimpy, Ren Hoek and toothbrush