This is the final of the 2010 Valentine's Day special for Green Corner, featuring Alshina and Koru. If you look closely, you may notice a special surprise detail :)

I hope you enjoy this spot illustration. It will also be available in prints on RedBubble soon.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Previously:
Valentine Background Progress (Part 2)
Background Progress (Part 1)
Shading
Flat Colour
Vector Line Work
Pencil Sketch

Labels: art, green corner, illustration, vector

More progress on the background for the upcoming Green Corner special this time. The changes to the sky, grass, and lake as well as the addition of the trees in the background really helped the mood become more romantic. I am quite happy with the sunset, in particular. You may recognize the trees in the background from my Lady with a Fan illustration as well as Alice and the Garden. I just changed the colour scheme for them.

The final is temporarily up as a TWC incentive and will be shared here soon.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing the work in progress for this illustration.

Previously:
Background Progress (Part 1)
Shading
Flat Colour
Vector Line Work
Pencil Sketch

Labels: art, green corner, illustration, vector, work in progress

This was the very beginning of the background being added. It was pretty rough, aside from the cherry tree. I used this photo as reference for the tree, but I obviously simplified it a fair bit. The rest of the background was mostly blocking in basic shapes and colours.

I decided I wanted to have a sunset in the background at this point, but it didn't really come together until the next step. I also fixed the colours for the grass, sky, and lake in the next step to make them more natural. I found it helpful to take a quick look at some photos of sunsets to plan how I would include the sun and how to better use a gradient for the coloured sky. But in this step, the sky wasn't quite working. I had been experimenting with both linear and radial gradients, but I decided it was best to step away for a bit after I got to this point as it's always helpful to look at a real sky when trying to emulate it in an illustration.

I hope you're enjoying the progress posts on this piece. I'm still deciding how to finish up, but I think the next step is very close. You can expect to see the end result soon :)

Previously:
Shading
Flat Colour
Vector Line Work
Pencil Sketch

Labels: art, green corner, illustration, vector, work in progress

Two progress images this time, but there isn't a huge difference between them so I'm sharing them together.
The bottom image here is the final shading for the figures, aside from some minor changes that I made later. I used a little feathering for some of the shading and shine details on Alshina's dress and Koru's tie.

I started editing Koru's proportions here, to make sure they were correct. I made some minor changes later, but here I was trying to fix his height as I initially made his legs too long. I've worked out his final height to be about 6' 4", while Alshina is 5' 8". He's a little taller than I was originally planning, but I think it will help add some more variety, as most of the characters are pretty tall.

Previously:
Flat Colour
Vector Line Work
Pencil Sketch

Labels: art, green corner, illustration, vector, work in progress

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season! In case you haven't seen my "Holiday Girls" illustration yet, here's the progress for my 2009 winter holiday special for Green Corner. (or feel free to skip to the end to see the final)

Labels: art, green corner, illustration, vector

This illustration features four animals having a tea party: a monkey, a bird, a rat/mouse, and a cat. It's a kid-friendly piece this time, because I had an idea that I couldn't help drawing. I hope you enjoy it.

Scroll down to see the progress from start to finish.


There were some obvious mistakes with the pencil sketch, but I focused on getting the concept down as I could easily fix a lot of the problems digitally. I didn't want to spend too much time fixing some of the things in the pencil sketch that are really easy to draw digitally, as it's more efficient for me to just have the idea for simple objects roughed in and finish them later (especially the tray of snacks). If I were to finish this traditionally, I would have done at least one more version that was tighter. When I finish digitally though, my sketches can be rougher.


Just the monkey and the rat, so far. With some of the scenery started.


Flat colour for all of the characters and more of the objects added.



You can see the detail of the dinnerware and snacks better here. The sugar cubes and most of the cheese slices are 3D objects. the crackers were placed using blends. And the steam from the tea uses the feather effect. I hope that's enough tricks for now, but if you have questions, I can do some more mini-tutorials on how I put some of these things together.

Labels: art, illustration, sketches, vector

Here's the 2009 Hallowe'en special for Green Corner. Aena is dressed as a 1980's inspired pop singer. I was influenced by Jem and the Holograms, as I mentioned earlier.

I'll be offering the ribbons as a free download soon. I couldn't find anything like them on the Adobe Exchange, so I'll upload them there too.

I hope you enjoy this image. I certainly had a lot of fun drawing it :)

Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts on the image.


Previous posts about this piece:
Art Post: Pop Idol (part two)
Art Post: Pop Idol (part one)

Labels: aena, art, green corner, illustration, vector

Here's a quick marker drawing of Aena from Green Corner as a pirate, for Talk Like a Pirate Day. Hope you enjoy it.

Labels: aena, art, illustration, traditional media

Here's the fully shaded colour of Aena for the pop idol piece:


I have since added shading to the flower arrangement on the bow, they won't be quite so flat in the final. I have also been working on the background behind the scenes, but I'm going to wait a while before I share that. I may make some changes to the background closer to Hallowe'en, but I'm finding the image to be extremely bright, colourful, and cheerful in my working file.

It makes me wonder how I'm going to top it for the winter holiday special!

In case you missed it: part one is here and includes the pencil, digital line work, and flat colour.

Labels: aena, art, green corner, illustration, vector

Here's some progress from a piece I've been working on recently. I've been trying to come up with an idea of what Aena's Hallowe'en costume should be this year. A 1980's inspired pop idol sounded like a fun experiment. I was thinking a little about Jem and the Holograms when I was drawing this, and I think the positive energy is great for Aena.

Labels: aena, art, green corner, illustration, sketches, vector

This is the new background image for my Twitter profile page. I kept this pretty simple in the digital stage. There's shading, but I didn't really add many details to the hair. Total time was about three and a half hours. I kept the colouring in shades of brown, but it sometimes gets a more greyish tint on screen.

This drawing features myself and my pet cat, Tabitha.

The pencil version of this is available here, if you'd like to compare. (I flipped the bangs for the digital, to be more accurate)

Hope you enjoy the image :)

Labels: art, illustration, vector

I posted the pencil for this drawing a while back, in this post.

Here's the inked linework, created in Illustrator CS3:


I'm creating another tutorial with this image, and will be posting excerpts here when it's complete. Hope you like the image so far :)

Labels: art, green corner, illustration

This is my vector of the three boys when they're introduced on page 23 (which is in progress). The panel is a crop of this art, and a fair bit smaller.

From left to right are Suko, Xico, and Mazai.

I kept their jacket designs pretty simple, but noticeably different from one another. Xico's jacket seems to have a bit of a Star Trek influence, but I was initially thinking of something more like a simplified racing jacket. I think I will keep it like this, and maybe add a subtle joke to the back of his jacket.

And here's my pencil sketch, before I adjusted their relative heights:

Labels: green corner, illustration, sketches, vector

Another image for my Alice Project. The coloured background is for online display only. The book will have a black and white interior.

This is when Alice is leading the animals ashore (and not mentioning that it's her pool of tears they're swimming in). I'll probably crop this for the book.

Illustrator CS3, 3 hours, 43 minutes. I used a gradient mesh for the top of the water, along with some feathering of some spots in the water.

I'm aware that her hair seems a bit lopsided, but she strikes me as a girl who moves a lot. Even when treading water and talking to the animals, she's probably moving around to face whomever she's speaking to (which explains the placement of her hair).

Pose reference used for head to waist. It's near impossible to find pictures of people swimming like this, so I approximated the legs.

Enjoy :)

Labels: alice project, illustration, vector

As I mentioned recently, I've been working on an image of Alice looking into the garden for my Alice Project. You can see Alice alone in my "Alice Looking In" art post.

Here's the composite image with the garden (click the image to enlarge):

My timer wasn't on while I drew the garden, but I estimate that it took near 10 hours to complete because of all the details and tweaking. The roses, topiaries, arches, pointy trees, and columns are original symbols that I created. The scattered leaves and sand were default symbols that I re-coloured.

I realize the leaves look kind of shiny on screen, but the highlights will be more subtle in print. I still need to convert the garden to greyscale and crop the image to add it to my Alice Project book. It was nice to work in colour this time, and it gets me thinking about possibilities for the book cover.

I will be formatting this image to sell as prints over on RedBubble. When it's available for purchase, I'll mention it here. Enjoy :)

Labels: alice project, illustration, vector

I've just finished this illustration of Alice, this time creating black and white as well as colour versions. You can see the progress below from sketch to greyscale digital, to colour digital. I made some changes to Alice's hair for the digital, for consistency with my character design. I also added teeth in the digital.

Time for the digital was just under three hours, with about 20 minutes extra for changing from greyscale to colour (I re-coloured with live paint, not live color).

For my Alice Project, this illustration will be obscured with the garden in front. This was an interesting pose, and I was a little concerned about making sure Alice looked childish enough, and not too curvy in her hips. I think it turned out pretty well, and I really liked adding colour to this one. Alice is a very vibrant and expressive character, so she's a lot of fun to draw. I think that colour only enhances her.

I hope you enjoy the images.

Labels: alice project, illustration, sketches, vector

I've been working on and off on a personal project for a while that I've been referring to as "The Alice Project." It's a short booklet featuring excerpts from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland accompanied by my original illustrations. The interior pages will be black and white, and I'm planning for a colour cover. When it's finished, I'll be selling printed books as well as e-books.

Part of the reason I started the project was to have another multi-page piece to add to my portfolio. This project allows me to show my abilities as a designer as well as an illustrator. It's a challenging project, and I will be using reference for the majority of the illustrations. I'm also using this project as a means to be more adventurous with my pose and angle choices for figures.

The following are my drawings of Alice for the first chapter, I hope you enjoy them.

Labels: alice project, illustration, vector

I've finished another Green Corner special. This one features Aena in human form, lying on a chaise lounge. Photo reference was used for the chaise.

Illustrator CS3, about 9 hours.

And here's a close-up to see some of the detail (click the image to enlarge):
I modified my colouring method a little for this image. The line work is in different colours and I feathered some of the shine to make it more subtle. I also rendered her eyes a little differently, using lines to add some detail without getting too cartoony. The only black in this image is her pupils, and I think that really helps the image feel more soft and elegant.

Desktop wallpapers of this special available on request. I hope you enjoy the image.

Labels: aena, green corner, illustration

If you've followed my comic series, Green Corner, for a while; you've probably noticed that I tend to make adjustments from the pencil stage to the final digital image. In the earlier pages, I often corrected proportions as well as relative sizes of characters and objects.

Now, I make far less adjustments of that kind and find it easier to double-check things while hand-rendering. I check proportions a few times while I draw by hand, to minimize the need for digital corrections.

I know how to draw in perspective, and what looks correct. But I sometimes have a little trouble with things like the sales desk in the bookshop. In my head, I know the size that I want for the desk, but I'm not actually using reference.

Professionally, I use more reference to ensure correctness; but Green Corner is a personal project (and a learning project) that I have the option of editing at my discretion. For the most part, I don't use reference for Green Corner. The problem with this is that it can be difficult to translate what I see in my head to what I draw on a page; which I think happens to a lot of artists.

I was recently working on page twenty of Green Corner; one of the more complex and detailed pages.

I wanted both Zalanda and Alshina to be mostly visible in the first panel, but I placed them a little too close to each other and made them a little too large in my pencil to allow the desk to fit naturally between them. Initially, I wasn't sure about including the desk, but I added it and other scenic elements to the page for interest. I adjusted the desk as well as the size of the characters in that panel for the digital version.

The desk is seen at various angles and in relation to various characters many times in the first twenty pages of Green Corner. I often find myself adjusting the perspective of the desk, to ensure that it's correctly rendered when it appears. If the angle appears too steep, it can make an entire page look awkward.

I prefer to digitally render the more geometric scenic elements in Green Corner, regardless of whether or not I sketch them out by hand. I can fix things when I re-work pages digitally, but when making detailed pencils, I want to limit later adjustments.

I think part of the problem I have with rendering things like the desk in pencil is that I'm used to drawing at a single size. When I draw characters of different heights, I often reduce a sketch with a photocopy and re-draw to fix relative size. This allows me to maintain detail and consistency at smaller sizes. I may re-draw characters multiple times, but I don't do the same with scenic elements.

When creating digital pages, I find it very useful to layer items and selectively hide objects if I need to work on something unobstructed. It's more involved to edit things in pencil. I find it awkward to check perspective of the desk by hand because it's usually obstructed.

I don't think I will continue making completed, hand-assembled pencils for Green Corner. I think it would be better to draw items separately by hand and then adjust and assemble in Photoshop as necessary. I would still have a hand-rendered foundation, but there would be less re-drawing. I think this would work better for the way that I tend to complete the pages, as I often draw portions not visible within the confines of a page to ensure things are rendered correctly.

I don't think I'll ever stop drawing things by hand, but I like to streamline my process when possible. Illustrating a comic series is a tricky thing, but it has taught me a lot so far and always encourages me to grow as an illustrator.

Labels: comics, green corner, illustration, theory, traditional media

I have completed this year's winter holiday special for Green Corner, featuring Zalanda (naughty) and Aena (nice).

Prints available! Order this from my Bubblesite


And here's the "Nice" greeting card:
"Nice" cards (Aena only) are available in my Cafepress shop. (in packs of 10 or 20 cards)


Free desktop wallpaper:
A 1440 x 900 wallpaper version is available for download from the Midori Forest group.
If you'd like a different size, please request with your screen dimensions in pixels.

Labels: green corner, illustration

This wallpaper leaves lots of rooms for icons on your desktop. It features Zalanda and Kasha from page 10 of Green Corner.

The file is 1440 x 900 pixels. If you'd like another size, please request with your screen dimensions in pixels. Other background colours also available on request.

Labels: art, downloads, green corner, illustration

I've been sketching more than usual in my sketchbook recently. I often sketch on loose paper, and I think it's partly because my sketchbook is a bit larger than I'd like at 11" x 14". I prefer 9" x 12". These are from the past few days, drawn with mechanical pencil. I may end up making digital illustrations of all of these. All sketches were darkened and treated to minor cleanup in Photoshop.

I hope you like them!
Aena from Green Corner in a more natural, human style (no pointy ears). The dress and hair is inspired a little by style in the 1930's. It's not meant to be accurate for that time period, I just wanted to create a classy look. Sketched 9/18/08, finished 9/20/08.

---

Practice in a more natural style. I used a photo of myself for reference (for the expression and the hand), and I think that's come through a little in the face, though it's not intended to be a self-portrait. I really like how the hand turned out. Drawn 9/20/08.

---

Aena from Green Corner in a bit of a gothic lolita style. Photo reference used for the pose. I'm not happy with the hand between her knees, so I'll probably change that when I make a digital version.

I was originally trying to have Aena cosplaying as a stuffed doll, but ended up going in this direction instead. I'm pretty happy with this. I have trouble with seated poses sometimes, but the body has turned out quite well here. Drawn 9/20/08.

Labels: aena, art, green corner, illustration, sketches, traditional media

This is not a complete list, but I hope that you find these sites useful. Feel free to share others in the comments. I'll likely post more in future.

Traditional Media and Illustration
Will Eisner's Comics & Sequential Art
This is an excellent book. It's not so much for figure reference, but more about the design side of creating comics, which can be helpful to illustrators in general. There are parts about expressions and viewing angles of figures.

Figure Drawing Classes
If you want to expand your abilities in drawing the human figure, taking figure drawing (or life drawing) classes can really help, especially if you take classes at a college or university known for visual arts. When I studied graphic design in college, we were required to take two Drawing courses where we learned the basics of figure drawing using the box method and applied this knowledge to drawing live models. There were additional electives in Illustration and Life Drawing. I also took one of the Illustration courses, which expanded on what we learned in Drawing 1 and 2, and required the use of various traditional media (pencil, pen and ink, and scratch board).

How to Draw Manga: Male Characters
Even if you don't particularly want to work in a cartooning or manga-influenced style, I've found some good points in here that apply to drawing male figures in general. There's also mention of the differences between male and female anatomy (aside from the obvious). As a female illustrator, I've found this very useful.

Temple of the Seven Golden Camels
Mark Kennedy makes very detailed and insightful posts about illustration, especially figure drawing. The majority of his posts are instructional.

Using Photographic Reference and Live Models
Once you know the basics of figure drawing, practice is what will help you improve the most. Note that you do not need nude models to practice, but it does help when you're starting out if you can really see the shape of your model. Models in underwear or form-fitting swimsuits (no shorts!) are fine if you're uncomfortable with using nude reference material. From there, progress to fully clothed models, and you will have a better understanding of how the parts of the body fit together underneath the clothing. See the list below for places to acquire photographic reference.


Photographic Reference and Stock Photography
Warning: a lot of these include nude photography and are thus considered not safe for work. Always check the policies of those who provide photos before using them. Some of them have specifications about how their photos can be used. If in doubt, contact the photographer or model. In the case of stocky photography houses, most require payment to use their images. Many individual models and photographers will be open to allowing you to use their provided photos for pose reference, but you should still politely request permission if it isn't explicitly stated.


Art Dibujar's deviantART gallery
This photographer has a wealth of excellent photos in his gallery of adult males (nude and clothed). There are lots of interesting poses here. Note: you may need to have a deviantART account and be 18+ to view the nude photos.

Corbis Stock Photography
Commercial stock images. Multiple options to help you refine searches.

darkprophecy's deviantART gallery
This gallery includes photos of the gallery owner (his face is not visible) as well as other models. There are nude shots here, but nothing revealing.

David C's deviantART gallery
Male and female models, with a variety of clothed and nude subjects. There are also some beautiful landscapes here. Note: you may need to have a deviantART account and be 18+ to view the nude photos.

Female Anatomy for Artists
Female models, primarily nude. A great variety of poses. A pay site, but there are some free samples available so that you can see the quality. Members can request poses.

Gimp Savvy Public Domain Images
Free, public domain images available. Most of the images are from: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Their photo sources have separate conditions for their use, so you will need to go off site to ensure that your intended use is approved (mostly this applies to people in photos if they're recognizable).

Human Anatomy for Artists
This has a wealth of excellent photos to use for illustrative reference. Primarily nude male models. A pay site, but there are some free samples available so that you can see the quality. Members can request poses.

iStockphoto
Commercial stock images, videos, and Flash files. Subscription or pay as you go. Search low resolution images free.

morgueFile
Free, high resolution stock photography.

Stock.xchng
Free stock photos. Browse by category or use the site search.

Use-Photos.com
Free photo resources. Mostly objects, scenery, and animals.

Virtual Model
Female and male options. Virtual models can be viewed from different angles in the same pose. Additional features available if you sign up.

Labels: books, illustration, reference material, resources, stock photography