Did some work for Kayak, Canada’s history magazine for children. I created the moose, Monty Moose, plus a couple of other spots which are in the magazine. Watch out for more Monty Moose!

Nude girl on a swing. I was testing out my new keyboard and the position of it on the new table. It will take some getting used to because it’s smaller, and it’s particualrly bad for typing, but better for using in conjunction with the tablet as I don’t have to spread my arms quite so widely.

I had a bunch of sketches sitting around to do up so she got chosen. Sometimes I feel like I’m wasting my time making artwork of girls; there’s no market for stuff like this anymore apart from people who want to see free ‘porn’ on the internet. Sometimes I feel that people don’t consider me a proper illustrator because of the girls I draw, and on the other hand I wonder if I should let society’s perceptions of correctness oveerrule what I like to draw (or dictate what is intelligent at least).

Anyway, I’ll put up a process of the picture another day.

Righto. So here’s the final image again. I didn’t crop it this time, and I toned down the white highlights from yesterday. I guess it does pay to let the eyes take a break from artwork. I’m happier with this version. While not perfect, I think it draws the eye correctly now.

As with all my illustrations, this started off with a sketch. I drew the people on a couple of different sheets of paper and tweaked the composition in Photoshop. The guy in the middle was supposed to be a flat silhouette at first.

Usually I don’t work with color roughs, but in this case I had a color scheme in mind so I quickly hammered out some color in Photoshop. I exported it as a jpeg to Illustrator where I made a color palette based off this. Don’t pick colors off jpegs in Illustrator, the swatch always turns out icky.

The vector work took quite a long time, about a week though I was working on it on and off. I tried to keep the gradients more subtle, which took longer, plus the details like the cameras were annoying to work in as they were all turned at different angles. You can’t really see the details in the finished piece so I’ve included a closeup of some of the people here.

The people were on separate layers in Illustrator and they were exported in groups as EPS files and recomposited in Photoshop. The composited initial PSD file looks exactly like the original Illustrator file.

And so begins the evil of Photoshop. Added a lightsource in the middle and some glowing bubble things to indicate flares from the cameras.

Effects were added to the layers of the imported people. Some were blurred more than others in an attempt to create depth and motion. I guess it was alright, not a huge success, maybe needs more practice.

So now the people on both sides are blurred, as are the people in the background. The background folks also have a soft halo of light around them.

Final touches – added more light particles, and a blackish band at the bottom to unify the picture. I actually worked in the details on the guy towards the end, despite what these pictures show (I deconstructed the final file in order to show the layers). The flat silhouette thing didn’t work out so well so I added some details in Illustrator and the wings and imported those back to Photoshop.

You can see the difference between the image now and my first ‘finish‘ where the highlights were too strong.

I think I just worked too long on this and now I can’t tell whether it’s alright or not. I’ve been trying to make my work look less vector-y, hence all the Photoshop addons. Will post a step-by-step of the picture tomorrow or so. It’s a bit depressing, working on something for a week and then thinking that maybe you just wasted all that time.

Here’s the final image, Illustrator and Photoshop. Below is a process snapshot; not a tutorial but gives you some insight to how I work.

This is the base sketch. I sketch in blue, then go over it in graphite. I scan it into Photoshop, remove the blue lines but then turn the sketch blue anyway. I like working over blue lines, I find it easier on the eye.

This was the initial render. I started rendering at 2am after drawing stuff all night. I wanted to do a speed render in an hour, but the unusual color scheme took a bit more time. I have preset color palettes for general work but I originally thought of doing a duotone pink-turquoise picture. You can see a closeup of the details on the face, hair.

So I quickly took the 1.5h render into Photoshop, changed the color a bit, slapped on some texture just to make myself feel better for the day.

I got up today and decided to finish the picture to get it out of the way. I abandoned the idea of doing a duotone color scheme as it really wasn’t working out. I know many artists stick to color schemes once they establish them, but I find it rather restrictive to work that way. Maybe it’s the lack of formal training, but I find I don’t like to get locked into a palette if the feel of the picture is not right. This is the Illustrator render export to Photoshop in 2 pieces – the background and the girl/ chair. It looks kinda flat and there’s banding going on in the background.

Photoshop is good at helping soften the images, so I threw on some blurs and soft highlights behind the girl and added noise to the background to break up the banding.

Additional color tweaking of the girl to bring out the color and soften the edges with slight blurs.

Final art again. Painted in the highlights in Photoshop with a soft brush to give the extra shine. It’s much easier to do that in Photoshop than Illusrator and it gives a more natural look as opposed to the highly controlled shapes in the latter.

2.5 hours of Illustrator and Photoshop fun over an old sketch. I really need to take more breaks in-between.

A few of the new pics I did for Arena Singapore.

I’m not sure if it’s done yet, but I’m not working on this anymore today.