"Creativity takes courage." – Henri Matisse
Hello friends! I just realized that it's been almost a year since my last art dump... which explains how I have accumulated so much art. I was contemplating whether I should split this into two posts, or just dump it all on you at once, and since I'm too lazy to write two blog posts …
Continue reading "A Long Expected Art Dump ~ ft. lions, samurai, and my broken brain"
Amidst all the fun I usually have with commission work, there are also times when I get a little stuck or stressed out. I recently had a couple days when I was feeling particularly frustrated with my work, so I decided to take a break and just paint something in GIMP for fun, and try …
Continue reading "Trying Something New ~ ft. the smudge tool"
Have you ever been blessed with a ton of artist talent, but had no idea what to do with it? Have you ever just sat around like a stale muffin, wondering what you should do with your life? Well, friend. You've come to the right place. Today I'd like to give you five whimsical suggestions …
Continue reading "5 Ways to Use Your Untapped Artistic Abilities"
An alternate subtitle for this post could have been, "Why You Probably Shouldn't Trust Me to Draw Your Characters—I may just turn them into hipsters", but I didn't think that would be good for business. (Plus it was too long for my header graphic.) So I decided to play it safe... Welcome, my friends, to …
Continue reading "Of Elven Princesses and Monster Hunters ~ an adventure in character art"
Well, my friends, after four long years... after many breakthroughs, and lots of discovery and exploration... after a trip to the zoo, and all the times it's been stuffed into my backpack with a couple of pencils and erasers... I've finally filled up my old hardcover sketchbook! Almost. There's still one or two pages there …
Continue reading "Gestures, Character Art, and Failed Portraits ~ drawings from the sketchbook"
And so we have come near to the end of our journey. This is part five and the conclusion of my series of posts on the fantastic, lovely, delicate, ambient, bold and beautiful world of shading. Over the past couple months we've talked about the tools of the trade, explored a rather painterly method of …
Continue reading "Where It Really Happens ~ the bold and beautiful world of shading"
Alright, my friends. We can't avoid this subject any longer. We need to talk about edges. When it comes to shading with graphite or charcoal, we're basically dealing with two fundamental subjects: value and edges. Value being how dark or light a certain object is (we talked about double checking your values/tones in my last …
Continue reading "The Joy of Finger Blending ~ the ambient world of shading, pt. 4"
Hey Lionhearts! Welcome to the third installment of a series of posts on the technicalities of advanced pencil shading. (In case you missed them, you can check out part 1 and part 2 here.) Today we'll be talking about graphite, which is still one of my favorite mediums to work with. It's very versatile, and …
Continue reading "All About Graphite ~ the delicate world of shading, pt. 3"
Hey lionhearts! Welcome back to part two of a series of posts on advanced shading. In last weeks post, I discussed some of the basics to get you started before we dive in. So we're just going to get straight to the fun stuff. No brakes, full speed ahead. Today, we will be talking about …
Continue reading "A Study In Charcoal ~ the lovely world of shading, pt. 2"
Many moons ago, I wrote this post on creating an accurate outline. I was planning to follow it up with a post on shading your accurate outline. But then I began thinking of all the different methods of shading, and everything that goes into it... and I'll admit I got a little overwhelmed. The thought …
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