Celtic Warrior

So this week's theme on the Irish Sketch Society is Celtic Warrior. Had an idea, so went ahead and drew it  up. I've been working traditionally for the last few weeks, but due to time constraints, I did this one entirely digitally. It'll be back to trad media after this, but always good to exercise the different media muscles!

I'll do a quick break-it=down on this one soon enough. It'll be a quickie, since it was all digital!

A pleasant surprise for a Monday morning!

So while surfing the internets this morning, I found that the guys over at Irish Comic News deemed one of my pieces worthy of mention! Quite the honour to be among such talented folk over there! Thanks for the props, you guys!

http://www.irishcomicnews.com/2013/04/art-indiana-jones-by-peter-slattery/

Where's Wall-E?

So I got myself a rake of bristol board recently and, being unsure what exactly to do with it, did a little experiment in pen and watercolour. I took the image from something I was playing around with in my sketchbook. And since I was in an experimental mood, decided to paint only in one colour too. So I drew it lightly in pencil and went over in pen. Worked up the tones in watercolour, and finally, added some digital flourishes in Photoshop. Here's the result. Also included a few detailed shots too.

Pages from my notebooks... Part VIII

Another series of sketches from the Moleskine and some an older sketchbook. Pencil, pen and watercolour. The second sketch was something I drew while waiting to board a flight to NYC in February. I painted it up when I got home. And the third is just a quick drawing of Louis CK, one of the greatest stand-up comedians today.

"Welcome To The Party, Pal." Break-it-down.

So I decided to post my first ever how I did it post. Being the first, and somewhat unplanned, there wont be too much to this. But it is the first, so future posts will have more detail. But come with me on this experiment, and we'll see how it goes.

First off, the painting started as a sketch in on of my sketchbooks. I had decided I wanted to draw an octopus, one of the most unusual creatures in the fish world, and something quite different to other fish. After sketching him, I thought it might be fun to have him seen as an outsider, but being welcomed in. He is, after all, one of them. And I found, while looking up octopus... octopi... that other tropical fish were quite unique and might make good characters. Here's the final sketch-

After this, I redrew the sketch on a sheet of A3 watercolour paper. I changed some details, like the appearance and positions of some of the fish. Unfortunately, I neglected to take a photo of this stage, so lets go on. At this stage, I painted the water surrounding the fish. This was a basic wash of blue which I made heavier down the page, showing the depth of the water. I added some reds and darker blues, as well as some green so the water would be a bit more abstract. Once this dried, I proceeded to paint the fish. I started with the main character, the octopus. I used a very small brush and thicker paint so the characters of the piece would stand out more. Here's the (almost) finished octopus-

After that, it was just a matter of painting the rest of the fish. Again, working small and building, using plenty of reference, and painting one fish at a time. It took a few days to get them all done. Here's the final painting... I should just note at this stage that I am photographing these images, and not scanning. Hence the slightly different overall tone of each shot-

Now came the very experimental stage. This was all done in Photoshop. I started playing around with hues, saturation, and colour balance. I separated each fish onto their own layer so that they could be worked on individually. I darkened the lower stage of the image to emphasise the depth. I also put a layer of white behind the octopus and the main fish so that they would stand out more. And I gave them a slight shadow to emphasise the light coming through the water. Here's the final image-

So what started out as an experiment turned out quite well. I'm very happy with it. Hope you enjoyed the process of how I made this image. More soon!