"Me And The Future Missus" Break-It-Down

So, as I posted a few weeks ago, my primary task for myself and my fiancee's wedding is to do the stationary. The invitations, save the dates, map, and whatever other bits of paperwork that need doing. So far, I've completed the save the date notice and about 80% of the invitation. I posted the save the date a few weeks ago, but also decided to post a couple of work in progress photos I took, so that you can see how the image came about. So, without further ado...

The first thing I did was a couple of thumbnails and small sketches. Once I was happy with these, it was a matter of recreating the drawings at double size. Not scanned and sketched, redrawn.

Here's the final drawing of my character. Well, I lie. This is actually a drawing that got scrapped. When I got around to painting the skin tone, it came out too orange. I looked like an Oompa Loompa. The painting had to be scrapped and redone.

Stage one of Gill's painting. Pants, boots and top done. At this stage, I paused for about two days. Next would come the skin tone, and that stage always terrifies me!

Skin tone done! With a sigh of relief, this stage came off without a hitch first time.

This is the final painting for my character. I'd painted myself a bit longer and slenderer than I actually am, but I could make adjustments in Photoshop. Also, my head isn't quite that big in real life. Quite.

I was happier with Gill's painting. The skin tone came out slightly better and I liked her design more. I painted her dress with acryllic to give it a bit of texture. While this doesn't come across very clearly in the digital form, it's quite nice in the actual painting. Also, the colours of this image would require a bit of work in Photoshop due to the slightly red and blue hues that came out with the photograph. I'd prefer to have scanned the artwork, but I lack a decent A3 scanner. For now.

And the final image. The sunburst pattern and text were done in Photoshop. The flourishes, in Illustrator. A bit of colour correction and a bit of a colour bleed from the bottom corner, for no other reason than I wanted to experiment a bit.

So there you have it. I learned quite a lot from the process. Not everything was a complete success. But I took the lessons from it and applied them to the next project for the wedding, the actual invitations. They're looking a whole lot better. But alas, they cannot be posted for a while yet. But they will come eventually! 

Man of Steel

Just a quick sketch from the Moleskine, for the Irish Sketch Society. This week's theme, to commemorate the release of Man of Steel, is the Man of Steel himself, Superman. Have a lot of work on my plate at the moment, so this one just has to be a quick pencil sketch! Plenty more posts coming soon.

Life Drawing May 2013 II

As with the last post about life drawing, I was sans materials for these drawings. Being forced to use just a pen, I thought the drawings wouldn't be up to scratch. But wouldn't you know it, I did one of my favourite life drawings ever in this batch. I've never had a good time with faces or hair, but in two of these drawings, I was very happy with what I managed to draw.

Unfortunately, these are the last life drawings for a while. We're on summer hiatus. But hopefully we'll kick off with the life drawing classes again soon, and then there will be more. Enjoy!

Me and the future missus.

So I'm getting married in September and one of my jobs (the other being don't set yourself on fire before the day) is to do the stationary for the wedding. So save the dates, invitations, maps, booklets and whatever other bits and pieces are down to me. The rest, all the actual work is being done by my industrious, hard-working, and organised fiance, Gill. Here, is the sum of my efforts so far. The 'Save the Date' card. Soon, I'll post the process, where you can see there is a bit of work involved!

Life Drawing May 2013 I

The first of two batches of life drawings from the last few weeks. A bit of back-story as to why the drawings are the way they are. For the last year, I've gradually built up a little collection of materials I like to use on life drawing days. A palette of water colours, some pencils, conte sticks, compressed charcoal, a few pens and pencils. I kept these materials in a bag at my desk. A few weeks ago, life drawing day came around and I went to grab the bag. I grasped, and yet my hand met no bag. It was gone. Thinking I may have left the bag in the life drawing room the week previous, I sprinted like a man possessed to the room and searched like... a possessed man searching. Nothing. Nyet. Nada. Naught. The bag was gone.

From what we ascertained in work, we had a fairly crazy cleaning lady for a week, who would move random objects on peoples' desks. Things went missing, yet were found in unusual places. My bag of tricks? Nowhere to be found. So all I can assume is, the bag was mistaken for rubbish and went the way of rubbish. To the tip. So somewhere, a plucky seagul is learning to paint. Or a feral cat is trying his hand at charcoal drawings. So I like to think. The real kick to the nuts? The cleaning lady left my actual bag of rubbish by my desk.

So these drawings were made with the few materials I keep with me at all times. Pencils and pens. Although there are no pencil drawings in this batch. Ah, the roller-coaster life of an animator.

Pages from my notebooks... Part IX

A couple more pages from the Moleskine, more to come. The first drawing is just a quick sketch of everybody's favourite imp, Tyrion Lannister. The second was just a little experiment I conducted when I got a new brush pen and bottle of red ink. And the third was the sketch that lead to Where's Wall-E. There's more to come soon!

Patriotic Iron Man

This week's theme on Irish Sketch Society is 'Iron Man,' what, with the release of Iron Man 3, an' all. So, I did a quick drawing of Tony and his pal, Rhodey in their Iron persona gear. As a bonus, I threw in the line work too. Which I kinda prefer. Coloured with my brand-spanking new copic markers (thanks for the birthday gift, ma'!), pen and a drop of guache for hilights. 

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!

Pages from my notebooks... Part VII

So I recently got myself my first Moleskine sketchbook. While it took some getting used to, it's what I'll be using from now on! And it's make me experiment a bit more. These are the first few sketches, with more coming soon...

Life Drawing January-February 2013

Some drawings from the sessions in January-Fabruary 2013. 1-5 minutes, conte stick, pen, watercolour.