Unintelligent design...

I was playing around with logos and shit today, not for any real reason other than my own amusement. I don't know that I'll ever apply any of this to anything, but seeing as how we're going to redesign the forums when phpbb3 comes out, I felt the urge to mess with design elements. I wish I was better at graphic design...almost as much as I wish I was better at not being ridiculously attractive.

(Click for full size versions)







The only thing I really created from scratch was the actual bomb, the fonts are from 1001freefonts.com...ok, yeah, basically I'm saying I didn't do any work on this.

Check Out The Beard

Check out my whiskers too (I kid). I made a mix tape, CD, play-list for Margaret the other day, and this is the album art that accompanied it. I think I came out looking a bit like Guy Smiley with a gimp arm, but maybe that's just how I'm looking these days.

Pirates of the AIRribbean! Har.

Another in the kind of air pirates theme we seem to have going now, for some reason. Not that I'm complaining. I was aiming for Ass Pirates, but I'm willing to compromise and get half of what I want.




I don't even know what I'm talking about most days any more.

This one's so wide, I had to shrink the preview image down a lot to get it to fit. As always, click for the bigger version.

Pilot Inspection

So I blatantly bit Todd's idea and drew me a dirigible pilot. What's that you say? You want me to take my absence of originality a step further and also post the rough sketch for this? Ok, whatever you say...

There, I even scanned the sketch book binding so you can get a sense of the image's scale. Why did I do that? It's because I'm a super generous bad-ass. Man if everyone else could be as generous and bad-ass as me the world would be like totally super generous and bad-assed.

Airship mechanic?

I feel like those arms are the mayors of Wonkytown, the face is at least a 6 pack away from attractiveness, and the wrench is all out of perspective, but I'm not positive about any of that. I did use reference for this, so it should have been cake to fix those issues, but the photograph was dimly lit and hard to make out detail in. Ah well, you win some, I'm handsome.



Original sketch.



Off topic, but while I haven't exactly been setting the group blog a blaze, I AM happy to see that looking back I've been a lot more consistent about trying to contribute the last couple of months. I'm going to go ahead and give myself a tiny bit of credit for actually somewhat sticking to at least ONE project for once.

I'm an ass.

The Saddest Horned Lizard

Behold! Yet another drawing featuring a static life-less pose! My leisure drawing has freaking fallen off the chart lately. I damn well better remedy that if I have any illusions of doing any comic work in the next couple months. The past two weekends I found excuses not to check out the drop-in life drawing sessions around here, and instead justified hanging out at 7-11. Shameful.

Forf o' Jooleye!

I know I bitch about this all the time, but goddamn do I wish I could draw girls. I bought this book on 50's pinup art the other day, as well as the 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons collection (it weighs as much as Hugh Hefner) and I think it would be awesome to be a cheesecake pinup artist. I've been working on it a lot lately and it's not coming any easier to me. I need to learn to do loose, fluid curves and delicate faces. Learning some stock poses would also be nice. These are pretty "meh", but I like showing my garbage so Kevin doesn't kill himself. ;)



That left arm looks broken. I don't know why I didn't catch that before I inked it.



I know those color schemes are wack. I used an online color scheme generator to save time (I didn't get started on these until almost 5am).

Have a good 4th of July. Don't blow your dicks off with firecrackers.

Me Am "Mab Mab!"

Inspired by Kevin's recent avatar, I doodled this during a meeting at work today and afterwards cleaned it up a little in Photoshop:




Poor planning lead to me running out of space at the bottom of the page, so I twisted his left foot into an unnatural position to try and get it to fit. It ended up looking retarded (or, in Bizarro speak, AWESOME), so I did that lazy "fade out" shit.

Also, those aren't lens flares, technically. I made them myself, which means they're not tacky, but rather, FUCKING INCREDIBLE.

EDIT: Does his right arm, particularly, the forearm, look completely fucked? My eye keeps being drawn to it, which can't be a good thing.

Red White and Douche...

Muscle studies, courtesy of the supa awesomez Arnold Schwarzenegger Muscle Gallery.




Aaaaaand, the black and white line art, because I think I fucked him (yeah I did!) by getting carried away with my artsy fartsy attempt at a coloring scheme.



Man, why didn't I color the background green so I could title this RGB?! Why must my genius wit manifest itself after the point of usefulness?!

Why the hell am I even posting this crap?

Squat Magistrate's justice is both swift and purple.

Shit Goes Down

Gillian's son had not only swallowed her earrings,
but also her desire to ever wear them again.

Exploration Ball

Huey's uncle drove a ball like this back in 'Nam.
He also apparently,"Saw some shit go down."

Self Portrait

This drawing is all twisted and wonkey,
like my ego.

P.S. I'm growing the beard out again.

6.1

Not feeling it AT ALL tonight, but I wanted to just throw some lines down and keep my hand loose so...blah.

With a click of the mouse...

He had become the devil he once advocated.

5.26

I haven't had enough time to myself lately to get on the computer at home and play with PS/tablet, so, back to basics! Ballpoint, non-repro pencil, Pitt pens (fuck Micron) etc. I was able to talk my job into getting me a scanner as a "work expense" so now I can scan the stuff I draw while I'm here. From this week:

9-12

So if you've seen me in person in the past 10 months, chances are I had a 3.5" x 5.5" Moleskin notebook on me and you didn't even know it. Usually these puppies only see action when I'm riding the bus, and even then it's only when I don't suspect the person next to me will glance at it. Anywho, I was looking through my stack of these notebooks and ran across a page I thought I would post.In case you couldn't tell that bottom has a puppy chasing a rabbit, the middle has a bunch of potatos [sic] "getting the fuck out of there," and the top has some crappy guys holding some stuff.

5.17

Huzzah!



Reference is for suckas! Look, I even threw a CHAIR in that biotch!

....I think I need a new "background" shtick.

....Is her head too big?

EDIT: I thought it might be fun to sort of compare notes, so I threw together this little thing that documents how I've been approaching sketching in Photoshop. If any of you sees something I could do to improve, can make suggestions/recommendations, or want to critique some crucial error I'm making in my process, I'd love to hear it. Fuck, if you want to make your own to share, EVEN BETTER!

My Process!

{blah blah blah, filler text because that link is really hard to notice when it's at the bottom of the post}

5.12

Still rockin' the laydays...



...Also, still drawing them. BOOYAH! Blindsided by hilarity!

5.11

"Boogey boogey boogey!"



Working the Midnight to 8am shifts at work, so I haven't had much time to spend with Photoshop the last couple of days. I'm tired as hell, but I at least wanted to play around for an hour for routines sake.

Must learn to render!

Sorry I'm monopolizing the blog, Ryan.


...Sorry you're not, Kevin.

Pig Beast

You must fear Pig Beast.
For he will not fear you.

What what say life's a beach...

Tonight's doodle:



And the reference photo, which I should have paid a lot more attention to. :/

As embarrassing as this is, I actually think I learned a lot while doing it. Primarily, there's a lot to be said for simplicity. I noodled around too much over rendering, when in the end, what I believe to be the most successful parts are the sand, the palm tree shadow, and parts of the tree, where I kept it simple. Overall, it wasn't turning out TOO terribly for awhile, until in addition to the excessive scribbling of "detail", I tried to add in the clouds and the water. I really need to learn how to render those things, I know there are plenty of tutorials out there, but I kind of wanted to just speed paint.

Ah well, it was fun, and like I said, I think I'm learning things slowly.

More to come later in the week most likely.

5.7

Tonights experiments, for better or worse. I really wish I felt more confident controlling the stylus. Right now it's not much more manageable than a mouse, which is why I have to resort to these lazy ass compositions. Luckily, I possess two important character traits: lazer eyes, and, more importantly, stick-to-it-iveness!

Beware the green eyed monster!

Fucking around in Photoshop (as I've been doing into the wee hours of the morning the last couple of nights). The digital "painting" hasn't been coming along very well, so before hanging it up out of frustration, I just started freehand drawing without a plan. I was kind of pleasantly surprised with it, which almost never happens:




I mean, I'm sure someone will come back and tell me she looks like a dude, and I think the mouth, jaw, shoulders and neck may be pretty badly off...but for my current skill level, as freehand line art with no reference, I'm not terribly disappointed with myself this time.

Seriously though, if you spot something that's wonky or could be improved, please tell me. I really, really want to get better at digital art. And kickball.

Have a good weekend d00ds.

Texturds...

I was reading Photoshop tutorials tonight, and I came across one for importing and using textures. I thought I'd give it a whirl on some random sketch I had already scanned:



Looking at it now, I probably should have used the texture just on the jeans, and then maybe a different one for the shirt, rather than pasting it over the entire image. Ah well, I get carried away when I learn new stuff. I'm definitely going to implement this trick more often from now on. I think it's a real help if you're as shit at coloring as I am.

Oh, and I added some links to texture libraries to the "Useful Resources" thread on the forum, if anyone else ever needs some on a whim.

Oh god, now this is just embarrassing...

Let it never be said that I pull any punches and only post what I consider to be "my good stuff."



So why am I posting this trash? I dunno, maybe in a year or so I'll be able to look it up and laugh at how bad it is compared to what I can (hopefully) do then.

I've never really invested any time in putting my tablet to use, which is retarded considering what I spent on it. I figured I'd start breaking it out and trying to familiarize myself with digital artwork. Holy shit is it hard. Really fun, but HARD. I need to improve my coordination so that I can get the fucker to actually do what I want.

I think this might be my first stab at a 100% digital "painting." I'm not sure though. I'm going to spend the next 9 hours at work pouring over tutorials, as I definitely want to keep practicing and get better.

Fuck, look at her face.

Flowers give me hives

Stuart's head a was once full of dreams.
Now it is full of bees.

More of the same as before, but while I liked parts of the previous image, this one I'm classifying as total shit. This time it's supposed to be Trent...raising his finger in objection, maybe...to, like...all the computer monitors and CB radios behind him? Or something. See what I'm doing here is letting you write your own backstory to the image. That's actually genius. I fucking love this one.







Is me posting all of my little Photoshop/Illustrator/MSPaint experiments annoying? Be honest.

Jyeah!

Illustrator is a really fun way to waste time here at work. I need to see about sneaking my tablet into this motherfucker.



I don't know if this is a self portrait or what. It's kinda like me in places I guess(glasses, facial hair) but so help me god, if I ever start wearing my hat that way, somebody please kick the shit out of me.

Oh, and for the record, I actually drew in a city scape background, but it looked too jumbled and confusing when I shrank the thing down, so I dropped it out of fear that if I ever tried to crop this into an avatar or something, it would be unreadable.

Damn it feels good to be a gangsta...

Like I said last post, more to come:










I kinda got lazy over the last 4 or 5 months when I moved, couldn't find my art supplies, and didn't have a working computer/scanner. I'm trying to get back into a regular routine of Monday through Friday daily drawing. This stuff is from this week. I've got a lot more, but I don't think I'm going to scan it, because it's just more of the same. That, and it takes a long ass time to scan and format. It's hard out here for a pimp.

I know I'm flooding the blog lately, and I apologize, but I need to sway the balance some so this isn't "Ryan's other blog."

PS-Those random blips of color aren't mine, they're clip art that was on work memos I was redrawing during a meeting...on the taxpayers dime!

She's a pink girl, and she don't need money...

I spent the beginning of my evening digging out and installing my tablet, so what do I do? I fuck around with this for an hour (and that time shows!) using a mouse instead.




Words cannot express how much it burns me that I can't draw girls to save my life. I'm really trying to focus on that lately, but we'll see how it goes. I also NEED to come up with an adequate way to ink my drawings. I've been flip flopping between tech pens, brush pens and quill pens (which is what this is) for awhile now, and I don't like my results from, nor do I seem able to get the hang of, any of them. It's pretty goddamn annoying to do an underdrawing that you think is at least somewhat energetic, and then promptly pull all the life out of it when you try to ink the damn thing.

Why'm I being such a Negative Nancy? I gave myself a personal goal of "become competent by age 30", and while that's 2 years off, it's going to be a long road.

Sorry for the glut of random doodles lately, but, more to come!

Undead Douche

This was going to be my stab at the "Draw like some other dude" thread on bombunists.com, but I didn't like how it was turning out, so I decided to post it here instead. It doesn't look like Ryan's work at all (it's hard to emulate his expressiveness with the tablet when I'm using a mouse), but hey, it's got a circular head and was done with Illustrator (7!), so in superficial terms, I halfway nailed it!



Y'know, for awhile there, when I had just the rough skeleton down, I thought I was sorta on the right track. When I tried to fake some "inking", I got a little carried away and started adding more and more details and proportions closer to what I would draw myself. The end result is some kind of monstrous superhero wearing the head of a fast food/sporting team mascot.

*cough*

This is what I do during long phone conversations at work. Mouse and MSPaint.







Lamest post ever? Possibly. Probably. Positively.

Stories Of Old (AKA: Re-runs)

Marathon broadcasts of 80's sitcoms had successfully postponed the monster's attack. But for how long?

Master Of Lightning

I've finally gotten Photoshop reinstalled on my home computer, and dug my scanner out of storage. Unfortunately, I have no idea where the scanning software is, so it's still out of commission for a little while. Once I find that shit, and reinstall my tablet, I'm back in business. The business of ignoring all of my art supplies in favor of my TV.

When I was at Russell's blog the other day, I came across the Ben Franklin page again. I decided to blatantly crib from his work, because that's the kind of guy I am.




EDIT:
Here's the color version I was playing around with tonight. I tried out some bloom lighting and different effects I found in various tutorials to create the light cast from the lightning bolts, but nothing turned out useable. It looks wrong without the lighting, it looks wronger with the lighting I tried to render. If somebody has a good method on hand, I'd love to hear it.