Rich the Dog

Inspired by Est Em's "Nero", I decided to draw up what my dog would look like if he were human. End result.

Something New

So yesterday, I decided to try something different with my tablet, going monochrome (relatively). I thought two contrasting colors would be nice and I suppose that was my subconscious working to correlate the image with the plot of the story. It's another of my characters and he's the main character of the only sci-fi series I have in my head.

First I started with a line drawing, and here I actually had to flip the image a couple of times to make sure the face was relatively balanced.


Then I filled it in with a dark shadow, much in the tradition of comic books, and then added grays and color. After the figure was done, I did the background. I could push the details in the background a little more but the character is the subject, no need to detract from him.

Oil Painting

So last week, a couple of days before the new year, I worked on an oil painting.
I had found an old unused 9" x 12" canvas in storage and thought I'd use it.

I decided the painting would feature the main characters of another one of my story ideas. The two characters were inspired by waiters I saw during my stay in Prague. The other characters in the story were also inspired by hotel and restaurant workers I've encountered throughout my travels. And if it isn't apparent already, the blond one is also featured in the blog header.

Techniques and Difficulties: I painted the whole thing with two watercolor brushes, (a thin one and a thicker one) as I don't feel like going out to buy oil brushes since I'm not going to be painting these things very often (oils and canvas are expensive and I'd much rather do watercolors). The most frustrating part was trying to keep dust off of it while it was drying (and as of this moment, there are still a few moist patches). Tweezers were helpful in removing fibrous bits and small hairs.

So, yeah, unless I just happen across another canvas again, I won't be doing another one of these soon. I'll just stick to watercolors, tablet, and pencil/ink drawings for now.