The finished product

Or almost finished product, at least. That image I showed in the last post was one of the ones that I chose to use in the final part of the assignment. This final part included taking one of the sketches and using it as an illustration in the context of whatever it was made for. And as that sentence made no sense, let me explain. That drawing was done with the idea that it would be part of a graphic novel. So, I took the illustration, 'finished' it in photoshop and applied it to a page layout for a graphic novel.

This is the result:


Just a single panel was all we needed, and I may have done more, but I didn't have the sketches to do so.

Comics are one thing I would like to seriously try some day. I've fiddled with them in the past, doing a project with person or that, or even trying it on my own, but none of them have been very successful. They get so far, and then things get busy. Perhaps one day I'll actually get a full story out.

That's right, more centaurs!

I tell you I'm going to swear off these creatures after this project.

So, it's no suprise that I'm brininging more centaurs to the blog, but let's all pretend to be suprised and impressed, shall we?


Here we see the progression from a thumnail sketch (Take a guess at which it is. I'll give you a hint, it's not on the left.) to a larger sketch. Thumbnail sketches are used mainly to quickly get out ideas as well as to give an idea of composition. They usually take only a few seconds, a minute tops. You want a quick gestural drawing to show you what's going to be in the image. Then, later, you draw a larger version, still a quick sketch, to get more of the idea of how things are going to lay out. Once you're sure of your composition and all the elements of the picture, you do the full drawing. Or, at least, that's what my professors tell me, but I want them to show me a professional who has time to spit out 200-400 thumbnails for every project their given to work on, let alone a student. While I'm in the habit of doing thumnail sketches for my pieces, it's rare that I draw more than 15 or 20, and then I usually go straight to what will be the finished piece, whether that be an illustration I draw, or something that starts right on the computer.

Still, it's a good habit to be in, doing thumnails and many sketches, because usually the first ideas aren't the best. For this centaur project, my best ideas came from the sketches I did in the middle of the mass horde of centaurs. From about 100-150 or so out of 174.

I'm still swearing off the beasts for a good long while after this assignment is over.

Centaurs...Lots of Centaurs

Today in the wonderful world of my sketchblog, I bring you thumbnail sketches. And a lot of them.

My current assignment in my new Illustration class is to do about 200 or so of these before picking the best and making larger, more detailed sketches of those. We're to use only markers, and no fine tips. The topic we were all given are the centaurs of greek legend.

While I do make thumbnails now and then, especially for my class assignments, I find myself tending to not use them too often in my free work (I should change that. At least for compositional reasons). This many thumbnails for one thing is quite unusual for me, though, I find I tend to run out of ideas pretty quickly. Good thing I have most of a week?

So without further ado....

Back from an unofficial break

Tornado's in January, who'da thunk it?

In other news, I've been neglectful, I'm sorry. Hopefully, now that I'm back on routine, since the semester is starting up again, I'll be able to keep myself on track more. And hey, maybe I'll have more for you all to look at than my face in watercolor, 'eh? We'll see how things go with this semester's classes. I may even have a website to go with this blog by the end of it, what with my web design class being this semester!

Here's to a good semester of growth and good work! Have the "finished" version of that digital painting from a couple posts back (as well as an alternate crop...because I was having fun messing around)