I wrapped it up in record time, thanks to the simpler coloring style. Actually it complemented the lines really well, so that worked out great.

I think the surprising thing about not drawing for a year is that I’m actually better at faces than I was when I left. On the downside, I’m worse at hands. So I guess that’s where I should practice.

This one is being entered in a “Day at the Beach” contest. We will see how it does. Thanks for visiting!

Having a deadline helps! I’m going to try to get this one wrapped up in time for a contest that ends on Sunday. I’m going to go simple on the colors, maybe a cel-shaded style. Wish me luck.

Made a little bit more progress on the beach girl this morning. Man, I love that hair style! I have an excuse to use it right now, since I’m out of practice, but I have to force myself to stay away from it once I start to improve a little bit. I also have to say, those vector ink brushes sure do make it easy to turn a sketch into a finished drawing.

Here is some inspiration, from one of my favorite artists on DeviantArt, Robbi Rodriguez. He’s got a great distinctive, grungy and cartoony style. I love how his images feel so complete even without the use of much color. His work sometimes veers towards the retro/tiki genre, but it’s way better quality than most old clip art. The way he inserts hard angles into the human form is also something to pay attention to, and it’s something I’m trying to incorporate into my work. He’s certainly a master of pen and ink, so check him out:

• Robbi462 on DeviantArt
• Robbi Rodriquez on BlogSpot

I’m missing the days when I could do one or two of these every morning Oh well. Trying to get my vector chops back up to speed, and the female form comes very easy for me. I might take these a bit farther before the month is over.

Thanks for visiting Ankhammentu! I will get back to that dang story one of these days.

Whoa, it’s been almost a year since my last post! I finally took a few hours to sit down and think about starting to do some drawing again. I’m sadly out of practice, so picked up this old piece to finish up as a start.

Where have I been the last year? Well, I’ve been working my buns off kicking my web design business into full gear. I totally underestimated how much time and effort it would take, it all seems a lot easier in theory than in practice. Sadly this means that a lot of personal projects, most importantly this blog, have been ignored.

I’ve missed art, and all my friends at DevianrtArt and Renderosity. Big thanks to everyone who’s stopped by to comment while I was away, either here or at one of those other sites. I would thank you all personally, but it would be weird getting a personal reply after a whole year away, wouldn’t it?

Just a doodle of wolverine… I’d really like to make a good drawing of this character someday. Keep practicing, and maybe I’ll get there.

Following up on my post from several months ago on Fun with a Pencil, I’d like to present the quintessential Andrew Loomis book, Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth. It’s hard to describe how good this book really is. I went to art school, and studied design drawing, fashion drawing, and fine art figure drawing, and I don’t think any instructor taught me as much as I learned from this book. (True, I still have a lot of room for improvement, but that’s another post someday.)

It’s a near-perfect explanation of all the key concepts you need to master to illustrate the human form. He starts with the basics of proportion, then he provides a great explanation of anatomy as it relates to art. Later in the book, he shows you how to light the figure, how to construct poses, and how to deal with balance and movement.

He also provides a great selection of samples of finished drawings, many in the pinup style.

If you only read one figure drawing book, this is the one to read.

• Download Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth

I first created these brushes around January 2008. I scoured the web looking for decent and simple photoshop brushes to create that natural media look that you can get so easily in Painter.

The brushes that I found on other sites fell into two categories–rubber stamp brushes (ok for design, but not for painting), and low-res brushes (also useless for painting). So I rolled up my sleeves and created my own.

The brushes in this pack were created from vector drawings, and they were designed to create a rough-edged stroke like you would get when using a real brush. These are super-high res (2500px), but I’ve also included pre-scaled versions of each brush. You can make them larger or smaller without loss of quality. As shown in the preview image, if you play with the scattering settings, you can get some other effects than just a rough-edged stroke. They should be compatible with Photoshop CS2 and above.

These have served me surprisingly well, and I hope they are useful for you too! If you find them useful, please comment, with a link to your work.

Download the zip here

PS These brushes are free for use in any commercial or personal work. You may redistribute, as long as a link back to this site is maintained. You may not sell these brushes.

Here’s a little test movie showing a screen cap of some vector drawing. The demo mostly shows me tweaking a rought layout drawing and detailing some hair. It might be useful for somebody trying to learn to use the pen tool in AI… but mostly it’s just me trying out Adobe Captivate. I’ll try to come up with some topics for more little demos. Any ideas, let me know in the comments. Thanks!