An ending to the mushrooms I was working on yesterday. After struggling for hours with “natural” tones of the mushrooms, in white, brown, and gray, I rebelled and made them rainbow-colored.
The line art from yesterday’s session. Note the color being applied, it is a warm beige; it was sampled from an actual mushroom.
More coloration, using a warmer color as a base. A lot like painting — using burnt sienna as an underlayer.
Nearing the end of my rebellion with color, here is the rainbow theme.
Zoomed-in color detail for the final mushrooms colors.
The final coloring, with Photoshop modifications for extra Wow.
This was a fun exercise, and I learned a lot, especially about the inner workings of Sketchbook Pro. I got more familiar with the behaviors of the brushes, and how to merge and separate layers to make the coloring process more forward-moving and less tripping over myself. The splatter-dot brush was entertaining and gave me a lot of texture in this image that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I look forward to learning even more!
Out on a walk, I found the cutest and most-nicely assembled bunch of mushrooms.
The three mushrooms. The original image I’m using as a reference.
I took a picture. Once I got home, I loaded this picture in Sketchbook Pro and started tracing and modifying the lines.
I began to outline the contours of the mushrooms and drew lines representing their interior texture.
Continuing to fill in the smaller mushrooms while using the original image as a guideline.
It is a work-in-progress, so I don’t have the image finalized yet, but seeing the progress in a post like this is helpful for me. It gives me a chance to become more familiar with the image, and share. This is the image showing the line work I’ve done with no background image. As you can see, the line work is very clean and represents the shapes and unique texture of the mushrooms very well. (And we haven’t even done coloring or textures yet, which are to come.)
The current line art, I’m mostly finalized — all the major shapes are represented with sufficient line detail.
The beginning of testing some colors — which is the next step: inking.
I’m excited to see how this turns out. The playful shapes in the interior of the mushroom were a lot of fun to draw, and gave me some good eye-to-hand exercise. I’m really enjoying the freedom of digital artwork, and the ability to make multiple iterations and moods to the same structural image.
Digital artwork. I made it using Photoshop. It is based from an original drawing I did in pen and ink, posted here. I like how playing with the color saturation really made the contours of the cliffs pop out. Seeing the cliffs apart from their original panoramic format helps me to appreciate my own work better. In this context, not part of the original (bland by comparison sketch) I see the shapes split from what they represented in real life and more of an individualized expression with many possibilities.
9″ x 11″, graphite (pencil) on paper with charcoal.
This is a quick portrait drawing based from a reference image. I really kept my focus on the tone, particularly minding how the flow of her hair framed her face and set the mood. There is very little detail in the individual hair strands, which I thought gave her a serious, intense look. She appears as if she has suffered some hardship, and that’s exactly what I wanted her to represent. Using charcoal for the darker gradients, on the right hand side of her face (her left cheek) really makes that effect work. I’d like to develop this image digitally in the future, using some smokey gradients to make her even more mysterious and “hard” in appearance.
I just bought myself a copy of Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. This program is intuitive, powerful, and downright amazing. I am exploring its vast features and getting accustomed to making digital drawings. This is a work-in-progress of Flowerina, originally an ink drawing I’ve shared here on the blog. My new project with this image is to turn it into a digital print from the original ink-on-paper image.
The original image, ink on paper.
Flowerina, in the process of being digitalized.
I’m looking forward to working with this program more, and digitally reworking my existing drawing. I think this will lead to the next project nicely — selling art online in various formats!
