Arctic Hoodie

     I think I’ve said beforehand that I’m terrible at naming my artwork.  This one is no exception.  Seriously, “Arctic Hoodie”?  SMH, well, whatever, anyways.

     Whenever I’m away from my computer, I still try to do some doodles, just to practice.  With this, I had a magazine where I found a reference for this picture.  For some reason, I just kept this one and decided to give it another try.

     I did a few more of these, and this one was the best of those.  I had decided to save it and try to color this piece the following morning.

     So, instead of coloring the last piece, I decided to redo it digitally in Sketchbook Pro 2010.  Looking at the last piece with a fresh pair of eyes, I didn’t mind it, but knew I could do better.

     Here, I started to bring the picture into completion.  After this, I went ahead and started coloring it.

     Once that was done, I started working on the background.  This is a mountain range covered in snow.

     And here is the finished piece.  The sky colors were done in Photoshop.  Afterwards, I loaded this picture in to Sketchbook Pro, and added a few more details, mainly the frost breath, and ice pod behind her.

The Truth Seeker's Reverb

Another one of my sources for reference photos is album artwork.  I have so many CDs, those alone could keep me occupied with reference material for years.  The title of this piece is directly tied to the reference.  Anyways… 

my sister needed the computer again, so I decided to hit the sketchbook.  My intension was to just get some practice in, but I brought my CD of Talib Kweli’s “Eardrum” with me, and decided to start sketching the cover.  This is where the title came from, Talib meaning “truth”, and Kweli meaning ”seeker”.  Reverb is just the side reference to an Eardrum.  Like a lot of times, this became more of an illustration, and I just decided to finish it with ink pens & markers

     This is the buildings placed in the background.  The black & grey parts are basically speakers, and the whole thing was done in Paint.net.

     Here, I uploaded the original piece into Sketchbook Pro, and colored it there.  At first, I used a red, white, and blue color scheme.  I thought I saved that, but I didn’t apparently.  So, here it is as it was to be in the final piece.

     I reloaded the original again into Paint.net, and made the speaker in the sky before moving on to what would become the end of this piece.

     And here’s what I got at the end.  This was finished in Photoshop Elements.

Honeybee Fro

     Whenever I do a piece of artwork, it takes me a while to come up with a name for it.  With this one, it took close to 24 hours.  The name for this picture comes from the name of the model used in the reference photo, which I’ll explain after the jump.

     About three years ago, give or take, is when I started trying to become a professional artist.  At that time, I started putting together a collection of illustrations to add to my portfolio.  One of the pieces was done using a reference from the Apple Bottoms Jeans ad, with Melissa Ford as the model.  That, Melissa Ford, is where I got the “bee” in the artwork title.  I only added honey because, well, just because.  This picture is almost an exact duplicate of the picture, except I gave my model an Afro, thus the “Fro” in the title.

     I had decided to try and redo this picture in Sketchbook Pro 2010, but it wasn’t working out.  I did a few layers of artwork to add to this illustration, but none of them looked any good.  So, I saved it, and put it to the side.

     A few minutes later, I came back and started coloring the pencil illustration just for the heck of it.  I had no plans of keeping it, but started to change my mind at this point.  So, I decided to keep it and continue finish it.

     And here’s where I got once I had the a lot of the colors laid down.  I saved that model separately and decided to start on the background.

     In Paint.net, I opened the original file illustration, and colored the background.

     I opened up the background & model in Photoshop and started putting the pieces together.  The third picture is my trademark/emblem.  For the last few pictures of mine, I’ve been adding it in ways that aren’t so distracting, and I repeat it here.

     I was going to save the picture as it was, but felt like it wasn’t full enough.  The model was loaded back into Sketchbook Pro, and I added the length to the legs.

     Next, I reopened Photoshop to add the emblem to the sneakers.

     Again, opened up Paint.net and added more room on the sides and below.  After that, I added steps…

...and put the model on the page.  As you can see, the right leg is too short, but I fix it later.

     Before I finished, I decided to change that vase.  I don’t know why, but I just didn’t like it.  So, I opened Sketchbook Pro and just did a quick illustration off the top of my head, and here’s what I got.

     And this is the final picture.  The right leg was lengthened in Photoshop using the Magic Lasso tool.  I isolated the foot & calf, and lengthened it artificially.  I also lightened the visible fur, as I felt it was to dark for a white fur coat.

Pier Scenery

     When I started this, it was because I had tried & failed at another piece.  I started over & over again, but it just wasn’t working out.  So, I started doing some cold runs, just to practice, and hoped to come back to it later.  Afterwards, I looked online for some references, and found a picture of Zoe Kravitz, standing in the middle of what looked to be an intersection.  I started using that picture to do a quick sketch, but it turned into more, so I decided to go ahead and start a new piece.

Here’s what I got once I cleaned up all the random sketch lines in Sketchbook Pro 2010.  The hairstyle in this picture is the Frowhawk & Cornrows I wanted to use before.  

Afterwards, I colored everything in separate layers and combined the layers to get this.  I didn’t want to use the street view from the reference photo, and so I started doing cold runs to try and come up with something on my own. 

Here’s what I decided on.  Its basically a pier on a beach, with sand behind it.  The stuff in the back is cement rails.

This is what I got when I tried to figure out what colors I was going to use.  I actually did it in Paint.net, but did the screen capture in Sketchbook Pro.

In Paint.net, I used the straight line tool to make the pier, and used Sketchbook Pro to add the lines via freehand.

And I used the exact same process to do the poles.

This is the rails done in Paint.net.

Here is the beach sand.  I did it in Sketchbook Pro, and those little sand pockets took about 45 minutes to finish.

Here’s the water washing up on the beach.  After my Ninja Turtles picture, I had been trying to figure out how to do water digitally, and this is the first time I actually got it right.

And here is the finished piece.  Everything was combined using Photoshop Elements, but I ran into a different problem.  The dress on the model was supposed to be transparent, but that transparency was established in Sketchbook Pro, and didn’t transfer into Photoshop.  So, I had to make another layer, copy the appropriate colors, and paint over the necessary areas.  The last thing added was the trees in the back, also done in Photoshop.

Curtain Pose

I couldn't think of a better name, and I'd spent so much time trying to come up with one, I fell asleep. So, here goes.

This was the mock up I started in Sketchbook Pro.  The idea was to have curtains being pulled back as the model walked through, of stood in the walk way.  The hair style was a Frohawk, with fat Cornrows on the sides.

Here’s what I got when I started trying to add the details to it.  I had started one before this one, but didn’t like it at all.  With this one, I just stopped and went to sleep, hoping to continue the next day.

When I woke up and looked at the previous pic, after having been awake for three days straight, I’m now seeing it with fresh eyes, and I didn’t like it.  So, I started again, being better rested this time, and here’s what I got.

And here’s how it concluded.  The Frowhawk & Cornrows got replaced by a head wrap, but the basic concept remained the same.  Afterwards, I uploaded the pic into Photoshop, and added the trademark into the background.