The Fox and the Crow

For an Illustration project we had to draw a series of three pictures illustrating an Aesops fable.

I chose the story called "The Fox and the Crow"

Enjoy!

The Count of Monte Cristo book cover

(Originally posted on March 23rd 2013)

My illustration project was to do a book cover for the Count of Monte Cristo, as I hadn’t read the book I decided to watch the movie and then scan the book for interesting scenes.
Here are some pages from my sketchbook:

Tonal composition thumbnails

Rough colour sketches

Messing about with composition

I had decided to do my final piece in watercolour, but I had troubles with stretching the paper and then ran out of sheets! So I had to settle with acrylic and oil on canvas. 

I started with a sketch and then filled in the colours with acrylic as they're quick drying.

Not a fan of acrylics, but they are handy.

I then finished the painting off using oils.

All that is left is to scan the image and add text using photoshop.

Ink and Watercolour Drawings

(Originally posted March 23rd 2013)

A few of my pictures from my watercolour sketchbook:

Monty the Falcon

Tigers, copied from an issue of national geographic.

Colour Studies

(Originally posted on March 4th 2013)

My task for this week was to paint the same image three times, using a different limited colour scheme. I started by doing a digital sketch to work out the tones.

Then I started painting in acrylic, the first picture I did I tried to use a “normal” palette, with green for the grass etc. To limit my palette I used a gamut mask, this online gamut mask was very useful.

I wasn’t very happy with how I painted this picture, I feel that I need more practice with acrylics. Regardless, I carried on, next using a warm palette.

Then I went on to using a cold palette.

Colour wise this is my favourite one.

Although I was unhappy with my painting skill, I realize I am still learning, and that I have actually created three images with very different moods.

League of Legends Preseason Three Digi-Art Contest

(Originally posted on Feb 9th 2013)

  I decided to practice my digital art by entering a contest that is being held at the moment, the League of Legends Digi-Art Throwdown.

Digi Art Throwdown page.

  The contest stated that the picture must include at least one character and one new object from the game, I decided on the icy bird called Anivia and a staff called Seraphs Embrace.

  First I set about drawing a sketch of what the pose of the bird would be.

Then I cleaned up the drawing by adding a second layer and tracing my sketch to get what is called a lineart.

I then decided to change the composition to a landscape one and added some basic colours and a rough background, I also changed the colour of the lineart

 I then created another layer, one which I like to call the “overpaint” layer, on this layer I added extra detail to refine the picture. I also created a layer which I called the “glow” layer, on this layer I used a colour dodge brush to create the glowing of the staff and the reflections on the crystals. I added some snow on a separate layer using a round brush with a motion blur filter and the warp transform tool. Some more fog was added to give more atmosphere.

I finally used adjustment layers to change the hue, saturation and levels of the picture until I was pleased with the result.

A higher quality version of the image can be found here.

Hello there!

 So I decided to relocate to Blogger as Wordpress was starting to annoy me. I will be re-posting all of my previous posts and hopefully be more active with my blog as I don't have to struggle with the ridiculous interface that Wordpress offers!