Making Ofs

 I don't have much to show right now but OH WELL. I filled my sketchbook with 30 second sketches (I got over 1000 in the end haha) and I think I will move on to 1 minute sketches now.
Well let's get to the actual content.
This is the Queen of Rats (ACEO #44), an original character of mine. As you can see that during working on this I decided to go for a more unhealthy, unappealing look this time.
I also used masking fluid as you can see in step 2 and 3, which still scares me. Worked well on this paper though.

And I drew Starscream from Transformers Prime. and if you don't know it and are willing to get past some lame first episodes, you should check it out, it's a lot of fun.
This painting isn't accurate at all...I wanted to see how fast I can finish this and it took me like 4 or 5 hours, which is not bad for me. I worked without outlines this time, and I have to say its a lot of fun :> especially with colored sketches, it adds some nice random color.

Mixed everything

Back from the Leipziger Buchmesse :> I had a great time. Artwise, linoleum prints happened~ They had a stand where children could try it on linoleum meant for floors and my friends and I decided to consider ourself kids for this.

Happy plaguedoctor is happy.

The grunt, a monster from the game Amnesia - The Dark Descent. Lovingly dubbed flappie.

It was kind of funny seeing Flappie between those prints haha.

I had tons of fun with this, so I'm considering getting myself some equipment for linoleum cuts :> I'd love to do a more elaborate one, on GOOD linoleum. Well there is only so much you can do in half an hour.

ALSO

I SAW THE FIRST EPISODE OF LEGEND OF KORRA.

And being a BIG FAN of Avatar: the Last Airbender, it got me ridiculously excited. Seriously, if you haven't seen Avatar, check it out. If you have seen Avatar, watch Legend of Korra.

I mean damn look at that badass.

Btw, Korra is drawn on one of the less homogeneous pages in my sketchblog.

For my 30 seconds gesture sketches I started drawing them with brushpens, to reduce the lines I'm using.

And now for something completely different...

Back in 2009 I was working with a bunch of other artists to compile a book that made songs from the german band Subway to Sally into comics and guess what - it's finally there : D

You can either get it at the Leipziger Buchmesse this week or preorder it online at amazon.com :>

What I love most about this book is how different the styles are and the unusual format of using black and white and one signal color:

NEAT

Here's another sample page of my entry :> I might have done it in 2009, but I am still very proud of how it turned out. While my shading and anatomy would be better now, I don't think I would be able to draw better ships hahaha.

That actually took the longest - looking for accurate reference (both ships in the story are based on ships that existed and they both have their own relevance to what is happening in my comic) and learning how to draw ships.

more tiny steps

Basically I just wanted to mark this day, since I reached 500 30-second sketches now :>

go for the stars, green man

I did the last 300 gestures from posemaniacs.com so I think I will switch back to stockphotos for a while.

Played with watercolor a little too (both unfinished):

Chalys

Nroci

 On the one on the left I tried to use a slightly different style - more wet in wet, less glazes and no outlines. It's a lot of fun! I also tested my Pentel Aquabrush on this. It's a nylonbrush with a watertank inside. For painting glazes it's a little too uncontrollable for me, but it's awesome for wetting areas before painting on them and stuff like this. I will get the other two sizes as well I think.
The one on the left was just the inkwash for painting over it, but I'm very dissatisfied with the finished product so...THIS IS ALL YOU GET.
I guess.

And since I started watching Todd in the Shadow's Pop Song reviews, I decided to draw a little fanart for that (seriously who can resist painting silhouettes...)

In which we combine science and art!

Well, not really. But that post I made earlier about how horribly wrong using Ecoline in combination with alcohol can go made me want to compare the three main types of colors I use: watercolor, ink and ecoline.

This is not a very scientific test since I only used one sample, didn't measure time and amounts and had slightly varied conditions but uh IS IT POSSIBLE I MISS BEING IN THE LABORATORY A LITTLE...

Pink shade: watercolor (Schmincke Horadam as cake to be exact. This only gives a rough estimate of how watercolor behaves since i found it does not only depend on the brand you are using or whether it comes in tubes or as cake, but also on the pigment itself. I have found that "earthlike tones" as sienna and umbra are usually more saturated with pigment and much more opaque than "artificial tones" such as phtalo blue)

Blue shade: Ecoline (liquid watercolor)

violet shade: waterproof ink (Rohrer und Klingner Zeichentusche)

paper: heavy watercolorpaper (300 mgs, I don't know what it would be in lbs sorry :c), coldpressed

(cut because this got kind of long)

What are torsos?

Hey ich hätte mal ne Frage an die deutschsprachigen Leser, die mir so folgen - ist english only okay oder wünscht ihr euch die Beiträge bilingual? Bis jetzt hab ich stets auf englisch geschrieben weil ich mir eben dachte dass ich eher davon ausgehen kann dass jemand english kann als davon dass jemand deutsch kann, aber mir ist aufgefallen dass ein Großteil meines Publikums aus Deutschland kommt, von daher |D

OH WELL
when in doubt I will continue writing english entries.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I decided to practice drawing since I'm not satisfied where I am right now artwise. To be honest, I never really practiced before...kind of sad.

Anyway, I might need to study a lot at the moment, but 30 second sketches don't take very long and are the first step to improving figure drawing (for me).

I am physically unable to not write stupid things on my sketches

Doing these I realized that the torso is the most important piece in figure drawing. Yeah that is probably the first thing you learn in art school but I never had any schooling so bear with my very basic epiphanies :D

So I started practicing how to place ribcages and hips (all of these are from reference)

I also finished a portrait commission :>
This was fun, I love using red and cool blues together aaah!