Some kiddie character designs

A few sketches of random character designs. Love the immediacy of Painter and digital workflow in general - most of my sketches these days are done straight into a piece of software, so I guess this blog is like flipping through a dog-eared sketchbook!

Noir 2 dee too

So I tried something with this morning's sketch. I loaded a 'medium round dots' paper texture which I got from a 'Painter X Wow!' book CD, and chalked in the grey dots to get some nice shading effects!

The cool thing is I can change the darkness/colour of the chalk I use to get different shades, whilst keeping the same size dots - makes it look a little different.

Old Me

So inspired by this post, http://heroprotagonist.livejournal.com/350365.html I sketched myself as a possible old person as a 'cool down' sketch of a Friday!

Quick sketch this morning using mostly the Bamboo pen tool and digital watercolour.

Plasterface

Quick sketch done this mornin' using the scratchboard tool - I thought I'd try using 'Bristol Board' paper from the 'Painter X Wow!' book CD to see if it makes any difference from using plain ol' basic paper, and I think it does - maybe - still, looks authentically ink on paper-like! (The shading is just a sponge.)

Drag n' Drop

Noir

Ok, so I felt like I was doodling comic art when I should be doing something else in my art class in school when I did this, but it was fun, dammit!

All sorts of pens were in use here: scratchboard tool, sponges, bamboo pens - and I couldn't resist adding a fake halftone pattern to it in Photoshop when I was done.

Only thing about warming up with drawings like this is it makes me want to do it all day instead of what I should be doing... kinda like being in art class in school..!

Old Geezer

Quick sketch of an old man's face. Seems like he should almost be a vulcan, so maybe I'll add pointy ears and tweak his eyebrows a bit next time!

Shark Tub

I had this random image of a shark's fin sticking out of a paddling pool/tub in my head yesterday, so viola! This morning's warm up sketch!

It's three layers, scratchboard tool ink pen on top, watercolour underneath, then I sampled the watercolour layer colours and sketched underneath that with coloured pencils - looks pretty much like what I had in mind!

Charcoal Guitarist

Ah, reminds me of my days watching 'Take Hart', the kids art show on tv back in the 80s, when I was a young 'un! Tony Hart always seemed to be doing these awesome sketches with pastel, chalk or charcoal on coloured paper - I'm still trying to get close to how good I remember those drawings were now!

Does a bear..?

I stumbled upon this great blog http://threemeninatub.blogspot.com/ and thought doing a 'warm up' sketch each day was a great way to get the juices flowing before you begin any major illustration work!

The idea will be to use bold strokes as much as possible, and not worry too much about what I'm actually drawing - then post them on this site, no matter what - NO MATTER WHAT, I tells ya

Doggy!

Quick sketch, using ink and watercolour (well, the 'Scratchboard Tool' and 'Broad Water Brush' in Painter!)

Merry Christmas!

And to one and all a happy new year!

Bears in Ill-fitting Hats

I love online group sketch idea things!

This one is for a group on flickr where you submit bears in ill-fitting hats - my effort is above, and a link to the group is here:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/bears-in-ill-fitting-hats/

This one was a very quick sketch (about 10 mins) in Painter, roughed out with the 2B pencil, 'inked' with the scratchboard tool (found under 'pens') and coloured with oil pastels. A bit of blending with 'just add water', a couple of gradients to fill out the background and I'm done!

Polar Bear Design Sketches

Here's a series of sketches where I had to design a Polar Bear character.
At first I thought it might be quite tricky to come up with enough variations of a polar bear, but done in a simple cartoony style, a long line here and a shorter distance there made all the difference and completely transformed one design to another! It's quite hard to do simple drawings too quickly, as a slip of the pen can alter the look of something too much and end up not looking like the image you were going for.
But I was really happy with the way these turned out, and am getting really comfortable sketching straight into Painter.

My Team Your Team

Have had loads of fun playing this game which I was shown from Kevin Cornell's excellent 'Bearskinrug' site (http://www.bearskinrug.co.uk/). Basically you play with another person and try to come up with superhero types that beat the previous character's skill or power - the more ridiculous the better! This pic is a run of heroes my girlfriend and I did recently.

I found it a nice way to relax and doodle, and you tend to come up with characters that you wouldn't otherwise think of doing. Give it a whirl!