Yeah?!?

Farewell winter

I know there'll still be plenty of cold spells before summer arrives in Canberra, but anyway...

A-Z

Ashwin berated cranberries decisively, elegantly flouting grotesque harmonies inside jubilant, keratin luminosity. Methodically, Nathan opened prismatic quorums, relentlessly stupefying transfigured undercarriages, violently waggling xenophobic, yelling zealots.

More

A random selection from this week's drawings:

Bunch

I've been working hard to re-establish a drawing routine the past week. So far I've drawn on 8 of the past 9 days, which already makes 3 days more than the first 6 months of this year :) Here's a sample of the output:

Graduate

Sitting

Sweep

Colourful run

Return

Fulfilling a promise made to both myself and a friend, here's my first new drawing in too many months. Nothing exciting, just a very quick sketch, but hopefully signals the start of something :)

Tom Waits

Krafty Komic - Part 4

Krafty Komic - Part 3

Krafty Komic - Part 2

Now that I've whet your appetite, here's the second instalment:

Krafty Komic - Part 1

Back in 2010, when I was young and full of inspiration, I created a birthday comic for my good friend B. Never before seen by anyone else, but requested by one whole other person, this is the first exciting instalment of:

Dunno

Shade only

Process

I didn't want to clutter my latest collaboration contribution with how-did-I, so I'm covering it here instead. This might be the most complex image I've put together, comprising three different photos and hand-drawn elements.

First up, I took a couple of night shots and combined them using a layer mask to let the moon shine through. Both shots were taken the same night, but I couldn't get crater detail and the cloud haze in the same shot. Not a very smooth transition, but since I was aiming for something a little unreal it works OK.

Next, I took a daytime shot (from a completely different location) and again used a filter mask to clear out room for the night sky (much more fiddly than just a circle selection this time!). I applied various filters to make it look a bit more night-y. I also cloned Lily out of the shot.

I started with a very rough sketch to ensure there was some depth in the shot. That boxy camera stuck around most of the way through, but I found it an unneeded distraction.

Miriam and Alice got a makeover and moved much closer the foreground to emphasise the depth. I used a combo of different reference shots (mostly basketballers) to get suitable action poses:

Finally, I moved the moon further out from the trees (as easy as dragging that layer a bit more to the right - I love layers!), drew my version of Liv's 3D monster, with a textured brush for fur-like shading, and voila!

All up this took a few hours, since I had to relearn the GIMP functionality for layer masks, try out different filters and do the drawing itself, including painting in white behind the sketch to make it visible, since I always draw on a transparent layer. Absorbing, tiring, and I'm very pleased with the result :)

Grammar

"That's great It! What is it?"

"It's my thing!"

"So, it's It's thing?"

"That's right!"

Collab

I've just started a new creative collaboration with Liv, which will gradually take shape here. Not at all sure what this unconstrained-multimedia-mashup-team-up will end up being, and that's the joy of it :)