Entering my First Compatition

I entered an online art competition on Instagram its the first time I have ever done any thing like this. Each week the Instagram account magnificent.art runs a competition with a theme and last weeks theme was Anime and manga. Now I have been a fan of anime since before it was called anime and on of my favorite series  in recent years has been bleach. so I figured lets have a go at drawing Ichigo.

I found a reference drawing for the pose on google images but he was wearing his hollow mask so i found other pictures of his face and practiced by drawing a close up version of his head and colouring it with pro-markers to get an idea of the colours I would need for the finished piece. I have posted my close up of Ichigos face on my Instagram account if you would like to have a look. Just follow the link on the left.

I got to try out a new pen that I had bought for the inking which was a Faber-castell Pitt pen with a brush tip. I like how it allows me to be able to vary the thickness of my lines in on stroke depending on how much pressure I apply and the angle at which I hold the pen. 

I bought a dark grey pro-marker especial to colour his clothes as I thought it would be better than just coloring the whole outfit in black which would have ended up rather flat.

In the end I posted the full version on the competition page 5 days before the deadline and received 182 likes and 2 comments which was a far cry from winning but was by no means the worst performing piece. 

I think I will enter more competitions on Instagram  its nice to expose my work to a larger demographic to see how it is taken and compare my work with others to see how I need to improve and where I am doing ok.

What do you think to my Ichigo drawing I think his face looks a bit odd especial around the mouth but I do like the pose.

Classic Harley Quinn Art Project

Last year I bought a book called How to Draw Batman, Superman and other DC heroes and Villains. I have already posted one of my favorite drawings from this in my last post in the form of Super Girl. 

some time last year Suicide Squad came out at the pictures and everyone was drawing Harley Quinn from the movie. I thought to myself I need to jump on this band wagon so I got out my book How to Draw Batman, Superman and other DC heroes and Villains and had a go at the tutorial to draw Harley Quinn in her classic outfit from the animated Batman series in the 90s. (in my opinion still the best representation of batman on screen and don't get me started on Mark Hamill's take on the joker, absolutely excellent) anyway I set off on the tutorial of Harley Quinn with her iconic hammer and totally cocked it up. The pose was wrong and her face was terrible. So I scrapped it and decided to practice her face. 

And you know what? the face turned out pretty good so good i though I'd add some colour. Then I put it away and moved on to what ever drama my 3 year old son was causing and totally forgot about the drawing. 

Harley Quinn Pencil Body

Fast forward to a week ago when I was looking through some of my drawings for my 2016 round up blog post and I found Harley's head and thought she deserves a body. So once I had a bit of spare time, which is generally laid in bed while my wife writes in her diary, I grabbed my 2H pencil and got drawing. 

I decided to make up my own pose because the pose in the book wouldn't make sense with the room I had left on the paper (you wouldn't be able to see her hammer). unfortunate I didn't take any pics of the stick position I made I was a bit to enthusiastic to  flesh her out. 

Google is a great referencing tool so I was straight onto google images to find out how her costume works and I also found a reference for her gun. 

Added Inks

 My inking skills are a bit basic and I want to work on getting my line work to look a bit more exciting but that's a task for another day. So my basic lines are inked in the next night and thank fully I get the weekend to add some colour.

Harley Quinn in technicolour 

Most of the reference material I found just had flat colour but I was a bit worried that she might look a bit odd if her right hand boob just disappear in flat black so I added some highlights to the blacks and some shade to the reds. I'm proud of how it turned out because I pretty much played it by ear and the feel of how it should look.

My final obstacle was the colour of the gun because I didn't have an appropriate promarker colour so I hunted through my art draw and found a metallic coloured pencil I got with draw the marvel way and it worked a treat although you cant tell that its metallic even in real life.

And so ends my 4th blog post I know I still have a lot more to learn and I'm still not sure I'm uploading content that anyone is interested in so if you have any comments or addvice for me please just leave a comment below. 

Thank you and see ya later.

My Favorite Drawings of 2016 Cont.

We left off last time with a picture of Ariel the little mermaid and keeping on the sea creature theme I loved drawing the picture below. This is another tutorial from Steve Beaumonts book How to draw fantasy art. My interpretation of the subject turned out to be more cartoony than the actual tutorial but cartoony is pretty much the style I like. I think she looks like a Bratz doll only with tentacles. 

This was the first time I had done a pose which was slightly erotic and I did enjoy the process of creating the pose.

Octopus Girl

My next pick is an old favorite of mine. when I was a kid I loved drawing Sonic the Hedgehog and I got pretty good at him. so for nostalgia's sake I though I would give him another go. I used various reference images found on google to get a look I liked. All in all this drawing didn't take all that long from sketching to inking to colouring may have taken only an hour spread over 3 nights.

Sonic the Hedgehog 

 During the summer I went on my first family holiday with my wife and three year old son. we went to Great Yarmouth and I thought I could do loads of drawing. It turns out that going on holiday with a three year old does not leave much spare time for drawing, but I did manage to start and finish another tutorial from Draw the Marvel Way. Arch vial of the Hulk, Abomination. I think this is my first ever attempt at drawing a monstrous creature and you know what I pretty sure it won't be my last. I found the for shortening of this drawing particularly difficult and I not sure I have total pulled it off but luckily I had quite a few green pro-markers with which I managed to give a good finish.

Abomination

I was browsing the same discount shop where i found the how to draw fantasy characters when I found How to Draw Batman, Superman and Other DC Super Heroes and Villains. I was a big fan of Batman the animated series back in the 90s and this book used the same style so I had to buy it. 

My favorite thing I have attempted from this book so far has been super girl I loved the flight pose. I had to use both pro-markers and coloured pencils to add the colour because my marker collection is still very limited. The hardest parts were the hands I practiced these over and over on a separate sheet but I think it paid off.

Super Girl

The final piece I was really proud of in 2016 was my attempt at a realistic eye. I had been researching how to improve my eyes and the same advice kept cropping up. Learn how to draw realistic first so you know each component of the eye when it comes to drawing stylised and cartoon eyes. So i did just that I know I need more practice but this exercise has helped me when drawing eyes.

Eye

So those are my fave pieces from 2016. If you have popped over from Instagram you have probably seen these but I think its nice to add a bit of background here and maybe open the a way to communicate easier. So if you have any comments please feel free to post them any tips on improving would be greatly appreciated.