Magical peoples part 2 - painting

here's the finished product. did the paint in Photoshop Elements, kept it simple. for this look i made lots of layers. here it is broken down:

1. take the original drawing, put that in the top layer. make sure to change the layer's attribute from "normal" to "multiply". this will allow you to paint all you want underneath, and the drawing still shows thru. all of the other layers can be left on normal.

2. background layer, the bottom-most layer.

3. flat color layer. just to get the basic color scheme in. looks like a painted animation cell at this point.
4. highlights layer. think of your lights and darks as shapes. know where your light source is coming from!
5. shadows layer. same as the lights!

6. effects layer. this made it easier for me, as if i messed up any of the "lightning", i could erase without touching the rest of the drawing.
7. glow layer. just a few glowy touches to finish her off! (see the first image again)

this isn't really a guideline on how anyone should work...just how i approach a project like this. this was a fun few days of work! hope that these past few posts helped if you're looking for a process of digital painting.

Magical peoples part 2 - clean up drawing

so here's our girly with the lines all cleaned up....i did this in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. it's a great drawing program and you can get incredibly clean lines with it. i like Photoshop, but the lines don't have nearly the same quality for stuff like this. basically, took the original drawing, created another layer over it, and went over it to create a new drawing. the trick to cleaning up a drawing is not to just 'trace' your original drawing. keeping the line quality, and keeping life in the drawing with one clean line is not as easy to do as it would seem. i had some practice at this stuff when i worked at Calabash Animation (for an illustrious 3 week stint!) as a clean-up animator. tricky!

Magical peoples part 2 - rough sketch

here's a quick, messy drawing i did today for some friends that i play games with. you can see how many times i went over the same drawing to get it right. looks pretty rough right now, eh? i wanted to scan in the original drawing without cleaning it up, and do a series on how it ends up all crisp-lined and colored.

Snow monster with color

here he is with color...this may be my Christmas card this year....

Ava vs. The Grumpy Santa

Here's a very bad scan of a very cute picture of my little niece....hereby dubbed as "The Happiest Baby Ever!". I mean, come on. If a baby can look that happy while sitting on the lap of a Santa that cross-looking, she has to be something special!

snow monsters

snowmen can just be so mundane...

was gonna color this but my wacom tablet pooped out again. *sigh* guess i'm just gonna have to buy that cintiq monitor, eh?

Raggedy Ann and Andy!

For this week's drawergeeks! i tried something a little different with this one, and i have decided that photoshop is not good for getting clean, crisp lines. but what the heck...this was a fun assignment and i like the cheerful colors.

3 o'clock meetings

why oh why do people schedule meetings at 3 in the afternoon? right when i'm at my sleepiest? and the only way i know how to reduce the number of times my head bobs noticeably forward is to open my eyes as wide as i can and keep fidgeting. so i probably look pretty scary in these meetings..... i need more coffee...


also, woke up this morning to more snow! huzzah! it's a pretty pathetic dusting compared to Edinboro, PA snows.... but from what i hear Portland hardly ever gets snow, so i'll be happy with any. here's a few pictures of our little community with the snow this morning. the first is our "backyard". i liked the way that little juniper looked with snow on it. gets me in the Christmas spirit!


Jingle actually liked the snow...now she keeps begging to go outside.

Here's a picture from our front porch.

work in progress...

here's something i'm working on for this week's drawergeeks. raggedy ann and andy!

thanksgiving here was awesome and we had a bunch of good friends come visit. we also had a ton of food....i don't think i'll want turkey for a long time. well, at least not until christmas anyway.

also, it snowed today in portland! hooray for snow! i was rather giddy as we drove home thru a gorgeous snowfall. maybe we'll put up our christmas lights tonight!

magical peoples..in color!

had time to color it tonight :)

magical peoples

this little gnome guy is about to teach you a lesson. or maybe he's happy. i dunno. it's hard to tell what he's thinking with those big glasses on.

these boots are made for walkin'

saw this girl at the arcade in Portland this weekend with the coolest big boots. so i drew her.

i was gonna color it but my tablet decided to stop working tonight. bah! hopefully i can get it working again.

secret agent...um...penguin

i drew this today while thinking about 2 movies that came out that i'd like to see - Happy Feet and Casino Royale. so i made a silly bond-esque penguin.

i was presented with the opportunity to work on Happy Feet earlier this year and wanted to take it, but it came at the most inconvienient time possible, and i had to turn it down. i would've loved the chance to live in Sydney, Australia for a while.

...what comes after Q, mateys??

AAARRRR, pirates!

I had a dream the other night that I was kidnapped by pirates. But they weren't too happy because I thought it was totally cool that I had been kidnapped by pirates. I have wierd dreams.

meh...

fixed my funky werewolf's arm and painted it....i think it looks so-so. i need to learn how to give things nicer color.

Jawas!

i think those things in the first star wars movie that said, "bee-deep!" were called jawas. i was always highly amused by them. i got to thinking that if they lived as scavengers in the desert, they probably all wouldn't be wearing the same thing. why have a company uniform when you're ripping off lost droids? so i made up some of my own today.

the one is pointing to a droid or something, and the one in the middle is getting ready to zap it. at least, that's how i see the scene playing out. this was so much fun to do that i thinks i might try to paint it.

Sleeping in...

Got back from an exhausting but very fun trip. It was worth it, but I'd really love to sleep for about 4 days straight now.

Wedding Bells!

I'm off on a trip to the opposite coast for my sister-in-law Jackie's wedding. Congratulations and God Bless, Jackie!

Queen of the Nile

my sister told me that she once had a student in her class named Nefertiti...and her nickname was Nefi. i thought that was really cute.

ps. joe asked me what she was sitting on. i told him, "i dunno...a big bean bag?" this is just the way the drawing came out. i don't think about it too hard. :)

Rainy season

Portland is in it's full blown rainy season now. actually, it's more so than normal, as the rainy season usually consists of a constant drizzle whereas today it was pouring. of course, today was the day i forgot my lunch and had to run down the street to get something to eat on my lunch hour. i learned that i should always carry an umbrella in my car and that wet jeans are really uncomfortable to work in all day. i think i'm gonna go to the bus stop and wait for Totoro to come and visit me.

Who's afraid of the....

the next topic of drawergeeks is werewolves, which i'm kinda excited about. because once again, it's something i normally wouldn't draw. i get sucked into drawing all kinds of cutesy girly crap if i don't think about my doodling. here are two i drew yesterday....the first one i really liked till i screwed up his arm. what the heck happened to that arm? i think maybe it got mangled in a fight.

the second came out better, but still pretty rough. i usually have to draw things like this about 5 or 6 times before i get one i like anyway. well, i have two weeks to screw up a whole bunch more before i get a good one!

more Mii

joe and i are going crazy with the Mii creator today. we made a bunch of our friends after we made ourselves. here's another one i did while work was slow. guess who this is...

to see joe's go to www.greendude.com

This's awesome....

I checked out my friend Andrew Burke's blog today, and he had a section on the Wii system's Mii character creation. it was so much fun to make my Wii avatar. i can't wait to sii what nintendo does with this system, it looks really good so far.

you can check out Andrew's website at http://www.3dburke.com/

Monster Madness!

Here's the newest one for drawergeeks.com - the wolfman!!! arrr!!! click the image above for a bigger version. the assignment was to take a kid's drawing and make a painting of it, keeping as true to the original as possible. with the limited version of photoshop i have, this was what i came up with. at first i thought it was pretty cool...then i didn't like it. then i thought it was ok again. now i'm not sure what to think. eh, whatever, it was loads of fun to do!

Bird shapes

I have an interest in birds at the moment. the fat peep looking one was my favorite today.

Happy Halloween!

Go stuff yourselves with lots of sugar!

Halloween in the North

if you grew up in the north...you know how annoying it is as a kid to have a cool costume all picked out only to have your mom ruin it by making you put on a winter coat and scarf and moon boots over it. how am i supposed to be a fairy/superhero/whatever with a coat covering it up??!?!?

Just Cloud...

Just got around to Cloud tonight...i thought he was a much stronger drawing than Seph anyway.

Sephiroth vs. Cloud

I liked this game. I didn't like the movie so much.

Final Fantasy 7 had a lot of great characters that I used to draw a lot back when it came out. Cloud is fun to draw because of his crazy hair. And I always thought Seph was one of the best bad guys ever. I'm gonna try to give this a little color tomorrow.

Mermaids!

I cheated today because I didn't have time....this one was for an old drawergeeks. I was pretty pleased with my drawing that week. That's rare for me :)

Happy Cat

I'm amazed at how many shapes a cat can get into. They're kinda like a slinky. They can be all compact one minute and stretched out the next.

My favorite cat pose is one that I call "fuzzy lump". My cat Jingle can usually be found laying around like this outside of my bedroom most mornings, no limbs to be seen. Just a gray fuzzy lump of a cat body. Sometimes she even curls her tail around her feet to make herself more of a lump. And she almost always looks supremely happy when laying around like this.

Ahhhh....to be as comfortable as a cat.

Cross-checking

i went to see a hockey game tonight for the first time in a long time. the portland winter hawks vs. the medicine hat tigers!!!!.....portland lost. :(

i used to play roller hockey as a kid because it was the only kind of hockey i could afford. ice hockey is way expensive for a redneck kid from the woods of pennsylvania. it was tons of fun and i got to play with my brothers and even my sister in one league. i stunk at scoring goals and usually played defense, and our team lost most of our games, but i miss it.

Fatmunk

Joe loves chipmunks. they're his favorite animal. it's not uncommon for us to go on a hike in the woods and hear him yell, "CHIPPY!!!" and run off. so today's post is dedicated to him.

we had a conversation one time about how funny it would be to see a fat chipmunk. and not just chubby...we're talking obese. i've seen some plump chipmunks, like the ones we used to feed peanut butter to when i worked at camp as a teenager. but never have i seen a really really REALLY fat one. i think it would be hilarious.

Jack without lines...

I kinda like the way he looks without the line drawing...creepier!

Jack, the Pumpkin King!

or, maybe small childlike prince. who likes to trick or treat for lots of candy.

WOWAA

"Hello, my name is Michelle....and i'm addicted to World of Warcraft..."

Here is a quick drawing of one of my characters from the game, Snipermish. Yes, clever name. I know. I just thought she would be fun to draw.

The Grim, now in technicolor!

Finally got around to coloring this guy....got a lot of tips from artist extrodinaire Joe. Think it came out alright since I usually suck at painting. To drawergeeks it goes!

muuuuch better....

here's a much better self portrait that i think i'll use rather than the last one. now i shall stop being so self-absorbed and quit drawing myself.

The Pirate Fairy!

A character from my story that i've been trying to rework....i've called him Aidan for a long time but really thought that name never fit. he has a 'legitimate' shipping service that Sierra, Kai and Phoenix catch a ride on in one point of the story. i was trying to capture his very very self assured personality in this drawing.

The Grimmm

Here's a sketch i did today for drawergeeks of the grim reaper. i'm hoping to get some color on this bad boy sometime this weekend. i'm actually pretty pleased how this came out and i hope my awful coloring skills don't ruin it.

sketching time

so, i figured the best way to keep me drawing and keep people telling me what i'm doing wrong/right is to start a sketch blog...so here it goes. here's the first official one. just a quick one of Sierra.

drawings!

did a quick and stupid looking self portrait tonight...i think i need to practice drawing some more...

Portland!

finally mostly settled in Portland, Oregon. wow, what a fantastic city! so much better than dallas. the drive across the country was fun, the first couple of homeless weeks in the city were a blast! got to see a lot of the sights around the city, (saturday market, rose gardens, japanese gardens, multnomah falls...). and finally got a really nice place to live close to walking trails and starbucks. i think i can settle in here for a while. i hope...

ho-hum....moving time again

well, it's finally happening. we're moving out of texas, at the worst possible time we can! hurrah! our stupid apartment (which you can find here http://www.moveforfree.com/apartments/texas/irving/Vistas,at,Hackberry,Creek.html )
is basically kicking us out due to the fact that they want to renovate the older apartments, which me and my husband just happen to occupy. no mercy for the unemployed. and while we have prospective job offers, there are no definate job offers, so it looks like we're unemployed and homeless now too. they told us we could sign another lease at a different apartment in the same complex, but it could be no shorter than 3 months. so....we'd have to move, get a job out of state, move again, break the lease, pay the thousands of dollars it costs to break the lease....um, no thanks. soooooo....we're gonna drive around for a while in our car in the horrible heat with a yowling cat and wait for a good phone call. and because of the time frame of the move, i'm missing a dear friends' wedding. thanks a lot, stupid apartment complex!

so, for those of you thinking of moving to irving, texas....stay away from this apartment complex!

free time and fish funerals

so here i am, in week 3 of being laid off. is it wrong that i'm loving it way too much? i mean, sleeping in until noon almost everyday, going to the pool, playing waaaaay to many video games....is that bad? i'm sure i'll be sick of it in a little bit and feel like getting back to work and not sitting around the apartment in my pajamas until 3pm. but MAN does it feel great now. not that i'm being 100% lazy anyway. i've been getting my website together and applying for jobs. i just hope that i have a little more time before any of those places call back.

in other news my pet beta fish of 2 1/2 years, Pip, died this week. he'd been looking sickly for a few weeks and i'd been trying any and all of the store medicines for betas to no avail. i don't attach myself to things very easily, but it was sad when he died. i tell myself he was just a fish and they can only be helped so much when they get sick and they die so easily. but he'd been my pet for a long time, and he was right beside me at work for over 2 years. so my husband and i had a flushing ceremony and spoke a few words about him. then he went where all the good fish go......that big toilet bowl in the sky. or something like that.

movin' on

so my husband and i just found out that our department at work is 'downsizing'....which basically means that we'll be out of work in may. this wasn't too much of a shock, and we were prepared for it, but it's still not too nice to hear. i love my job, and i adore the people i work with. but if there's one good thing about it, it's that this gives us the chance to get the heck outta dallas. now, for those of you who are from texas and think it's God's great gift to the USA, i'm sorry. but after i had a few things to think about what this layoff means to me, i was actually pretty excited to get out of the state. dallas really has beeen the worst place i've ever lived in my life. the city is dirty, and for about 9 months out of the year i feel like i'm trying to cope with living in the oven. and that oven is baking all the dirt and smog and SMELL all around me and into me. you never want to go outside. even if you have a pool, it gets so warm around july that it's like swimming in old bathwater. and i miss snow. good heavens, how i miss snow!!!

so, i will miss the job. and i will miss the people so much. but texas....so long. i don't care if i never see you again!