Illustration Tutorials and Tips for the Traditional and Digital Artist - Monster Cutie » Sketches

Monstrous Nintendo DS Sketch

Jamie — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:33:42 +0000

Here’s a quick demon sketch done entirely on my Nintendo DS. The program is a homebrew application called Colors! The DS is pressure sensitive and Colors! records every brush stroke so you can output timelapse movies to upload. Love it.[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=acmil026dTI[/youtube]

I started with a loose silhouette to define the overall shape and personality of the demon. With character design, it’s always a good idea to establish a strong silhouette. A strong silhouette instantly communicates the personality of your character with just a quick glance. I probably could have pushed the silhouette further.

Once the silhouette was established, I started filling in the details. Mike Lavalee of Killer Paint came up with the slogan “Wide to tight, dark to light” when painting his True Fire kustom paint work, a phrase that applies perfectly to digital and traditional painting. Wide to tight means starting out with broad, wide strokes working increasingly smaller to build up details. Dark to light means starting out with darker colors gradually building up shape and detail with increasingly lighter colors.

I kind of wussed out on the feet. I realized too late that my initial silhouette didn’t leave room for proper legs. So I painted in some fog to cover my oversight.

Lots of fun with the DS! If you’ve got one, I highly recommend Colors!

Fwoggy Cutie

Jamie — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:11:48 +0000

A quick sketch done with Sharpie Poster Paint markers. Unlike regular Sharpie markers, these guy won’t bleed. And you can’t get high off of the fumes. You can get quite a lot of coverage with just one marker. They’re also great for painting DIY custom vinyl toys.

The pencil lines don’t show up all that well from this distance. I may have to zoom in some more for future tapings. This was about eleven minutes of work time-lapsed down to a little over three and a half.

Logan vs. Manji

Jamie — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 19:36:40 +0000

This is a quick sketch that I recorded for a feature on Angry Zen Master called Super Geek Wars where I pit characters from different franchises against each other in singles combat. Readers vote on who they think would win in a no holds barred fight. This particular sketch features Logan, Wolverine, from the X-Men comics and Manji from Blade of the Immortal.

The sketch starts out very loose. I use a combination of brushes to build up texture all in gray scale. When I’ve worked the sketch to decent enough state, color is added on layers above the gray scale sketch. This workflow is similar to traditional water color and acrylic painters who use thin layers of color to build up their forms. To finish everything off, the sketch is flattened and color corrected. Highlights are worked in with the dodge tool. Color gradients are overlaid to tone the entire composition. That image gets flattened again and duplicated for the blur effect.