More progress

Here is some more progress fleshing out the foreground.

Let's just say painting garbage bags is a pain in the ass. They're simple yet there is a lot of subtly in there key lights and if you don't paint it right, it can look really off. 

My goal is to finish this tomorrow night hopefully. 

Something new I'm working on...

I know I haven't updated here in a long time. That's mainly because I've been meaning to redesign this site for a long time but there never seems to be enough time to do everything.

I did finally redesign my portfolio website (www.iantopple.com). I'm happy with the result and have started looking for another job. I'm grateful for the job I have now but I feel like I've outgrown it a bit and want to look for something with better creative opportunities and responsibilities. I've had some interviews but so far no luck. We'll see what happens.

I've also decided to redo my facebook header. This is what I've been currently working on.

I don't understand why blogger gets rid of some of the contrast. The foreground is supposed to be darker and the bg is a little bit lighter. Anyway, I'm liking the direction this is going in. The animals I have sketched in will be mutated rats I think.

During this process, it really has been a journey and where it's going is certainly better than what I thought it would be. When this is finished, I'll post the result.

Working progress...

Here's the working progress of the image so far.

I realized I had to redraw the girl a bunch of times in order to get her right. I'm finally happy with how she came out.

I realize now after looking at it that I will probably need to fix the shadows and make them look more like they did in the color thumbnail. They look too long for the time of day I'm going for.

I wanted to try something new and get out of my comfort zone for a change. Children book illustration has crossed my mind so I wanted to give it a try. I also haven't really painted any outdoor scenes before because I was too afraid. It sounds stupid but there is a lot to think about when you are painting an outdoor scene, not dimension I had to use perspective and cast shadows. For some reason cast shadows scared me. 

While working on it, I'm not sure if this what I want to do be doing. It was definitely challenging and I've been learning a lot from it but I think I really need to figure out what it is "I" really like drawing.

We'll see what happens. My goal is to finish this by the weekend. 

Color comp

Here is a color comp for the next illustration I'm working on. I plan on starting the real thing either tomorrow or later tonight.

New illustration in the works

I'm working on a new illustration. It's a little girl riding a pentaceratops in a suburban neighborhood. I'm going to really focus on getting my perspective and lighting better this time. I did some studies below of the general lighting that I want. 

Below is a thumbnail that I liked for the new illustration. Things might be hard to tell now because it's so small but it will be clearer as I work on it. The little blob on top of the pentaceratops will be the child and the little blob to the bottom right of it will be a person walking a dog in shock of what he sees.

What I learned from my finished illustration. Side Note: This blog needs to be redesigned.

At last I finished it.

Yes I know. It has some problems. This is what I learned from this experience:

I should never be lazy about perspective ever EVER again.  

I kind of had a feeling that the perspective was somewhat off in the beginning stages but I never bothered to fix it. Why? Because I was lazy. I thought maybe I could pull it off and no one would notice. Wrong. That was just dumb of me. I should have taken the time to put down my horizon line and vanishing points and did it the proper way like I have in the past. Next time, I will put down that effen horizon line.

Spent more time figuring out the light source.

I sort of fudged the light source too. There is no definite light source. I was confused about where to put my light source because I wanted it to be overall a cloudish night so there wouldn't be any harsh lighting. I guess I should have invested more time in figuring out how other artists tackled this issue.

Come up with a better composition. 

The composition should have been changed to make the mouse and rat more the focus. This was something I struggled with. I tried doing it here with the contrast but the mouse and rat are hard to see. I had another idea for the composition but I couldn't get it right. Yesterday as I was resketching composition ideas for this, I finally got it right. Why did it take this long? I don't know but over the course I was working on this, I have been getting better at composition anyway. 


Those are the main things I learned from this. Deep down, I really just wanted to draw some cats and that was the toughest part for me. I was trying really hard to get the anatomy right and make sure the cats were drawn well. I must have redrawn them a million times until they looked right. That's what took me the longest too. I like how the cats came out and I learned a lot more about animal anatomy. 

I still like it regardless of the issues and plan on redoing it in the future.  

On a side note, I have to redesign this blog. I know I can design it better so I really need to take some time and do that. The problem is is that I have a million other things to do and don't really have the time. I'm also lazy. It may take a while until you see a new layout soon. 
 

It's getting there...

This is still taking too long but I like the direction this is going in. Hoping to finally get this completed.

I also did some fun sketches on the side and just playing around.