Ink on paper sketch: T.O.T.O. Warfare

Circa 1990. Ink on paper.

“TOTO” was an acronym I dreamed up for “Terminate On Target Ordinance”. In my teens I was a military hardware freak One too many Tom Clancy novels!

Tutorial on drawing and painting digitally

Here’s an excellent tutorial by Bob MacNeil on the “Setup and painting techniques for digital painting” (check out the post at AmateurIllustrator.com, or over at Bob’s online portfolio site).

He shows how one could go from the planning stage, to sketching, the something called “blocking”, then painting (the concept of digital techniques aren’t that different traditional art like water-colouring), Detailing, and Line Grabbing.

Bob’s explanation of visual art theory is clear and concise. I like this one on creating a focal point for the drawing (it’s something I intuitively do but knowing the theory helps as well).

If you’ve attempted to do a digital painting before, Bob’s tutorial is a great reinforcement. If not, it’s a great way to get started by having an overview of how one could approach the whole digital painting process from start to finish.

Technorati Tags: digital painting, digital art.

Sketches of my left hand (1990)

Sometimes I get inspired, and I am able to sketch something like this (circa 1990):

Close-up of the sketch that was used for this genre guide:

BioTech illustration

This is an illustration I did for the NLB Science Fiction “Biotechnology” Genre Guide (2006).

The picture shows a human hand juxtaposed with a cybernetic one. There’s a DNA double helix strand on the side of the human-hand, while the series of computer zeros and ones are on the side of the machine-hand.

How it was done
We needed illustrations for the genre guides. No time to commission an illustrator, so I volunteered. My Colleague suggested that the illustration could be based on the following:

“BioTech Science Fiction - cloning, genetic engineering, Aeon-Flux stuff etc…Usu. with enmasse specimen laboratories, or really complex-looking machinery…Or eye candies with some form of marked defect.”

That gave me some rough idea to work with. I remembered I had these pieces done years ago — a sketch of my left hand and a cybernetic hand:

In brief: After cropping the separate images, I adjusted their placement on a new canvas (I used Photoshop Elements). Then added the background colour, played with the eraser tool with different opacity settings to give the background a washed look (there are 2 background layers). Then added the Zeros and Ones, and the DNA strand.

Photoshop Layers
Layer #1 — a series of Zeros and Ones. It’s done as a text (’System’ font, size 22). Got the idea partly from “The Matrix” where the zeros and ones pixelised to become images.

Layer #2 — the sketched hand, cropped from the “1990 Sketch - Hand and Figures” (see this post). Used the lasso tool to crop over the image and then used Eraser tool (with different brush & Opacity settings) to wash out the unwanted spaces. Colour/ Lighting adjustment was done to give the pencil lines a more rusty look, like something out of Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawings — to show something really old, as opposed to the futuristic cyberhand.

Layer #3 — a cropped image of a DNA strand (from 3DScience.com). It’s a composite of two copies of the same image and merged-down (bec. one single image wasn’t long enough, or got distorted when stretched). Colour adjustments done to give it a bluer tone. Layer was set at 50% Opacity to blend into the background.

Layer #4 — cropped image from the “1990 (Sept) Cybernetic Hand“.

Layer #5 — a layer to paint the cybernetic hand. Highlights and shadows are painted onto the same layer.

Layer #6 — background layer for that chalky/ washed look for the side of the hand. It was one of the first layer I started off as a doodle. I liked how it blended nicely with the look of the sketched hand, I left it there.

Layer #7 — added as a background layer to paint the shadows and give more depth to the cybernetic hand and the zeros and ones.

Layer #8 — Plain white background. Kept it so that I can duplicate blank white-filled backgrounds as required.

Creating a “paper-garden”

This was made for the NLB library outreach event at the 2006 Singapore Garden Festival (background to why this was done, at this post and this one).

How it was done
1) Started off with blank sheets of paper (square sized). I decided to fold the sheets in half and combine two folded sheets to make a long banner of sorts:

2) Next I penciled a very faint outline of the flower petals. Then I used black Electrician’s tape (yes, you read me right — Electrician’s tape! I had to use whatever was available) to create the top and bottom border, kinda like a panoramic look to it. Step 2 took the longest as I had to grapple with the wrapped paper (it was pasted hastily on an uneven table, with no time to dry the glue properly):

3) The rest of the steps were relatively easy. I traced out the petal shapes with a black marker, like so:

4) Then I added more petal shapes, drawn free-hand style:

5) The completed product looked like this:

At first I wasn’t too pleased with it, but my colleague was kind enough to assure me that it looked OK. I have to admit that it sort of grew on me, and looked better with some paper mosaic pieces pasted. Let’s see if the kids visiting the booth like this. Would be interesting to see how it turns out after the kids are done with it.

New Year Postcard (2007 series B)

This post provides the background as to why I created this postcard:

The design was sketched in free-hand, using ink on watercolour paper. Had a rough idea to use circles and intersected obliqued lines, and simply applied ink to paper and let the design flow. For the colours, I tried to limit to Cool colours (blues/ greens) though in the end I had to sneak in some hot pink to spice things up.

Sequence of inking/ colouring:

New Year Postcard (2007 series A)

My brother had a set of markers left over from his art-school days. I had a stack of watercolour-paper postcards which I bought more than a year ago (they were marked like a postcard on one side, and blank on the other for you to paint on). Last Sunday I decided to try my brother’s markers on the watercolour-paper postcards to create — what else — postcards for 2007.

This is how the finished side looks like (the reverse is where you write and fix the stamp):

First, I outlined the “2007″ at the center with a pencil. Then I moved to ink and directly sketched the other lines. There was no prior design; I simply applied the pen to paper with a hazy idea that the design would look like something from a Chinese Vase. Other than that, I drew whatever came to mind as the sketch developed.

For the colouring, I tried to keep to similar tones and was conscious not mix Warm colours with Cool ones. But there were only limited colours so in the end, I used almost all the available colours in the box.

Sequence of inking and colouring:

The Art of Pinstriping

A “pinstripe” is defined as “a very thin stripe (in cloth)” or a “pattern of thin stripes”. Pinstriping refers to the painting such thin lines. If you’ve ever painted, you’d appreciate the skills that these folks have. I guess even if you’ve never held a paint brush, you’d be mesmerised too. Amazing.

Via diskographik.

Historical Romance

This illustration was done for the “Historical Romance” genre guide, one of a series of five Genre Guides for the public library.
Illustration for “Historical Romance” Genre Guide, 2006. Digital Image produced with Photoshop.

How it was done
This illustration was fully digital, i.e. sketching and colouring all via Photoshop.

I started with these general requirements from my colleague: “Historical Romance - Victorian, regency era, old-school England/ French society where ladies still wear corsettes and put fake moles on their insipid white faces… full of fluff kind.” My colleague also provided a photo-reference culled from somewhere (I have no idea where is that picture right now… might have deleted it. Anyway it showed a woman in a dress not unlike the one I painted).

First I traced the outline of the woman in the dress from the photo-reference, as a new layer in Photoshop. Once that was done, I tweaked the sketch a little (i.e. adjustments to the position of the head, the body shape, added the umbrella). Then I created another layer over the sketch for filling in the colour.

After some initial experimentation, I settled on using Wet Brushes with varying Opacity settings. Discovered that I really could achieve a watercolour effect this way. But the main shortcoming was that unlike a real watercolour brush, the Photoshop brush setting was rather rigid, i.e. you couldn’t adjust the tip or width of the brush as immediate as a real one.

Once I had the face painted with the desired wet look, I started another new layer for backgrounds. Decided to keep this illustration relatively simple, in typical watercolour style where emphasis is on the whites and negative spaces.

Much time was spent figuring out the brush and opacity settings. Like in my actual watercolour paintings, I have a tendency to overwork the paints, i.e. go over more than one stroke and spoiling the clean look. This was easily corrected though — the great thing about Digital Painting is that you can go clean up or undo the less desirable attempts and try until you get something you want. Of course you sacrifice the feel and texture of paper and layering of real paint.

Finally I cropped an image of a building from another photo-reference (royalty free, of course) and added it as a new layer (to subtly jazz up the overall picture). Painted over with darker purplish colour.

Technorati Tags: genre guide, historical romance

More watercolour pencil art, from Mrs Rambling Librarian - “Orchids”

Here’s another watercolour-pencil piece by my wife. This is her second one (first piece, here). Since she prefers not to reveal her name, let’s just call her Mrs Rambling Librarian : )

“Orchids” (Aug 2006), Watercolour pencil on watercolour paper. Lower res scan 150 x 200 pixels

I must say, this is quite good (I’m not just saying this to get into her good books, heh). She did her sketch with the watercolour pencils direct onto watercolour paper (no pencil whatsoever). Spontaneous and natural. That’s what I meant.

Then she coloured in with the watercolour pencils, then applied water. The differences, between the one done in colour-pencil and the one with water applied to it, are more apparent when you view the larger image. The former (left) is more “scratchy” in finish while obviously the latter (right) has had the lines smoothed with water:

Her finishing touch was to add an imprint of a chinese seal. It’s amazing how much more “professional” a chinese seal makes the drawing look! Hey, looks like a majong tile, don’t you think?

Technorati Tag: watercolour pencil, watercolour pencil art