A Beautiful World Pt. I

So after the last tiger thing I posted, I thought I had it all figured out. I went ahead and started working on another image, and shaded it heavily in graphite on another piece of paper. When I got it all scanned, layered, and colored it just...well, looked terrible. Shading entirely with graphite and then layering cell shading over it just didn't work. Maybe it worked for the tiger, because the graphite was minimal....but not for everything, so basically it wasn't the solution to the problem.

The thing that I really did like with the tiger was using brush strokes as colors, which is something I have been trying to do for a long time and been incredibly unsuccessful at. And then I had an idea:



- Inspired by the visuals of a recent image Tomer Hanuka did, I worked this out. I had recently bought a new type of india ink, and thought that I should probably start with a fresh brush ( I bought a stock pile before I left Chicago, and now I am on my last one ) and it made a world of difference. I should be refreshing brushes a lot more often. I was trying to recreate the inking I had done on "Armor For The Sleeping" because I felt that I was in my prime while drawing that.


- I then just simply flipped the paper over on a light box, and inked in more shadows. This is a ton easier than doing it on a different piece of paper. I was a little sloppier with these inks obviously, because I was to eventually give the colors a rougher feel.



- Scanned them, mirrored the shading scan, slapped them together, changed some opacity. Now all I have to do is cut the parts of the ink shading I want and adjust the color while coloring. SUPER easy, and SUPER effective. I will absolutely be posting updated on the finished image. I have no idea why I never thought of this before now.

The reason I am in this frenzy to improve my work is because I have been recently picked up by The Art-Dept as my representative/agent. I am putting together an online portfolio as well as a physical portfolio for them, and while looking through old work I felt that there was a lot of stuff lacking in my new work that I had in my old work. When I focused more on contrast and inking was when I feel my work was better...so now I have been just trying to figure out how to hold onto those old inking techniques, while allowing colors to merge well with them.

I am very happy to be with The Art-Dept. I have had a lot of respect for them for years now. I am absolutely a huge fan of a good handful of their artists (especially Autumn Whitehurst), and Stephanie Pesakoff is fantastic. And hell, this means I will be able to work full time as an illustrator...now all I gotta do is have a portfolio that can back it up.

I am unfortunately in a Wii frenzy. I am doing my best to contain it, but really....I cant. My apologies to Rachel in advance for any rash behavior. Sweet mother fucking christ Zelda.... Patience is not one of my good qualities in situations like this.

I also got my hands on tom waits' new collection "Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards". I haven't gotten all the way through it yet (three discs), but I believe I have heard most of it...which is kind of a disappointment. And I am never a big fan of compilation albums, especially those covering 30 years of an artist's work. But the big question I have with this...is how much is re-recorded? Either way it's no Blue Valentine, but its certainly not bad by any means.