W.I.P Vlog – Week #03

Lots and lots and lots of cross stitching in the past week in order to get my Benedict Cumberbatch pattern finished! Loved the pattern in last month’s issue of Cross Stitch Crazy, and I’m a fan of some of his stuff, so I set out to try and finish it in under 2 weeks. Did it in 10 days which I am proper chuffed about! Posted the finished image of it to the magazine’s Facebook page, and they emailed me saying that they would put it into the upcoming issue! So proud!

You can check out the progress of that piece on my cross-stitch blog “Betty Baileys”: http://bettybaileys.wordpress.com/

Also got asked to do a few commissions from several peers this week, which has really given me a boost! My PayPal account is looking quite beefy now, haha! So, with those in mind, I decided to get a bit of footage whilst I was working on one of them (doing the outlining).

Decided to be a bit self-indulgent as well, and create some original character art. It was nice to take a break from Uni work for a bit just so I could do something a bit different! Plus, I need to get the practice in on so many aspects of facial design and so on. I’m not too brilliant at drawing a face in profile with out a little bit of photo reference for help!

So, what do we have in this weeks video?

1. Cross-stitching Benedict Cumberbatch.
2. Typing a blog post.
3. Cross-stitching Benedict Cumberbatch.
4. Colouring an Original Character: Bob.
5. Outlining a commission piece: Callum as Iron Man.

Colouring: “Nash”

“Nash” is the main character of the Self-Negotiated Brief project which we were given to do last year at University. I have since chosen to continue on with this character, and storyline, and develop it into a proper comic book sequence. I also have the aspiration to get the potential comic book published – but it is very early days yet!

Here is a quick video I created during the summer break from uni, in which I demonstrate how I colour my more “comic book-esque” style of art. My medium of choice is Copic Markers, as I feel that they give off a rather nice watercolour effect, without the hassle of paints running or the mess which usually comes with it. It is a medium used by countless industry professionals in recent years, and have been a valuable asset to the creation of my art and characters.

The music accompanying the video is “Penetrate” by the band “Godhead” (taken from the Queen of the Damned Soundtrack Album). I chose to use this music because it is the type of music which I imagine the character of “Nash” would play in his band in the comic book. It is also a fairly mellow sounding song for the most part, which I think generally tends to go well with speed drawing / speed colouring videos (although, it also really tends on the subject of the art piece too). I will be able to elaborate more on the overall narrative of the story, once I have thought it through in a bit more depth – until then, we’ll just have to wait and see!

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PROCESS

1. I always start with an E00 base, purely because it is a nice pale tone, which blends well with the proceeding skin tones.
2. Recently, I’ve started using the BV00 “Mauve Shadow” colour to create the base for the more shadowed areas of the face. This was suggested to me by a tutor, and once I had gotten over the initial feeling of “bah, preposterous!” I found that it just adds that little bit more depth when you layer the next skin tone over it.
3. The colour which I use for a medium skintone is E21. It has a nice, warm, slightly orange hue which gives a bit more of an impression of depth and contour in a characters skin. I only overlap it over the BV00 slightly, so that the highlight effect of the E00 is still quite prominent. For the lips, I start usually with E21 as well, depending on whether the character is male / female and with / without makeup.
4. I also use YR02 to shade in the darker sections of the lips, as it offers up a slightly orange tone, with a very slight peach hue to it.
5. I used BG01 for the base colour of the iris, because it was quite a pale blue, without it looking too “minty”.
6. I used RV42 around the eyes to give them a sunken look, or a look which tends to come with a heavy lack of sleep.
7. E04 was used to to shade in the sunken eyes, as it has a nice earthy purple tone to it, which I also use quite a lot to show bruising on a character.
8. Because “Nash” starts to become “posessed” within the frame of the story, I felt that something unusual needed to be done to the appearance of his eyes. I decided to colour the sclera completely black, because I thought it looked quite unusual and a little bit sinister too.
9. C-3 grey was used to create a base stubble effect for his facial hair – I also tend to use this on characters which have shaved heads.
10. I chose to use E37 brown for the soul patch and beard, because coupled together with E47 brown, it gave off the impression of depth and varied hair colour, which tends to usually be the case with a lot of beards / facial hair.
11. E47 brown was also used to colour in “Nash’s” hair. The one truly wonderful thing about Copic Markers, that I find, is the flick effect you get when applying pressure to the nib when colouring, and then releasing, so as to create a great impression of strands of hair.
12. I used C-3 for the base of his shirt – using the pressure technique again to make the colour seem as though it is fading out at the bottom of the picture.

A Discussion with Valen Vain

The wonderful thing about being a freelancer, is the variety of clientel that you come across over the weeks and months. Valen Vain (Alt. Model) is a very fascinating client, in particular.

Image © Valen Vain

Having met a while back through mutual friends of friends, our professional relationship began when he commissioned me for a portrait / tshirt / webpage banner design back in August / September.

Recently, he contacted me again, with the proposition of receiving more paid commission work for the forseeable future. The work he has asked me to do, involves creating a recurring “Mascot” character, to be featured on flyers and posters. These promotional formats will be made to spread the word of a local “fetish Night” which he organises and participates in.

Already having a love for character design and altrnative art themes, this is the perfect brief for me, at this moment in time. It also ties together well with all the client work we have to get involved in this academic year, so I feel incredibly fortunate at this stage.

Here are the notes which I pieced together during our conversation:

I will be documenting this creative venture for my CaTS (Critical and Theoretical Studies) assignment, as we are encouraged to go out and find paid work. I will be uploading concept sketches, any conversations the client and I have, progress videos and so on. This will be used as evidence in my final report. I am looking forward to seeing the process and results of this project!

Spring Awakening Collaboration

It has certainly been a bust Summer for me already! During the past two-and-a-half months since I’ve broken up from University, it has been non-stop requests and commission work from various people and businesses. It has been really nice (albeit a little bit hectic) being so in demand! This isall quite new to me – but either way, I am absolutely loving this creative streak, and I’m getting so much portfolio work done because of it.

After I had completed the t-shirt commission for James Ramon Baker (director and starring role in the local production of “Spring Awakening”), and seeing my work debuted in a professional setting, I was asked to contribute more towards this theatre production. James commissioned me to create an individual drawing of each of the actors / characters in the musical. These would go towards being put on an album cover for the cast recording (which is available for purchase now from Hull Truck Theatre).

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As well as being grouped together on the cover, each individual character has been put on individual pages in the inside booklet. In total, there were 16 individual characetrs drawn for the cover (one character had to be re-drawn due to an innacuracy in the costume). Each character was drawn separately, and edited together for the full group image using editing software. They were drawn up and coloured using my standard tools:

• Mechanical Pencil
• 0.8 Pigment Ink Fineliner
• Copic Markers

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ROW #01:

• Fraulein Knuppeldick
• Wendla Bergman
• Melchior Gabor
• Herr Knochenbruch

ROW #02:

• Martha
• Ilsa
• Moritz Stiefel
• Georg

ROW #03:

• Rupert
• Ernst
• Hanschen
• Otto

ROW #04:

• Dieter
• Anna
• Ulbrecht
• Thea

Hope you enjoy those little doodles! Thanks to those being commissioned, I’ve gotten many more requests since! One of my payments for doing this project for “Spring Awakening”, was free entry to the local production of “Footloose” – which was equally as amazing! Anyway, I’ll keep you all updated on the projects I participate in in the coming weeks! For now, enjoy a preview of the cast recording! If you like it, please don’t hesitate to buy a copy!

The Self-Negotiated Brief – Part Ten: “Nash” Facial Variations

One of my tutors, during a one-on-one discussion, suggested that I draw up a “before and after” image of “Nash” (before being possessed, and afterwards), so: here is the result! I’m pretty proud of myself for getting the two faces looking incredibly similar on one page. It seems all of this constant and never-ending doodling is paying off, finally! I used an image I found online for reference. It is an image of “Godsmack” lead singer: Sully Erna, on whom “Nash” is partially based. He has the perfect look for the character, spare a few tweaks and differences that I intend to make over the course of this project.

Translating the above image into colour wasn’t too difficult, as this was only a basic image done in order to get a rough idea of how he will eventually look – should everything go to plan! I have (what may be considered) a bad habit, of using the same three colours for skintone in absolutely every “causcasian” drawing that I create: Copic Markers “E00” / “E21” / “E33”. Whatever the opinion on that is, it works for me, so I’ll stick to it for now, before moving onto experimenting with other colours for skintone variation.

COLOURS USED:

• E00 – Skin White
• E21 – Baby Skin Pink
• E33 – Sand
• BV00 – Mauve Shadow
• RV42 – Salmon Pink
• E04 – Lipstick Natural
• E37 – Sepia

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NOTES:

• *PRE-DEAL
• Decent complexion.
• Skin has a slight tan to it from touring in hot weather (America)

• FACIAL DIFFERENCES
• Robert “Nash” Johnson
• Adept musician
• Knows hardship
• Poor
• Easilly influenced

• *POST DEAL
• Most notably, eyes are sunken / inflamed / sleep deprived / corrupted.