Secret Sketches: Blender, Color Studies, Book Pages

Sometimes the secret sketches posts are a little devoid of color, but NOT TODAY!! January was filled with a lot of colorful projects, and--as I mentioned in my previous podcast--creative exploration. I've dusted off my 3d skills (or lack thereof, for now) to pick Blender up, as well as downloading PicoCAD (as of literally 10 minutes ago). Definitely wanting to share more about this when I get more acquainted with each program. 

If you click through the gallery this time around you'll notice there are short descriptions with each image. This is for folks that just want a quick understanding of what they are looking at. As always, below goes into more detail if you're wanting to know more!

☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁

Images 1-3: This all blender business babes. 3d people, look away in horror, please, and don't look back until I'm a little better. With the first sculpt, I'm focusing on low-poly character building, using the rough outline from this tutorial . Luckily, because of my limited knowledge from a zbrush class I took, a lot of this is sounding at least vaguely familiar. My goal is to do a lot of low-poly sculpts with either toon shading, or completely flat shading (using full-on emission to fake it). The second image is what I sketched up as a goal for the character I had in mind, as a rough guideline. I'm still a little scared to figure out how to texture paint without a tablet, or UV unwrap so that I can paint on my ipad and import the texture map(???) Hence, the reason my little guy is just featureless right now. Third image is my progress on the infamous Donut tutorial. I swear I'll finish it, I promised myself I would-- it might just take me forever. 

I know I'm saying a lot for these three measly (and frankly pathetic) images, but I just feel so excited by how humbled and confused I am. I'm used to being so snappy with 2d art, and to activate the learning part of my brain again is wild, albeit very frustrating, but thrilling. Part of me keeps thinking "I've got too much on my plate with my book illustrating and tattooing, I simply can't make time to learn" and the other part of me is just pushing past it with my wants taking priority over the needs right now. Hence why I also decided to get picoCAD on impulse this morning. 

Image 4: Color studies for One Long Line, the book I've been slowly chipping away at illustrating, all about pine processionary caterpillars. The book itself is illustrated in one color, but the cover allowed for four colors + b/w. Thanks to guidance from the awesome designer (and fellow Ringling alum!!) Larsson, I think I'm really starting to like the direction. 

Image 5: In April, I'll be one of the artists with two wooden mushrooms in the Gallery Nucleus "Cluster" show! I was sent two mushrooms to paint on, and so I was working out some ideas digitally...though I don't know if I'll stick with these. Also, here's a list of the other artists invited to be a part of this show, I'm sure you'll see some familiar names on there!

Image 6-7: Two pages from Arden High vol.2: King Cheer in full color! First one is without speech bubbles/text in place, and the second one is with text in place (always very exciting to see). This is the project that, unsurprisingly, is keeping me busiest. I have 60 pages lined/colored.....and 100 to go. I have plenty of time to get it done, but having that large amount of work consistently looming over me doesn't feel great. I also am very aware that despite the lax timeframe, I have to get it done in order to move on to other projects. The longer it sits, the longer I can't start on other books. 

Images 8-10: Commissions! First is for an author of their character, second is some rough tattoo sketch directions for a client, and third is a finished tattoo design for a photographer that I'm trading with! 😳 

Image 11: yeah I'm fully back into Portal and I'm in deep. Nothing quite like humanizing some robot orbs into tumblr sexymen :-))) 

Images 12-13: Some people I've met recently. I can't help drawing someone to get to know their face on a more intimate level. If you're an artist and you want to see someone in a different way that you've just met, drawing them will do something to your brain chemistry :-0

☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁ ☁

That's it for the art side of life. In February, I've got some fun tattoos to do, lots of graphic novel pages to draw, sketches to turn into finals, and objects to sculpt! 

As for upcoming patreon content, I'm thinking of doing a podcast all about what's been inspiring me lately. Maybe it will get your juices flowing too!

See you soon!

-JG