It's been a long time since i've blogged. I apologize, but since the last posting I've made it through finals, Jesusmas, and , of course, a couple of digital pictures.  I should get this out of the way right now, this semester is going to be hell. Don't expect the frequency of postings to increase or even bear any resemblance to consistency ( aka- a whole lot of jitter....>ack< see(!), it infects already!).  Regardless, i'll try to keep something coming at least once a month. God knows 99% of you have already seen the art and don' t read the words anyway. And on that note, onto the pics!

 

 

There is so much to say about this picture that i don't even know where to start.  First off, I never expected to actually colour this pic. The original pencils were in my 'infinitesimal detail and 5 million degrees of tone' style of drawing which doesn't translate well into digital art.  The only other picture originally drawn in this style that i've coloured was the Beast. For him, i just framed out the shading blocks and colourized them. It looked good on that picture because, for the most part, the Beast is white.  Such processes would render this picture rather bland so another approach was necessary.

 

Basically, i painted Ashley the same way i did any other standard digital picture.  I wanted to keep the picture soft so i used a circular brush at 45% hardness. I didn't go all the way soft because pictures tend to look overly gradient-y and doughy with very soft brushes. By maintaining some semblance of hardness, the picture has punch but the lighting still creates a glow.  Ahhhhh, the glow.  The glow was created for two reasons: First, if you look at the original pencils you'll see that i never finished the drawing before scanning it (well, actually, it still resides in this state). As such, i needed to find some way of working the unfinished bits into the drawing. A low contrast picture with plenty of whites creates the illusion that the washed out parts are bathed in light, a lot like the effect your eyes give your brain when you wake up to an overly sunny white room.  Since i always (always always always) put a light source from the upper left, this worked well with filling in the reason for the hair not being filled in.  Reason number two was that i wanted it to look like you were looking at her after waking up in an overly sunny white room.  To complete the radiosity-like light bouncing, i kept the palette narrow, putting hair colour on the skin, eyes, and lips and vice versa.

 

The rest of the development of the picture is basic layers of brushes over and over, pounding layers down and adding more layers. Kick up the colours with oranges, harshen the contrast and pound down some more.  I spent a lot of time on the eye 'makeup'.  I normally have huge difficulties putting makeup on my female pictures because they always come out looking like whores. I mean, i know the basic principles of makeup application (if you can tell there's makeup, there's too much on...yadda yadda), but it just seems if you want to add some colour, it really cheapens your girls. So i basically kept the minimum amount of colour here, working with deeper fleshtones, which could either be cast shadows or makeup, either way, it deepened the eyes.  Interestingly, i've actually intently watched girls put on makeup solely for the knowledge of doing pictures and i've been amazed. I mean, girls who can hardly draw stick figures expertly mixing colours and toning effortlessly on their faces. And here i am, like a 5 year old with crayons makin' the girls purty. Bizarre.  In the end, i sent the pic to a few girls and got back some responses that the makeup around the eyes was too heavy, still.  I don't really see it, but if so, what the hell, she must be a mother truckin' rock st*r.

 

For final touchups, i added highlights to the hair and freckles. Yes, freckles. I actually spent about an hour getting the freckles looking just right.  It seems every time the freckles subject comes up i get kinda accused of over-sexualizing this picture.  Conversations like this:

    "Yeah, i think the freckles look really good."

    "That's because you are a pervert."

And yeah, i can kind of understand the accusations (of over-sexualizing this picture, not of being a pervert).  I mean, beyond the colour scheme, which suggests that early morning glow, there's the extreme close-up nature of the framing (which means you would be looking at her really close), the EXTREMELY dialated pupils (which suggests love or arousal - it's true!) and the look in her eyes, which i still have yet to put my finger on.  I mean, i drew it, to be sure, but i'm not sure the intent in the look.  There's a sadness in there somewhere, but that's not the presiding emotion. Anyway, yeah, the freckles add it too, but i'll need someone out there to explain that one to me.

 

The original pencils were drawn in a style based off of an amazing japanese illustrator named Ayami Kojima. She does amazingly effeminate and delicate illustrations, though the more i look into her work, i find she is a HARD-core gothmaster. Like, the sweetest art ever airbrushed on the side of a van type of gothmaster. Angels with half skull faces and dragons flying from swords type of crap. Regardless, she does amazingly quality work, and you should look her up.

 

Finally, i should probably explain where the name 'Ashley' came from. It's sort of embarrassing, but whenever i draw the picture of anything or anyone, different segments are inherently based off of my own real life observations, even if i don't mean to.  Sadly, whenever i draw a picture of a girl out of my head, she inevitably looks much like one of my friends' girlfriends, past or present. I don't try to, they just come out that way. So, yeah, this is Ashley.

 

Just think, someday your girlfriend too will be the subject for one of my drawings. Don't worry, it's just a symptom of the neuroses.