Marek Okon

This is the piece I was least confident with, I'm still not the best drawer in the world by quite a long way, and Okon's work is incredibly realistic and atmospheric. Each piece has some sort of story being told and has interesting characters which are extremely well drawn.

I tried my best to draw my character in a realistic way, this is the final result.

Ashley Woods

Ashley woods style was a lot harder to replicate than Galloway's. His art is mainly done traditionally with paint and other traditional mediums. To compensate, I downloaded some paint brushes to help make my piece look hand painted. A lot of his work is quite rough with some outline to give the form shape.

I am really happy with this piece, and I think it my favourite one from this year.

Sean Galloway

I decided the initial pose I created worked quite well for a Sean Galloway inspired piece. The main things I took away from his style is fairly simple two tone colouring. I experimented with different colours before getting it right, and then decided how to displayed the piece. I was looking through Galloway's work when I spotted this piece which I really liked.

I decided to replicate the presentation for my piece since I am working in his style. I duplicated my finished piece, reduced the saturation,and added a gradient overlay similar to how it looks in the piece above. I then did the same with my final line drawing.

 

I am really pleased with how it turned out, it looks very similar to my initial sketch and how I pictured the character to look, and I believe it follows Sean Galloway's style quite well.

Creating a monster

With my new project, the first thing to do is create a character of some sort to draw in the three art styles required. As I usually do to come up with a character idea, I did a few front on silhouettes to experiment with shape and size to create some cool looking characters that I would be happy with.

I decided of the three of them the most interesting was definately this one, I preferred it to the generic human shaped characters.

 

 It didn't really make much sense though so I decided to add legs to it and add a few quick details. I wanted to go with quite a creepy horrific character.

After getting an overall look of the character, I looked for references of poses I could use for a top heavy creature and found this. I dropped the opacity and did a quick sketch over the outline for reference.

 

I then worked in the details of my character with the reference behind as a guide.

Trying  more stances with slight differences to find the best possible stance. It has been quite difficult portraying the neck of the creature when it is not front on.

 

 

 

Copycat

My new assignment is to create a character and draw it in the style of three distinctly different artists. Ashley Wood; an award winning illustrator, often know for his work on the metal gear series with a set of comic books, Sean Galloway; a comic book and cartoon artist and Marek Okon; a self taught concept artist.

Ashley Woods style is very inspired from traditional oil painting and contains elements of expressionism. Many pieces of his feature suggestions of shape and form, rather than being extremely detailed, it is a very effective method.

 

Sean Galloway's style is very cartoonish and sleek, often featuring a very thin outline with colour shading of two or three tones. His pieces are often full of character and seem to be in motion. He has worked on a number of comic series.

Marek Okon's style is focused on realism and is full of colour to bring the pieces to life. His pieces are often something you would find in a cinematic scene.

 

Starbound

After getting my reference shots, I went through them looking for something that stood out to me. I eventually settled on one that had an interesting look, lots of things in the image and tried to picture what it might be if I changed the setting completely. I could use it as literally as I wanted.

I'm not sure why, but it reminded me of one of the trenches on the Death Star from Star Wars, so I decided I would paint a space station of some kind, using the silhouette from my image. I ended up with an atmospheric colourful setting in space which I am really happy with. I added some spaceships to give the scene a sense of scale, regardless of how big someone might percieve a spaceship to be, the difference in size shows a clear indication of how big the space station is.

I also made a slight variation, changing the mood of the piece by switching some of the colours around. It is interesting how just by adjusting colours, it turns from a mysterious space station to somewhere dark and foreboding.

Manchester transformed

My new assignment is to take images of the city centre of Manchester and use it as reference and inspiration of a completely transformed environment piece of art. I went out during lunch and took a lot of reference trying to get interesting shots of buildings that I could picture being something else such as ancient archways or a high tech city.

Here are some of my shots:

Vehicle

We were tasked with creating a vehicle and a driver that would drive it. I looked online for different vehicle designs and decided I wanted to make something inspired by monster trucks, big and heavy. I started off with a silhouette and then worked in some details with a light grey brush, quite rough and quick. I also added a huge gun, because guns are awesome.

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From this initial sketch, I worked over it in colour to create a final piece. I'm still getting used to digitally painting properly, rather than cell shading like I have been previously doing, it turned out ok but it I had problems trying to give it a sense of depth, it looks quite flat.

Alienated

We recently learnt about how to use reference images to our advantage in our artwork. Getting a stance for a character right can be extreemely tricky so using reference allows you to get a starting point for a stance and it helps work our proportions. Starting by drawing a basic outline around the reference to get the foundation and to avoid copying too much is the best way to do it.

To try it out, I had a go with a male reference and created an alien from it. This is the original stance:

I built on it and using the reference ended up with this image:

Sea of Ghosts: Creedy drawing

After drawing his face, I did some quick rough sketches based on the descriptions in the book to get an idea of what his clothing would look like. Since it was never explained in detail I had to go with what was actually mentioned.

Although my initial sketches could have been something Creedy would wear, I eventually changed it all together for a final sketch the character.

I then combined the two to create a final sheet in photoshop ready to print and hand in.

Creedy

First off I decided to draw his face, as this is his main feature and it is the most vividly described in the book. His most interesting feature is his clockwork eye, definately something you don't see everyday. He also has a missing left ear which he lost in a fight.

I decided to draw his face with thick lines to make the fact he is quite tough stand out. The thick lines emphasize his jaw and thick neck. To represent his lost ear I drew the side of his face slightly deformed, and his clockwork eye was drawn with references of old camera lenses and clockwork pieces. To represent the brine, I added dry cracked patches of skin to his cheek.

Drowned in Brine

Now that I am back from the Christmas break and have read the Sea of ghosts, I have now been given my brief on which character I am drawing, picked out of a hat. The character I have to draw is a character called Creedy drowning in brine.

Creedy is a big, bald character who is quite shifty and a thief. He is an interesting character who will be fun to draw. The brine turns skin dry and anyone who comes into contact with it for long enough turns into a lifeless body. I don't think I will able to draw him fully transformed so I think I will draw the character and then include some minor patches to show he has started to change.