Rabbit stew

My entry for the Character Design Challenge on Facebook, this month theme was "Masterchef".

Too cool for school

It's being a very very hot summer so far in Italy, so it's hard to sleep at night with cicadas singing and temperature at  30°C. So, last night I made some scketches, one of those has become an illustration in the last few hours.
So here there is:

She is a pirate!

A very quick sketch done for a friend during a hard work night.
The woman in the portrait is Marika, she is a wonderful friend, a very good illustrator (you can see here her artworks) and well... a pirate! She has been my inspiration for my original chatacter Marie too.

This, that or the other one?

And here there is the final version of my sketch from the last post. Well, the three final versions since I am not able to choose which one I do prefer. So... have you any preference?

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Saturday night break

It's being a very very busy time lately, I am working on two project and I hope I'll share soon with you some good news and some pieces of information about what I am working on, but for the moment I'll be quiet.

But yesterday night I was a bit in a bad mood so I decided to take a break from work and draw just for myself. This is the result: I'll try to finish it a bit a time in my spare time so I'll think I'll do another wip-post.

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Postapocalyptic survivor

Here there is my entry for this month character design challenge themed "Postapocalyptic survivor". I am currently very very busy (as you could maybe spot) but, men, I am a doughter of 80s, how could I miss this theme?

So here there is my quick sketch for the challenge:

Lappish Witch

Some weeks ago I decided to take part in the Character Design Challenge on facebook. It's just a game: an excuse to draw something not related to my job and it works this way: they give a theme and you have to draw a character according to that theme and post it on their page. It's so incredibly nice to look at how many different ways a theme can be interpreted.

This month theme is Wizards and Witches and this is my entry:

If you want to take part  in the Character Design Challenge you are welcome: this is the official page this one.

Lemurs

I know, I know... I've been not posting for a long while, but lately I'm having a very very busy time. I hope I'll update you soon with some news, in the meanwhile here there is a sketch made in bic pen, brush-tip pen and automatic-pencil.

Greyscale VS Full Colour

Some days ago I was practicing with digital colour, so I tryed some new tecnics: I worked on this portrait in greyscale and then added the colours. I'm not still completely satisfied with the final results but it's a first attempt, so I supposte it's ok.
By the way, which one do you prefer? The Grayscale or the Full Colour version?

Gun WIP

And there we are with the step by step process for the Girl with a Gun I posted some days ago.
 

1) as usual the start point is the pencil drawing on common print paper.

2) Cleaning up the illustration: after I scanned it and opened the file with adobe photoshop I start ereasing all the pencil line in excess and all the grey shadows. I'm afraid I forgot to take a screenshot of the final result after the clean up, but you should easily imagine it, it's like the image above but more tidy ;)

3) The flat colour part. It's when I choose what palette I'll use to create the atmosphere I had in my mind while I was designing. I simply fill up the different areas with a colour shade that will be a sort of halfway between the darkest colour I'll use for the shades and the lighter colour I'll use for the birght points.

4) Colouring the lineart. I simply change the colour of the whole lineart making it more similar to the base colour of the area. It's a little detail but the image looks quite different.

5) Volumes time: with a soft brush I try to armonize the lineart with the base flat colour and, while doing it, I try to make the image a bit more tridimensional casting shadows according to the volumes as the figure was under a neutral light source.

6) Shadows. I simply paint the shadows according to the lightsource I chose. I usually paint the shadow with a colour (dark green-brown in this case) to suggest the idea of the kind of light is shining in the picture. After I painted the shadows I set the layer on 'multiply' and low the opacity.

7) Light. Now it's time to add some light spots, I go on using the soft brush and paint with a bright colour the spots where the light goes, I try to be consistent with the different materials (i.e. the light has a different effect on humas skin than on the fabric) but I don't always suceed.

8) Final atmosphere. That's the final part of my work: I simply add some detalis like the wallpaper and give a stronger light.

I hope you enjoyed the work in progess process :)

Disclaimer: I summarised a lot, but I usually work the steps 5, 6 and 7 on an area at time, starting a new area once the previous one is complete but it was simpler to explain this way.