No need for paper

As I'm leaving the country I'm not going to have access to a scanner for a while so I decided to do a quick test of ArtRage as an alternative for drawing my comic. This picture shows the results, drawn entirely on the laptop, and I think it does a pretty good job of it.

Long story short, no need for me to stop drawing my comic. Everyone rejoice!

100 posts!

Wow... finally reached the 100 blog posts milestone.

To mark this ceremonious occasion, a parade (of ants) will march past my house. I've also drawn this little painting showing some biological warfare going on inside the body.

electron microscopic DAMbots

I used the same background for virus and added some other bits here and there to see what it would look like. Not enough contrast to make it work, though.

Cracked again.

Here's the second cracked image.
Ok, actually this was going to be the one I submitted for Illustration Friday, but when I painted it I had the idea to do the planet image, which came out better.

I was more interested in exploring light and dark in this than the concept itself, though in the end I thought I'd crack up my initials as well just for fun!

Also, why is it that when I say I'm going to do loads of posts I vanish from the face of the Earth for a month, but when I say I'll not post much, as I did a week ago, I end up posting more in a week than ever before?

Illustration Friday - Cracked

Here's my 'official' illo for this week's Illustration Friday, the word of the week being cracked, my take being a cracked planet. And this also turns out to be one of my best colour pieces yet.

I've been using Art Rage, which came with my Wacom, and find the combination to be a breath of fresh air.

So why did I highlight 'official'? Well, I've done another 'cracked' picture which I'll also post today but not submit to their list, this one being the superior of the two...

Slightly more contagious

Following on from my previous attempt for Illustration Friday, here's a new experiment in drawing fake electron microscope images. The painting is of the T4 virus, which apparently feeds on ecoli bacteria, or something like that. I just love its other-worldly look, which shows that the microscopic world is far stranger than anything we would ever find in our own.

Grunt guy

I actually doodled this grunt on paper at work ages ago while I was installing something. I finally got around to drawing it semi-properly. I tried to aim for something that hides a lot of the detail in the shadow and looks a bit like a futuristic knight.

On another note, does anyone have any good tips on shading? I find either there is perfect smooth shading like a 3D image, but that seems too hard for me, then there are other techniques that just layer a couple of shades but then it ends up messy as in this picture. I don't know how to do either method 'properly' so any tips and help or pointers to some tutorials would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Illustration Friday - Contagious

Sorry about the really really long delay between posts yet again. I do have a valid excuse this time, which is that I've been prepping for a move to a games company all the way over in Montreal! This does mean future posts might be a bit thin on the ground for a while but I'll do my best to keep going...

Anyhoo, here is my take on the latest Illustration Friday topic - Contagious. Fortunately this fits in well with the kind of thing I draw regularly for my webcomic. This time I decided to explore drawing in a new way, trying to emulate the style of electron microscopic imaging, which almost works. I'm a big fan of the technique as everything ends up looking like an alien planet.

So do you like this? If you do I might draw some more, but to do that let's set a target of, say, 10 or more comments this time - if I break the magic double figure comment threshold I'll draw another pic like this perhaps. Your call...