makesfive

Random progress shot. Been enjoying working on this piece on and off, mostly because of the robot hand-thing. Yes the yellow-orange bits are meant to be glowy, will add a bit of a glowy haze to them when I'm finishing up the painting. From this I guess one could conclude that whoever this random chick with the robotic half-arm is, she is not an assassin or a ninja, seeing as how the glowy bits on her arm would be rather inconvenient. Or maybe she just wraps it up in a hefty bag before sneaking around and killing people.

Anyway. Worked mostly on the hand and a teensy bit on the face. Her eye was looking scary huge so scaled it back a bit. And the hand was just all over the place since apparently I have no idea where thumbs go (side of the hand, who knew?) and had to do some reconstructive surgery, flipping it around and resizing and moving knuckles around because apparently pinky fingers are not as large as index ones. The glowy bits are totally out of control at this point but I can't help but keep adding them. They're starting to resemble these really awesome rings I saw at this jewelry shop I visited over the summer.

Not everything I've been working on; finished stuff has been tossed up on my DeviantArt account. My favorite thing I've actually finished lately is the random Scribblenauts doodle I did. Partly because I love Scribblenauts and partly because it's one of the few finished things I can actually stand to look at.

Will probably scrap the Pino piece, as I can't get it to look quite right. The box thing is actually part of a series, (maybe a comic, I don't know) that starts with a box and ends up as a robot, ta-dah. It's mostly an excuse to work on perspective and lighting.

Then there's Ms. Robot-Hand. I have no idea what's going on with her or her hand, but she's an excuse to practice a different brush technique I've been working on in Photoshop. I like it so far, as I'm getting a lot of texture which I like and normally texture is something I struggle with, because I hate how smooth things paint up in PS sometimes. Buuut I'm not sure how much of the texture will show up once the picture's finished and resized. It's fun to play around with in the meantime though.

Also, my scarf addiction continues.

Finished my Where The Wild Things Are piece, and it turned out okay. Might go back and tweak it later, as I'm not entirely happy with it but it turned out pretty much the way I had planned. I painted Max a bit differently than my usual style, so the brushwork is a bit rougher but I think I like it.

The original is pretty huge so I think I might make a wallpaper out of it at some point.

( Read more... )

Progress shot. [see title]




I need to find/make some brushes one of these days, this is like 90% this one crusty old textured brush. But it works. Will most likely attempt shoving Max in here at some point. Not sure yet if I'm going to keep the green & blue scale type paint. It's not very plausible as graffiti, unless there's advanced spraypainting techniques out there I am unaware of (which is entirely possible). Still waffling on whether or not to try and refine the letters a bit to make it more readable.

So since the last post, went on vacation and finished a thing or two. Vacation photos are imminent, assuming I ever get around to sorting through them. Haven't done much digital work lately, been on a bit of a knitting kick again. Finished a scarf, started another, and have very nearly finished one half of a set of gloves. They're a bit more challenging than I first thought. I thought the hardest part would be the colorwork, but it's the casting on and off that's been the real difficulty. Although it probably would be easier if I didn't do all my knitting while I'm watching tv...

So yeah finished the Persona piece, it's over at my deviantart account. The facial structure still needs some tweaking I think, but I'm saving that for when I'm no longer sick to death of looking at the thing.

Started a new piece: ( Read more... )

Just thought I'd post an update on what I've been working on lately. I'm still all tied up trying to get this picture of Kanji (from Persona 4, yay) right, and at the moment I'm stuck between loving it cos I've learned quite a bit from it and sheer hatred because I've spent entirely too much time on it.

( Read more... )

Ok so mostly been busy with knitting still... Sort of. Got the new Prince of Persia and Patapon 2 so been having fun playing those. The new Prince of Persia is so pretty :Q

Took some pictures at the aquarium a few weeks ago, some of them are up on my Deviantart page. Post on that will have to wait a while though because I totally blew up my Flickr account with cookie pictures.

My sister's got into cookie decorating lately so I thought hey I can practice taking pictures some more and then, added bonus, she'll have a photo record of her food decorating adventures.

I tossed some of those pictures up at Deviantart, and yeah, blew up my Flickr with a ton.

Been working on a few different things, digital art wise. Nothing terribly exciting, just working on developing/improving techniques. And drawing things just for myself. Progress shots after the jump. D:

( Read more... )

So, actually been knitting for a few months now just haven't bothered to upload any pictures or post about it, 'cause, knitting. Well that and buying yarn is almost as entertaining and time consuming as the knitting itself. I love looking for yarn online there's just so much of it and so many colors and textures and such. But yeah lack of pictures is mostly 'cause I started out just doing really simple stuff, striped scarves and such and if you've seen one striped scarf you've seen them all, you know? I'm close to finishing my first lace project though, which has been fun in an irritating sort of way. There's so much counting. D:

But yeah, ( gratuitous progress shot )

Also fell into the dreaded black hole that is Etsy. Been avoiding it forever because I love crafty things and craft supplies and I can look at stuff on there all day and not get bored. Got some beads to do some beaded lacework with later (found some really neat purple-blue yarn, going to do like a star pattern on it and the beads I got to go with it are faceted platinum colored ones and they look amazing) Also bought a bunch of beads to do jewelry with. Made some earrings for my sister and am currently working on a bracelet. She's finishing up her next to last year at Uni and she's going to be a teacher so if I can ever get the dang thing finished it's going to be a bunch of green beads with an apple charm on. And the green is not so much to go with the apple but because she's one of those people that can actually wear all shades of green without looking like the undead.

So yeah, ( earrings! )

My sister's friend wanted a custom skin with a Phi Mu theme for her iPod Touch, and this is it. Phi Mu's kinda got all their stuff copyrighted and I'm really hoping that this doesn't just stomp all over that... So! Tried to make it not overtly in your face Phi Mu-ish, and girly and fun with just a bit of pop art flavor to it. [I am also going through a hopefully temporary addiction to checkerboard patterns.]

Was a lot of fun to make, not really my usual. It's definitely not a design I would personally use 'cos I like either nauseatingly cutesy or crazily geometric type stuff. But! It was a very satisfying experiment as far as doing something different. I really hope the person it's intended for enjoys it.

( Pink checkerboardy goodness below )

Been taking pictures with my camera lately, finally took some I felt were worth the trouble of uploading. Was warm today so I let Cinna play outside some, took a *ton* of pictures and quite a few turned out decent, including a couple that I took without using the viewfinder which is always a nice surprise. So yeah, pictures under the cut and I broke down and made a Flickr account (flickr.com/photos/makesfive) so I can upload pictures and kinda keep track of my progress. Still need to start shooting stuff manually though. :X

( Cinna pictures! Top 3 )

Shirt design went up for scoring a lot faster than I thought it would @.@

This post is going to be a bit of an art dump. In December when I was picking through all the random stuff on sale in Hobby Lobby I saw that they had a ton of pre-primed, pre-stretched canvases on sale, and since I'd been having so much fun with acrylics on vinyl I thought I'd give canvases and 'proper' painting a try. I thought it best to start with a specific project in mind so I picked up three 5x5 canvases and decided to do three themed mini paintings as a bday present for my sister. When I asked her if there was anything in particular that she'd like (because I suck at the whole presents being a suprise thing apparently) she said she'd like 'live, laugh, love' 'cause she has a lot of stuff decorating her dorm room with that theme already. So.

I like graffitti and street art and such so I thought I'd start with that, come up with some really stylized text and pseudo sticker art. The result ended up being a little too cutesy (and pink!) to really evoke the whole street art image but I think it turned out alright.

( all kinds of crap under the cut )

So I keep buying cardstock because every time I go to Hobby Lobby it's on sale. I have no idea what I'm buying it for since I don't do the whole scrapbooking thing, but it's a) cheap and b) looks pretty, so now I have a not so small pile of the stuff.

So! Decided to try doing something with it, and made a Valentine's day card for my mom. I like how it turned out, it was fun picking out which patterns to use. Need better glue though, or to just water down the stuff I have, I had to put it under a pile o' books overnight to flatten it out. D:

( picture! )

( big old image )

Made for a 3 year old who really really likes bunnies, especially blue ones. Was originally going to do something more cartoonish but then got distracted by an article on shading and lighting and values and such in digital art. I've really been trying to work on doing a better job on shading and lighting and finding my own style when I'm not going for straight up realism. I'm not sure if I'm really happy with this piece, I may just end up doing something else altogether but I do think I at least was able to learn a little more about reflective lighting.

This is also the second piece I've done completely in greyscale before slapping some color on. I really didn't care for this method at all the first time around but I think I at least get it now, although I'm still not sure it's something I'd want to do on a regular basis. For any interested, ( here's some progress shots/layers/whatever: )

I can't really be bothered to set up a proper website because that's work and I'm lazy and lacking in time so. Thought I'd go the blog route, that way I can just post whatever I'm in the mood for, which is supposed to be primarily art (I have CS2 and a tablet and I know how to use them! Sort of.) but will most likely include random bits about music or books or videogames because I have the attention span of a fruitfly and love to share.