blue's book (OMG! It's alive!)

[bluefooted]

**Updates at end of thread** Most links Fixed!!! Yay!


Didn't have a sketchbook, so thought I'd start one for stuff that had nowhere else to go.

Some entries for C.O.W. None of them won







Loki from a quickie. I liked him so I finished him off



I did this watercolor of Harry Potter for a friend's kid.



this is also from another harry pothead pic - I just liked the owls:



my dog:




some damn thing that didn't work out



Another homage to my favorite comic character. Actually I just needed a sketch to practice messing with textures on.

[key]

I saw these on eatpoo! I really enjoy the first 4 and the bird people. digging the style...but I've already seen all of this--MORE :3

[redehlert]

ya gotta put your ChOWs in here, blue.
that last piece is a mint!
see those circle lines appearing in your current ChOW - gotta love how elements float between pieces.
cheers!
d

[loomer]

yeah i've been loving all your pieces as well. Show us some sketches, WIP, life studies...Give it all! We are hungry ...we must feed
cheers

[Alday.J]

Man, I love your stuff and it's a pleasure to checked them all ! I'm very curious to know how d'ya work. Cause if it appears obvious that you work in some traditional media, I can see some digi aspect here and there... Aow, I got a doubt, now ! It's seem like a blur area between the traditional & digital, impressive ! Tell me some more about your process, please !
I 'll get an eye to your SB, for sure !
Cheers Bluefooted !

[daqu]

i agree with alday....i wanna know how you make your stuff!
how!? ahhhh
thank you

[madplanet]

Now you definately have that story book feel to your work, very imaginative. I didn't see any of the c.o.w. entries, but I like what you've done with these creatures, especially the one with the glowing tentacles. Nice touch with the moths being drawn in to the glow. The colors work well in this piece. Overall I like the Loki piece, but he needs to look more mischievious, or would that be too comic bookish? I like the bird people too, but I can't tell if the male is protecting or keeping her prisoner. Either way, there is a story going on here and it's fun to think about just what is going on. And in the one that you said didn't work out, I like the colors. I think that at least works very well. It's hard for me to tell just what you were trying for, so for me it looks good. Thanks for sharing.

[Zord]

Loomer's right, we want to see sketches! It'd be nice to see how these finished pieces get started. The COW is one of my favorites. The Loki piece reminds me of Mucha. Cheers man!

[GunTrouver]

Nice to see u start a sketchbook I like your style and your alice pictures r great!
I agree to the others: More sketches plz
Great stuff, keep it up!

[mull77]

Great start dude!

I'll join with the chorus and demand that you show us the proccess. It almost looks like watercolour (though my knowlege of traditional media is limited at best). Each of these looks like it could have been used as a book cover.

I think the Yeti is probably my favorite, but the guy witht he dragon is up there as well.

I'll be keeping my eye on this one

[brokk]

What a wonderful style


...and...

you already won a C.O.W

[fractured1]

Very nice work.

I love this stye, but I can never manage to pull it off. Your work reminds me of Charles Vess. Great washes with inks.... Groovage.
Keep it up.
Raw pencils would be great to see.

Peace

[Johann de Venecia]

Blue, glad to see an sb from you! Great, great work on your tranny drag hunter (tranny...drag... sounds like your mortimer entry hehe). Hope to see more goodies from you!

[AmishCommy]

i love your linework. pure awesometude!!!

[bluefooted]

Thanks for the comments! Sorry the things that I post aren't really sketches - I don't actually sketch a lot (which shows, considering my lack of some basic skills) and I don't have my own scanner... and web space is limited... That's enough excuses, I guess. But, I can say, that most of these were done for practice and I pretty much finish everything I start.

So, here's a little update. Some of this is older and some is newer.

Some CHOW's and COW's The two CHOW's were both done by cutting and pasting textures into Photoshop. For example, the dragon's color is a picture of a copper plate and the gold bits in Mort were from a picture of goldleaf.





This was done by just painting (quickly in Photoshop) and slapping a texture over it:




Hey, I actually scanned some lines in before coloring them This is probably the piece I'm most proud of - it took long enough! Lines:



The finished watercolor:



And since it got kind of lost in the 'Techniques' section - I'll add the tutorial for my one and only COW win here:

Fake Watercolor Tutorial

This is a slightly older tutorial I made that basically combines a bunch of Photoshop tricks to get a single (somewhat useless) result. Not terribly exciting

Here's how I get a nice artificial watercolor-look in Photoshop 7. I'm sure that Painter actually has nice watercolor brushes that render all this extra work obsolete, but Photoshop users might find it interesting. It's pretty simple, too.

Step 1: Put your linework on a transparent background.
The way I've seperated linework from the background is, literally, 5 clicks of the mouse. Basically:
1. Click the 'channels' tab.
2. Click 'load channel as selection'.
3. Click 'delete' to get rid of the white.
4. Select 'inverse' to get your lines.
5. Hit ctrl C (to copy your selection) and ctrl V (to paste into a new layer).
6. You're done!

Takes me about 15 seconds to do, now. The advantages are now you only have a single layer to mess with and you can continue painting on it (changing the colors of your lines) during the whole process without messing up any of your other layers.

I'm not going to go into too much detail about how to do this - there's a nice tutorial here:

http://wacom.walkthroughs.nu/archive...ne_1.html#more


The reason I like to do this is it allows you to change your inkwork from black to... whatever color you like. Make sure you lock the transparency of the layer. Here's the linework. I've got a white background behind it so you can see it. I've already changed some of the line colors:



Step 2: Blend colors. So, to get the nice gradations in color that occur when you're using wet-on-wet watercolors, you can use the healing brush, the little 'band-aid' on your tool pallette. The way I do this is pick a portion of the painting and block in all of the basic colors. Then go back and blend the edges with the healing tool set on 'multiply' (on your tool settings). Here's some random scribbling so you can see what it might look like:



I like to work on each 'element' separately, that way I can't screw up the whole thing at once. It's best to just go crazy with color, then use the healing tool, then clean up around your lines with the eraser. Here's the monster, cleaned-up:



and the background - all done the same way. It gets a little boring after a while :? :



Step 3: Time to add texture. Once you've got your finished image all sorted out - colors adjusted, etc. - you're ready to add some texture. Save your finished pic as a jpg or flatten your image (you could do this in your PS file, but it gets kind of messy below). Here's my finished image without texture:



So, grab your texture image - this can be an interesting piece of paper that you scanned, or just about anything. Mine came courtesy of RobG, but there’s a really nice free texture library here:
http://mayang.com/textures/

Here it is 'in action':



Cut out a piece of the texture that matches the size of your picture and paste it into a new layer on top of your image. It should cover it up. Set your texture layer style to 'overlay':



Step 4: Adjust your texture. You should change aspects of the texture layer, like hue, saturation, and opacity. Also, you may want to make some adjustments to your base image now that it's got this overlay - I've upped the contrast and made some color changes. Having the picture as a single layer really makes this process a lot easier.



And... done. Hope that was helpful to some people.

[Bennett]

WOW, nice piece. I'm more interested in the art than the process, but thanks. So are the dreams being sucked up in to the air or puked all over the town below?

[redehlert]

sucked up, bennet.....
sweet piece, eh?
sorry blue, had to beat ya to the punch there.
d

[bluefooted]

Thanks, Red

Thanks for the comments, Bennet. It really does look like he's puking, but as Red said, he's supposed to be feeding off the bad dreams of the little town below... that's the idea anyway.

[Midnight]

I love your style, and I think your work is beautiful!

No real crits - keep it up!

Mid.

[Ben powis]

*echo*

I love your style, and I think your work is beautiful!

No real crits - keep it up!

[bumskee]

I remember the dragon hunter ChOW.. ever since then I been almost seeking your work, you have such unique style and beautiful line work. and all the COWs look brilliant, wish you had participated this weeks ChOW, would have been treat to see your interpretation.

[csteingart]

I love your sketchbook.

Your work really shines on all of your entries.

c

[Nocti01]

Your style is fascinating! Every piece carries such a storybook feeling, which I love! Post more, please.

Nocti

[threeeyesworm]

WOW. I think you are one of the most underrated artists here! You totally deserve at least 4 stars! Damn these are so damn coooool! ><><><

[fooxoo]

Really really cool style! Love it, keep it up!!

[bluefooted]

Thanks for all the kind words!

I'm feelin' a little guilty because I don't sketch that much... yet, I have a sketchbook. So, I'll post a couple things I'm working on.

Here's my entry for the month-long CHOW - master and puppet



Some more random stuff. Using pencil instead of inks - I always want to use pencil drawings instead of ink when coloring, but until I get a better scanner, I don't think they'll turn out looking right.



An oil painting for class:

[bluefooted]

A small bump to add my latest CHOW

Lord George Fredrickson (or something - I can't remember his name). He's supposed to be half-dead:


Cheers!

[Alday.J]

I... I love you ! You're Jubilee and Jono are great, don't worry about that ! I really like the mood of your pic and your tutorial is awesome, really ! Your art is one of the most elegant and poetic in the whole forum... And look at it an enjoyement of every instant.
Chapeau bas, Madame Bluefooted !
Julien.

[m@.]

lovely work miss, I dig your style!

[bluefooted]

It's been a while since I've done anything... soooo lazy

Here's a little thing for a weekly - we had to depict the Devil:



My entry for the first Girl's contest - I think that's what it was, it was a while ago:



And something for one of those 'Draw my Character' threads, only I can't remember whose character this is



Cheers!