Chihuahuas and Wolves

Ink, Photoshop

Wanted to try out the scanner of my new cheap printer. Nothing special but now I have two scanners, one which can be plugged straight into my computer instead of my brothers. Everytime I wanted to scan something I had to turn on his piece of junk with a faulty noisy fan.

I helped my friend go wholesale shopping today and I came across a few dogs (which was the highlight) including a cool yappy Chihuahua that carried a piece of meat way too big for it. It was funny walking into this shop and it had a little 20cm high fence out the front that you had to step over. The point is I like dogs, they have so much personality, but wolves even more so. They seem more spiritual. My line work was much more confident in this as I couldnt just rub out mistakes like I normally do.

Progress

(Graphite, Photoshop)

(Googled Photos, Photoshop)

Ive bought a few illustration books lately and through the broad collections of works, ive been inspired to try new approaches and styles in order to really find myself. I dont feel I have a sense of consistency in my illustrations so im trying to fix that. My personal life hasnt been all that great lately but im happy with how my art is progressing.

Field With A Dragonfly In It

Graphite, Sketchbook and Photoshop - 3 Hours

Feeling a bit de-motivated lately, especially today. I was in one of those moods where I didnt want to do anything. I went to see Muse last night, it was good but the first time was better, and Im still hurting. So maybe that added to my lethargic day. Once again music saved the day though as I listened to a live Augie March recording I have and my spirits lifted.

Its 9.50pm now and I have to go to work tomorrow. Weekends are never long enough, doubly when your not going to be staying at that job for much longer.

Blind Worship

Even if you worship the Sun, staring at it will still leave you blind

It seems i find it difficult to do a quick sketch. I hadnt done any drawing over the last couple of days so I thought it was time to add to my sketchbook. Looking for dancers on Flickr, I came up with this guy and was fascinated by his costume, so instead of doing a quick sketchs of multiple gestures I spent a couple of hours drawing the detail into this. Halfway through I came up with the idea of some holy man that watches over the changing from day to night and vice versa, (this was after I came up with the black eye, white eye thing) but I had already put to much effort into both sides. This was only meant to be a sketch so not too much thought went into it. Next time ill stick to my guns.

Im trying to be a bit more imaginative with the composition...

Turn Thy Cheek

Photoshop CS

This came from a random sketch. I never do odd angles like this and this time I used no reference at all. Not even a quick peek in the mirror to see how the underside of the nose looks like. It came out quite twisted and painful and got me thinking about how people can suffer hardship unnecessarily particularly in a Christian context. The text refers to Matthew 5: 38-39 and reads:

"The plain instruction is, Suffer any injury that can be borne, for the sake of peace, committing your concerns to the Lord's keeping. And the sum of all is, that Christians must avoid disputing and striving. If any say, Flesh and blood cannot pass by such an affront, let them remember, that flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God; and those who act upon right principles will have most peace and comfort."

This kind of talk makes suffering seem like some self righteous thing which I believe is just a weakening. Sure its a good thing to let the small things slide (a slap on the cheek, some insensitive remark) but there comes a point where you need to defend yourself (blowing your opposition out of the water is not defense!). Polarisation on a topic like this can be a very bad idea. The world is not black and white.

Mortal Kombat Non-Fan Art

Scanned Sketchbook, Photoshop colour

Im not what you would call a fan of Mortal Kombat (After getting MK4 on the Nintendo64 a few years back I was bored after a day - stupid clunky strafing!) but it is part of my child hood. So when I started sketching this girl, and decided that she was a little boring so I gave her an extra pair of limbs and a random mark looked like hair, I instantly saw her as a female version of the MK beast general, Goro. I had a craving to do some hand rendered type.

Ive set myself a little incentive to encourage me to use my sketchbook. While the current one is quite decent, I have a moleskin currently sitting on my bookshelf. I feel like a kid saving all his coins for a bike. Every once and a while Ill open up said sketchbook and un-psychotically stroke the pages, then close the book and snap the elastic in place. Its good to have goals, even little ones.