Transit Doodles!

Lately I've been trying to loosen up my drawings, thus making them more fun to do! Ever since attending a drawing workshop with Louis Gonzales I feel like I've been pushing my drawings into a new, very fun direction. I'm trying not to get bogged down in what's actually in front of me. Instead, I'm trying to capture a feeling. 

~Chris

Team Donatello

Here is a personal piece that I worked on during a couple weeks that I took off work. I wanted to stay sharp, and also I wanted to play with my new copy of Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro! Below is the finished piece and some work-in-progress stages.

Final. Light and dark tones added. The dark tones I added by painting different shades at full opacity. After doing so I realized that, even though this is something I'm doing for fun, I would have preferred to use just black on a semi-transparent layer. That's exactly what I did for the highlights (not using black, though... naturally) and I enjoyed that much more than hand-picking several different shades.

WIP #4. Base. I put down a base coat for all of the colours that I would work with. I put all of the base colours on one layer; since this was a personal project I didn't want to have to navigate through several different layers. Not if I didn't have to. The paint splotch however was its own layer. I used one of the pre-made brush designs as a starting point, but scaling it up this far made it extremely blurry, so I painted over most of it and just had fun designing an energetic splat!

WIP #3. Line Weight. After putting down all of the clean up lines, I went through and added more weight to some carefully selected areas.

WIP #2. Clean-up. After I was happy with the semi-rough I proceeded to create a clean version on a new layer. Looks like I jumped ahead and began adding some heavier lines before remembering to save a new version.

WIP #1. Semi Rough. After scanning the rough draft from my sketchbook I did a lot of plussing and re-constructing on a new layer inside Sketchbook.

Rough Draft. After a couple pages of brainstorming, this idea appealed to me with its energy and simplicity of design.

Ink And Watercolour Tones

Experimenting at home with my Pentel brush pen and a water brush, adding dimension to some sketches that I did while riding in transit.

~Chris

Transit Gestures

Having fun applying some wisdom gained from attending the Gesture Drawing Workshop with Louis Gonzales. What a great time that was, and what a blast this page was to draw!

~Chris

Life With Baby No. 1

Detective Sketch

I've been reading through some Blacksad comics that I got from the Library and they reminded of an old idea I'd had of taking one of my brother's short stories and developing it into some sort of visual medium.

I did a quick sketch of what I thought the main character might look like. It's nothing fancy right now but I wanted to get something out there into the Blogosphere.

Enjoy.

~Chris

Long Time No Post

It's been a while since I posted anything. This past year has been tumultuous with many ups and downs. I'm working on an exciting show that makes me very happy, but I still feel - as I'm sure I will always feel - a deep sense of loss since my brother's suicide.

The show I'm working on is one that I'm sure he would be equally excited about since it was such a large part of our childhood. I am not at liberty to say any further details about it right now however, and certainly not in this format.

Today is Saturday and I was going through my archives of saved artwork - both collected and created. It is my well of inspiration. My idea farm.

I found two images that I created some time ago that I still found to be appealing, so here they are.

~Chris

A Backlog of Transit Sketches

Where Are They Now?

The child actor gone sour.

~Chris

Punched By The Bat

Another one done for the Sketch After Work.

~Chris

Octopus Ass Kicker

Done for a weekly sketch blog, Sketching After Work, that me and some friends at work are contributing to. The theme for this one was "Martial Arts Animal"!

~Chris

Skipping Thumbnails

Yikes, seven months without a post. Well, it's not much but here are some thumbnails I did at work today for a character skipping. I haven't animated a skip in some time, so some action analysis was much needed.

I remember when I was a student and finding reference took some effort - nowadays you can find everything on youtube. I like it, but at the same time I think it makes us less appreciative of the reference because it's so easy to come by...

~Chris

Enthusiastic Photographer

Something possessed me to draw a person enthusiastically taking a picture - Not sure why.

~Chris

HOLY SMOKES DO I EVER LOVE LAUGHS!!

There was an email thread at work here a little while ago, talking about gathering together and watching something funny. One of my co-animator pals replied with an email saying, "HOLY SMOKES DO I EVER LOVE LAUGHS!!". All in Upper Case like that. I was immediately struck with an image, so I quickly hammered it out in Sketchbook and emailed it to him - he liked it.

~Chris

Sunday Sketches

Went Downtown on Sunday to do some drawing at the Central Library. The weather was gorgeous and I couldn't pass it up!

~Chris

Playing Fetch With Loki

Work Doodles

I made a new page of random sketches at work this week. It's a great way to use the downtime that comes with Playblasting my scenes, and any other computer things that suck away the fun and creativity out of the day.

Pencil on paper, and colour in Photoshop. I hope to do more of these.

~Chris

Sketching from the Television

I managed a page of heads while watching The Midsomer Murders (great show!). Green Col-Erase on paper.

~Chris

My Wife's Feet

The Page 100 Project: Pulp

A while ago I stumbled onto something called the Page 100 Project. This is a fun exercise where you turn to page 100 of any novel and adapt it into a comic! I thought to myself, "That sounds like fun!" So I grabbed Charles Bukowski's Pulp off of my shelf and this is what came of it.

~Chris