I’ve been browsing galleries, drooling over digital-watercolors and trying to figure out how to implement a similar style in my own work. PaintTool SAI has a watercolor tool (but no directions) so I decided to play around with it and see what sort of effects I could come up with.
Seems a little more ‘air-brush’ than ‘watercolor’ but I’m happy enough with it for a first attempt. And the completion time was so much shorter than my typical cel-shaded pieces, so that’s a bonus!
I think I’ll go dig around for a good SAI tutorial and experiment with a few more digital watercolors…
~Dalliann
A new month and a new theme! As chosen by The Random Word Generator, the theme for February is “Brother”. Having a brother of my own, this was the first sketch idea that came to mind:
If I had known that he’d someday grow into a gorilla, I SO wouldn’t have picked on him when we were little. As much. Probably.
I have a few ideas for kinder illustrations (we do occassionally get along) but I think I’m going to save those for later in the month; I’m currently doing concept art for a trio of siblings in my comic “Sink” and it’s way more fun to draw them being antagonistic than cooperative… ~_^
~Dalliann
Ha- it’s finally done! Honestly I didn’t think this one would take so long but shading and highlighting the berries and leaves was suprisingly time-consuming; not because they were particularly difficult to color- just so BORING. Every time I’d sit down to finish those awful twigs, I’d find something more interesting to do elsewhere… Like watching funny cat videos on Youtube…
Anyway, I’m pleased with how it turned out and even happier to be finished with it. On to new projects!
~Dalliann
I started this illustration as part of a four-piece series (featuring stylized Eastern ladies) almost two years ago. I got pretty far with it before I realized that I hadn’t resized it properly before coloring and that it wouldn’t be suitable for print. Frustrated, I took a break and forgot about it… until earlier this week when I was cleaning out crowded desktop folders.
I love finding sketches and wips that I’ve forgotten about or misplaced; it makes them new and exciting again!
I loaded this one into PaintTool SAI, vectored over my original lineart, resized it, and colored it in Photoshop. Since I already had so much of the original piece finished, I was able to use it as a color reference and it made the whole process fly by! Now I’m feeling motivated to go digging through more of my old stuff and see if there are any other half-complete projects I can salvage…
~Dalliann
I decided to ink and color both of the sketches I drew for this month’s theme of ‘crown’; of the two, I thought the rustic one would be easier but, no, the hundreds of sticks and berries that need shading and highlights are driving me insane.
So this one zoomed to the finish, instead:
When I began, I had an entirely different palette in mind– lots of pinks– but I ran across some Russian fairytales I hadn’t read in years and “The Firebird” sort of took over the idea. Usually, my final illustrations differ greatly from the original sketches but this one remained pretty consistent. Aside from adding the Firebird in the background and getting rid of her veil, there’s not much difference between the sketch and the finished lineart.
Now to finish up that other one… *sigh*
~Dalliann