I seem to be gaining a bad habit of starting pieces of artwork and not finishing them since I've not made any progress on that wolf image thing since the last time I posted about it here. So instead of working on that, I ended up browsing through some of my art folders and found a rather scribbly something I started months ago, but never tried to finish. It was something I forgot about after dismissing as a 'lost cause' since it would require a lot of patience from me to actually refine it enough to make it into a finished image.

Anyway, I opened it in Photoshop, enlarged it (it was just a low-resolution JPEG), and made a new layer on which I'd paint over it, slowly refining it until maybe one day it could be considered finished. Here's what I have so far:



I've been slowly refining that creature standing on the bridge, the bridge itself, the rocks and water below the bridge, and have also started adding tree branches. Oh, and those lanterns weren't there in the original version. So yes. This is all on two layers in Photoshop, one for the low-resolution original image and another for everything I've started adding today!

Edit: And, slowly but surely, it's coming along:



It's turning out better than I expected it too! Which is nice. It's uh... interesting and rather confusing trying to get the lighting right with this since there are two lanterns shining yellow light on the creature in the middle, the sky is shining its light on the creature, there's red light reflecting off the bridge onto the creatures legs and belly...! And I have to worry about green light on all the stones from the grass and blue light on everything around the water and... and... I don't even know how I'm going to do the leaves of the trees. I'm worried about that bit since I know from experience that I'm uh... really not very good at making trees look good.

All this is, as I probably already said, on a single layer (well, all my additions to the original, vague, scribbly JPEG which is on its own separate layer), so it's a bit difficult painting the parts of the sky that are around the trees. At least I haven't done much detailing on the trees though so I don't have to worry about losing any precious work on them if I DO paint over them a bit.

I feel like I should be taking some close-up screenshot things that I could use to make a 'painting without lines' tutorial, though I'm not sure what I'd even SAY in a tutorial like that other than "don't worry about painting over things. If you painted it once, you can do it again!" or uh... something. o_O

Edit 2: More progress!1 Even though it doesn't really look like I've done much since the last one.



I'm not quite satisfied with the water yet and still have some sparkly bits to add to that... I'm not sure if I'll keep it swirly or not. I also went to all the trouble of drawing wood grain on that bridge, but you can't even see it when it's zoomed out! I also refined that lantern on the left!1 I might attach some ribbons to those lanterns and have them flap gently in the breeze, then add some falling leaves that follow the breeze as well... I might also add sparkly, glowy, floaty things coming out of the water or something!!121 Though that might be too much... I don't know. Either way, this is taking a while!

Edit 3: And the last one before I go to bed:



All my lovely little rock details are completely destroyed by the shrunken image! I should uh... post detail shots of things like that! Yes!1

I wish I could just make a solid decision on which way I want to colour something...! I spent all that time making refined lines only to decide I wanted to try colouring it sort of realistically without any lines! Which seems like a waste and part of me is disappointed to not be colouring it in a more cartoony style just because it might look nice coloured all cleanly or something. I wanted to do a more realistic style though since I don't get enough realistic painting practise and I feel as though my colouring skills are behind my drawing skills or something. I need to learn to render light and shadow better and this is a good opportunity to try doing just that.



I'm showing the lines in that work in progress shot there since I've not really coloured enough of it for it to look very interesting without the lines.

Edit: Some progress.



I adjusted the colours a bit and uh... now I'm feeling a bit stuck because I don't know what colours I want those clothy ribbony things or those three floaty thingy-dings to be...!

I decided to try to draw a (totally overrated!12 o_O) wolf thing today just because I don't really ever draw any of those and it's interesting to see if I can even do a good job of it.



I'm not entirely happy with the positioning of the hind legs as something just seems wrong about them, but I've been tweaking them again and again and am not sure how to position them so they actually look *right*... Maybe I'll be able to fix them tomorrow after sleeping. There are also some lines that still need refining. I think also that the uh... long clothy thing that ends in a swirly 'flame' bit in the background should be moved more to the left since it doesn't seem to match up with the perspective of the limbs, which I only noticed just now. Gasp! Oh no! I'll also do that tomorrow since it's getting late and I should probably sleep.

(Actually, looking at this image now in this blog entry thing has made me realise that it's probably the length of the hind leg closest to us that's making it look wrong... I lengthened it at one point because I was trying to adjust it to a different perspective, so now I should probably shorten it again.)

A couple of days ago, I wanted to try making some pixel icons. I decided that, if I succeeded, I might offer to make pixel icons for $5 each (and maybe a discount if you got more than one? $8 for two? $12 for 3?). I'm sort of uh... mixed about offering commissions since it's sort of embarrassing how uh... when I offer them, nobody is really interested. But anyway. o_O



So far, I've only made this one, and have had little luck when trying to draw more (though I've only really tried a few short times and was somewhat distracted during each of those attempts), but I'm happy with how it came out. I'm not sure how I feel about the animated 'twinkling' background, but uh... everything else I know I'm happy about. Hopefully I'll have more to show soon!

For days, I've mostly been drawing tigers and trying to improve at those, though most of the drawings I've done and kept are in my sketchbook, which I haven't scanned or anything, so I can't show those. Today though, I ended up drawing this thing since I sort of wanted to draw a more recent version of Firequill:



I'm satisfied with how the upper body turned out, but I've been having troubles with the positioning of the legs and I'm also unsure of how to make the individual feathers of the wings look good...! It's unfortunate that I seem to find this discouraging rather than just thinking of it as a challenge to be overcome; it makes me want to run away from the image altogether. I'm hoping I'll continue with it tomorrow rather than leaving it be, but uh... we shall see...!

I started sketching something earlier today and, gasp, I've started colouring it! And I'm actually feeling somewhat excited to be working on it, though my hand is getting sore and slowing my progress. This is what I have so far along with some background-related sketchings:



I want to have uh... *cloudy wisps* washing over the griffin's wings, which is why all those straight purple lines exist around the griffin. Also, I've never tried drawing *buildings* in the background of an image (that I can remember, at least), so that will be somewhat of an experiment when I get to colouring that part! I feel like I should add some more buildings or something near that bottom-left corner, since that seems a bit... too empty.

As I've been working on this, I've been taking screenshots of what I'm doing since I'm sort of hoping to put together a 'Colouring With Lines' tutorial when I've finished the painting. Hopefully. Though, for all I know, I could change my mind half of the way through colouring and get rid of the lines or something!

Edit - 8:38pm
And, like I sort of predicted, I ended up getting rid of the lines after all!



I found that it looked less... 'flat' or something without the lines and I liked how the griffin's colours looked against the background colours without the lines separating the two. I also accidentally ended up with a feather texture I liked! I started with the feathered areas shaded softly, but then used the eyedropper tool and the hard-edged brush with about half opacity and some lowish flow number and made rows of short, fat strokes with a lighter colour, moving slightly into a darker colour, then eye-droppering a slightly darker colour than what I was using and proceeding further... I've been wanting to use that sort of technique for grass, except with uh... much narrower brush strokes, of course...

For the last two weeks, I've been trying to get myself to start drawing and colouring something, though it's been annoyingly difficult after having spent five weeks mostly not drawing. It's made me feel annoyingly out of practise and I've been struggling to uh... get used to drawing again. Today, I ended up unexpectedly sketching a rather loose image and then started painting over it immediately. After a while of rather vague brush strokes, I ended up with something like this:



I liked the general colour scheme, but the thought of actually trying to go into any more detail than that seemed really daunting since I'd have to attempt to make the cliff look like a cliff and the background below look uh... like whatever it's supposed to be, and I don't really know how I should go about that. I'll be needing reference, I suppose.

I didn't actually WANT to try finishing this, but I didn't have anything better to do and it felt bothersome to just let the image go to waste, so I forced myself to work on it bit by bit until eventually it started looking better than I expected and it no longer felt daunting to work on. Eventually I ended up with this:



I added wings since it seemed uh... compositionally better with more blue sticking out to the right. I've also made more progress since then, but not enough to warrant posting another progress image. Hopefully I'll finish this within the next few days though...!

Sometime within the last few days (time is such a blur that I can't even remember when I was working on this...!), I started working on this drawing and have been making layer after layer of sketches on top of sketches to try to correct mistakes and get it closer to how I want it to look.



I've been having so much trouble finding a good position for the legs though... I've drawn them in various different positions, but none of them really look right and I'm not sure what to do about it, so I'm not sure if I'll even get around to colouring this thing. It seems unlikely, but who knows. I might just start over and try a different pose, though I do want to keep the wing perspective I've currently got since it seems somewhat dynamic. I'd also like the rest of the pose to be more dynamic, so maybe it would be good idea to start over anyway.

I haven't been doing as much art as I would like recently though due to university courses having started a few days ago and worrying about or distracting myself from worry about that by playing games rather than being productive has been consuming my time and focus. I have been trying to draw wolves or other doggish things though, plus whatever other creatures end up coming to mind, but those sketches are in my sketchbook and not really worth scanning and showing since they're not especially interesting or detailed or anything.