ONE HUNDRED!

Well I had hoped to post a nice finished picture for my 100th post, but it's taking ages so I thought I might as well just post my progress, it's also my last day in London today so it shows what I've done during my time here, also, once I get back I have a video to work on so not sure when I'll get this finished.

I started on Audrey first as she was the simplest character. I found that she wasn't visible against the yellow background so I changed it to a dull green colour...

Once I'd finished with Audrey I started to work on the colours I wanted to use for Audrey II and scribbled them on a separate layer so that I could keep referring back to it. The first part of the plant I drew was the plant pot, then the neck/stem and then I started on all the tentacles. One of the tentacles was drawn on a separate layer as this was the one that had hold of Audrey and so needed to be layered over the top of her....

Originally I had drawn the leaves with a raggy edge but when it came to colouring them up they looked quit messy so I redrew them with just a simple leaf shape. I also added some smaller tentacles on the walls behind the plant, and finished off the tentacle that was wrapped around Audrey's waist...

The most time consuming part so far has been Audrey II's head, but I've managed to get most of it done; the head itself, the mouth and all the teeth! It just needs the leaves around the "face"...

So here's a little snippit of it so far. Annoyingly I think I'm going to have to go back and work on Audrey because she's a little faint compared to the plant so the shading parts on her need to be darker. I think the background needs to be darker too so that the teeth on the plant stand out more, this should also make Audrey stand out a bit more...

...

Well, after two years of working non-stop and spending all the pennies I have on college stuff I'm finally having a week off (hurrah!) so I'm visiting a friend in London.

Before leaving I started a new drawing. There were a few things that I had in mind that I wanted to do...

   * A fully finished scene - after doing the woodland scene I thought I should have another go at doing a finished image as a lot of my stuff is just a character on a blank background.

   * Stylised and with no outline - I've done a couple of smaller images in this style before, and did two cut out animations using this style, and I rather like it so would like to work on it some more. This is the style I used on the woodland scene so I thought it would be nice to create something again using this style that had a lot more detail in, and as I wasn't working to a deadline it'd be nice to just take my time with it.

   * Little Shop of Horrors - as this is one of my favourite films, I've been wanting to do some drawings from it for a long time now (and make an Audrey II puppet!) so I thought it would suit the style quite well, and it was something I could make quite detailed. 

So, I started to draw it up in my sketchbook in the hope I could finish it off, scan it and then work on it whilst I was down south... but I didn't finish it... so it didn't get scanned... and I forgot to bring the sketchbook with me. Idiot.

But fear not! for it provided me with an opportunity to do something I rarely EVER do... draw something straight into Photoshop. This always scares me a little, although I know it shouldn't, 'cause it's a lot easier to erase mistakes in photoshop, but I feel I have a lot more control over my drawing if I draw things out in pencil then scan them in and colour them/trace over them in PS.

However, it wasn't quite the disaster I thought it might be; after drawing one character, I was able to draw the second on another layer and concentrate on getting the proportions right without having to make sure it was to scale against the other character as I was able to adjust this afterwards. It also meant that I could reposition the character until I was happy with it.

So here are the first few images! 

Oh, and this is my 99th post! making the next one... ermmm... the 100th! I wanted to post something more interesting, a finished piece, for my 100th post and I had hoped it might be this finished image, but we'll see how much I get done and how long it takes!

Mittensss...

I spent the last week doing a bit of knitting as it's been SOOO long since I've had any free time to do any! A while ago I'd made one of a pair of Alligator mittens from one of my Stitch'n'bitch books, so I decided to start again and try finish a pair this time.

Kitting on double ended needles was a little tricky to start with but once I was on a roll it was pretty easy...

The pattern started off on the double ended needles to do the wrists and then was worked flat to create the top and bottom of the mitten...

After I'd knitted the green part for both mittens I started on the mouth pieces, these were pretty straight forward to do, just garter stitch with a bit of increasing and decreasing... 

Once I'd finished both of the mouth pieces I started to sew the two parts together, for this I used the long pieces of wool left hanging from when I'd cast on and bound off...

Once I've sewn them all together I'll be adding the eyes, and teeth and I plan to add a cord too, or a ribbon, to run through the sleeves on my coat.

Final Show... Photographs...

Well here are the photos of the finished set up for final show!

I managed to get some frames from some charity shops, the four of them totaled £6.97, a bargain! The chair has been knocking about the studio since I started the course so I'd put dibs on that months ago!

I would have liked a teacup to put my business cards in, but I was worried it might get knocked off the arm of the chair and break so I decided it was best to avoid that. I had started making the cat too, but it wasn't quite finished in time so I left it out...

... and here's the giant plushie squid I made! I wish I had some 'making of photos' to put up, but it was a rush job so I didn't really have time and as I didn't need them to get marked on I didn't worry about it too much. The shorter tentacles are actually about the height of me, as is the body, and then the 2 longer tentacles are about the length of me if I stand with my arms in the air! So it's pretty huge! 

... not the greatest photo of me but it might give you some idea of the size of the squid!...

Final Show... Wallpaper...

I wanted to design my own wallpaper for my board rather than buying one, and I wanted it to be something that looked like a normal wallpaper but when you looked closely you could see that there was more to it. Anyone who knows me knows I like squids and octopi, so it seemed fitting that one of the two should feature in the wallpaper.

I looked at some damask patterns online and drew up my own version with an octopus and lots of other little bits and pieces which were based on different types of seaweed and a sea urchin...

I was quite pleased with this design but the octopus looked a little plain compared to the rest which was a little more detailed, so I decided to add some suckers to it...

Once I'd finished drawing it up I started to play around with colour. From the offset I knew I wanted it to be a gold-yellow colour but decided to try out a few other versions just incase...

I also tried these in reverse, with a lighter image on a dark background.

In the end I stuck to my original idea of a gold-yellow colour and went for a dark image on a light background as the other way round was a little too dark. Once I was happy with the colour I created the layout I wanted and then cropped it to create a piece that could be tiled and would line up properly so it could be printed on a large scale to cover the wall for my show. So here's the final wallpaper...

Final Show... Recent Photo...

And finally a more recent image of Mabel and Arthur, again drawn the same way as before...

This time I couldn't use a texture to make the image look aged so I thought it might be better to add a little detail to the image so it didn't look so flat, so I added a knitted texture to the jumpers...

So here's the final image, before cropping. I also added the wallpaper that I designed which would also cover my board at final show...

Final Show... Seaside Holiday...

This is the second of the images,  from a holiday Mabel and Arthur had in Brighton in the early 50s. The characters were shaded in the same way as the previous image (though this was actually the first one I coloured up)...

Once I had finished colouring the characters I cleaned up the edges and created the background by again tracing over some photographs I found and making them blurred to add some depth to the image. This image also had a filter added to it to make it look old...

... and so here's the final image for this one. If I'd had more time I'd like to have added more detail to the costumes and the hat, but it's something I might go back to and work on for my portfolio...

Final show... Wedding photo...

So this is the first of a series of photos I drew up for final show; Mabel and Arthur's wedding photo...

Drawn in pencil first then scanned in and traced over in Photoshop...

To create Mabels bouquet I sourced an image from the internet and traced over it roughly and shaded it in colours to match my image, then dragged it onto the final piece and scaled it down...

Once I'd finished shading the characters I added a texture to make it look more like an old worn photograph...

...and here is the final image. I'd have liked to have more time to work on this, and the other images, but I had a deadline to meet to get stuff printed in time for the show, though I am quite pleased with the character design and the style as my work is usually flat, solid colour so I'd never tried shading them this way before...