This time I'll try a car.

[lemorris]

I know...somethin different.

Actually it is a little.  It's not a VW and I won't be inking or doing lineart as usual.

I received a message and someone asked me to do this and explain a bit so I am.  If you don't wanna read then you can just look at the pictures. 

So...on my facebook art page I held this contest and an old friend of mine won.  more people voted I should draw his car.  I was doin stuff a little differently then so I waited until I felt like I had something at least different to do with the piece.  I started this whole pencil sketch color non-sense because of this book I got or I might have seen it on a CGI forum...anyway...I figure if they can do it to a dragon, I can do it to a car....(makes sense to me for some reason, but then again...the owl in Clash of the Titans didn't bother me much so that outta tell you somethin.)

anyway

In the spirit of DTD I'll show you a nasty sketch.



Its about the size of a quarter and it's after several tries....ok ok fine!!
 here's one of the previous tries



so...movin on

I liked that first guy and I don't know, maybe one of the big wigs on here can explain it better.  I can see the finished piece in that nasty little sketch.  Many of you guys here are much better draughts-persons but I'm sure the moment of clarity is the same.  When you land that sketch, you know.

so here's that worked up.  I print it out larger and tape a clean piece of paper over it and head to my light table and redraw it.







so...here's the different

I scanned that last guy and then added a background.  Knocked out the car and blocked in some flat color.  I did add a radial gradient on the background and my sketch is set to multiply.  When I block in the color it pics up some of the gradient look.  I just painted with a solid round brush about size 19.  I hit the brackets [ and ] to increase or decrease the brush size as I go.



Then it's just a matter of painting.  Not a lot of path work at all.  The sketch line serves as my black line and as you paint, you kinda paint over the sketch and it just kinda disappears.  What's cool is that the qualities of that sketch remain in the piece.  This is what helps it retain the character that I've been soap-boxin about for a while now.

here's a couple shots of where it stands.  I got a couple hours tonite so I will update in a bit.

I can try to answer questions but I'm not very technical.  I scribble a lot.  Some of these other cats can come in and clarify I guess.  They know.







In this one you can see the basics.  The flat color serves as an underpainting, just like a lot of painters do  I add the tones on a new layer above.  I set my brushes opacity and flow down and I also go to the brushes pallet and turn on "other dynamics" so the brush responds to my tablet pen pressure.  The process is much more like painting than drawing and you can build up tones in washes of color almost.

Any whooo...pretty fun method, I'm still learning so it's a tad raw, but I am enjoying where it wants to go.

questions?



-lemorris


p.s  The car owner is a dog trainer so the plate did say "DGTRNR" but that sent peoples brains for a loop like the feral boy in The Road Warrior so I went with "SIT STAY" 

[Fresh Baked Printing]

Love the art and love the "SIT STAY"!

[Command-Z]

Rocket Sauce!

[Dottonedan]

Sweet. Love the texture and pencil left overs. Adds that special something.

D

[Sbrem]

As my year old grand nephew says, "Wowee wow!"

[lemorris]

so...basically I'm doing contract work with this aerospace outfit.  It's funny...you go fulltime artist then immediately get a contract that makes you gainfully employeed but not as an illustrator but as some kinda weird hybrid techno-art-freak thing.  Anyway...it's good work, but it took me off this for a couple days.  However...I am black.....ummm...back...well both I spose...anyway...



I started to go in and paint some more, just really refining.  My brush settings are low.  50-60% flow, 20% or less opacity.  I sample and blend colors by holding down the alt key which turns my brush into the eyedropper.  By sampling colors from either side of the edge you can create really nice painterly like blends.  It's pretty fun.



Next I started eliminating some pencil lines and building more and more tones.  I keep some lines as it's supposed to look a little rough...natural.  If I drew better it would reflect that but as it is since I'm not using any paths or pens or other algorithmic based tools, my line stays perfectly not perfect and it retains a lot of the character my sloppy a_s pencil had.

Note:  I did make paths for my little glass bits.



finally I ended up here.  I kinda stopped as this is somethin I'm still learnin and really done is done...too done is broke....figuratively and as an artist, literally speaking.  You can work a piece to death....and starve in the process.  It's not perfect but lessons learned and moving on.  Pick up what crayons you can and use them on the next drawing.

In any case, yay.

Thanks for watchin.

[tpitman]

I think it was James McNeill Whistler, taking drawing classes while at at West Point, objected when the instructor wanted to make a few "refinements" to his drawing by saying, "Don't, sir, you'll ruin it."
Knowing when to stop is the hardest lesson.

[ravenmark]

Nice illustration.  I have always enjoyed messing around with this technique, it gives you a nice traditional look to a piece. The underpainting works equally well in Painter as well as Photoshop. To get some additional tones a trick I use sometimes is to float a layer over everything set to soft light and one above it set to screen for some highlights. Of course it pays to fiddle with the opacity afterwards to dial everything in. I have also seen people do partial shading done in pencil painting below and over the drawing as well as using a pencil drawing as a channel set up as a mask to adjust rendered colors to a darker tone (the latter technique is tricky). Anyways, again nice job and drawing!