The final installment! I’m sure we’re all overjoyed.

Anyhow — as far as the actual drawing progress goes, I think I only have these two pictures to show you. There were three more photos taken between these, but the visible progress on those was so minuscule I figured there wasn’t much point to showing it. By comparing these two, you get the gist of what else I did: the main change was in the shape of the face. The thumbnails alone show how the newer version is much less rounded. I finally did the background, fixed up the shirt, played with the colors and eyebrows some more…

Trust me, it took more time than you’d think.

Once I was finally done, two things needed to happen: one, I needed to Photoshop the heck out of it to make it fit for online viewing. Two – way more exciting – I needed to order frames and matting.

This is always tricky. Picking out the right frames means needing to hold them against the actual drawing to see how they look – which means lugging the drawing all the way across town. If you know how paranoid I am about my art, you’ll get why that’s such a big deal. Since I work primarily with pastels and charcoal, my work is annoyingly fragile. I don’t even let the frame shop handle the framing – I’ve had way too many people mess up my work to let anyone but me touch it before it’s safely behind glass.

One example of How Things Can Go Wrong: last year, seconds before entering the art shop, a drop of molten snow fell from a roof, smack-dab in the middle of my drawing. OUCH.

Anyhow, at the art shop, I dragged one of the employees aside and we spent at least an hour debating colors, contrasts, paint types, and all those fancy things that go into frames. We pulled out a dozen colors of matting, which we quickly narrowed down to one. The frames were more difficult to decide on; I ended up calling my commissioner to get her opinion. (Super-pretty frame that’s super expensive, or slightly less pretty and slightly more affordable frame?)

We ended up going for the more expensive frame. Why? Because the paint had the exact shade of dark red in it that I used in the drawing. Look at how shiny it is:

Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the drawing after I’d actually framed it. Hopefully, the commissioner will e-mail me one soon.

Thanks for following the ever-exciting chronicles of my commission work! And, if you’re curious, check out the final, color-corrected, cleaned-up, Photoshopped-to-death version right here on my website. All the photos I posted before were unedited (aside from size once or twice), so it might be interesting to see the difference.

I meant to update again earlier — but then I got swallowed by PHP. I’m overhauling my website, both because I wanted a new design and because I wanted to integrate the art and writing parts, and it kind of took over my life.

The good news: I should be done soon. PHP, you are my bitch.

Anyway, on to the WIP!

The last picture I left you with bothered me on several levels, most of which I ended up fixing by the time I took this picture. For one, the eyes are less terrifying. (They’re still a little uneven; it’s the same in the photo, which makes it all the more difficult to get right.) For another, I fixed up the colors. In this version, there’s more straight-up red, straight-up blue, and straight-up yellow. In the previous version, those shades got mixed together too much, which made the entire thing look kinda ‘meh’.

Although this is still HOURS from the final version, the other WIP shots don’t really show it. The fastest progress is always at the start of a drawing – I can get the main set-up and color blocking done in under an hour. The thing that takes up most of the work is finetuning. That’s the part where I really want to light the entire drawing on fire.

One example that I touched on earlier: the paper. I usually go with standard drafting paper for my work — white, smooth, thick, designed for pen/charcoal/etc. For this drawing, I went with proper pastel paper. I felt awesome. Like a professional. Investing in pricier paper! Finally matching up my materials!

Yeah, I’m totally going back to the cheap-ass drafting paper.

The thing with pastel paper is that the struture is very different. If you look at the above drawing at full size, you’ll probably see the little flecks of red shining through everywhere. In theory, I like that — but in practice, it’s hard to keep it that way. If you use one layer of pastel, it’s no problem. If you use seven layers of pastel, eventually, those red dots fade away — especially in areas where you keep erasing and adding and fiddling with details. This makes the problem areas really ‘cluttered’ and stand out from the other parts where the red shines through. Because of that, I actually ended up grabbing a fruit knife to scoop out pastel and show the red again. (Later on, I found out an empty mechanical pencil did an even better job.)

In case it’s not obvious: this was really irritating.

Another annoyance was that, when I erased, sometimes the paper would turn black.

Seriously. There was no getting around it. The paper turned black, and I could try to erase that blackness, or scrape away the top layer of the paper, or go over it with all kinds of different pastel colors, and it would stay black.

I’m pretty sure that’s not how erasers are supposed to work.

So there’s a small peek into the frustrations that go into these things sometimes. Ha! The last installment — featuring pretty frames! — is coming soon.

Yesterday, I left you with a half-finished portrait of a very blue baby. Today, we continue with a slightly less blue baby. I used various shades of brown to go over the bottom layer, resulting in a more cohesive whole, but also somewhat grungy colors. Baby skin should never be puke green, people.

You’ll notice that I’m mainly sticking to the skin so far, not really bothering with the shirt, eyes or mouth yet: that’s because my focus now is to get the shape of the face right. What you do with the eyes themselves affects that, but not enough that I want to let myself get distracted. Focusing on too many different things at once — it doesn’t work for me.

So, with that same goal — getting the shape of the face right — I applied more yellow, to really bring out those planes the light catches. Next, I finally filled in the eyes and mouth,  and again went over the earlier layers to ‘connect’ and soften up the colors.

Last year, I shared some work-in-progress photos of art I’d done. I figured I’d do another one of those with a commission I finished in November, but I should probably split it up into multiple posts. Otherwise, as those links will tell you, they get loooong.

So, in October, I took the train all the way across the country (it took a full HOUR!) to take some reference photos of my model. My model was, at the time, four or five months old, so that was problematic. I ended up with 82 photos, which is relatively little, but taking more would’ve been too much to ask of the baby. Her mother and I made a selection of eight photos we liked and that I could work with, and finally settled on one, where she’s laughing.

I liked the warm red background in the photos — in fact, I asked for that specifically, since it usually makes for some nice skintones — so I decided to go with red paper, too. I knew I’d draw over every inch of it, but these things have a way of shining through. I chose pastel paper, which turned out to be a huge mistake — but more on that later.

For the sketch, I started with yellow pastel pencil. The blank eyes and open mouth made the girl look pretty freaking terrifying at first. (Not that adding eyes helped much.)
Once I had the basic features in place, I started filling things up. First, I started shading with dark-blue in the darkest places. After that — and this is where the real fun started — I took a close look at the colors in the photo. There was a lot of red, yes, but the other primary colors also showed up a lot. One side of the face was quite blue, and the light was yellow. So what I did then freaked out everyone who saw the WIP: I grabbed blue and yellow and applied them. Quite liberally.

To be continued tomorrow!

So all those pieces of artwork I had to make in such a hurry for that exposition? It wasn’t actually a guarantee I’d get in. I was supposed to hear the yay or nay by yesterday. And – you guessed it – nothing yet.

Mildly concerned.

Anyway, here’s another post to showcase my progress, this time with charcoal. As before, this is not a how-to/tutorial in any way (though you’re welcome to interpret it as such if you think it’d help), just me wanting to do something remotely useful with all those photos I took while drawing.

Photos completely unedited.

Sketching. Though I’m all about the shading/contrast, I start with lines – always. (Photos taken Sunday, November 15th, 2.22 PM, 2.54 PM, and 3.31 PM.)

Here I start focusing on getting the shading/contrast right. Because there are a lot of strong shadows, and one of my goals with this drawing was the contrast of the figure on a stark-white background, I didn’t waste any time blocking in the dark areas. I also smudge the heck out of charcoal, even more so than pastel. (5.39 PM, Monday, November 16th, 12.26 AM and 12.36 AM.)

An awesomely overexposed shot of the two sticks of charcoal I used for that drawing. Those are the only ones I used for the entire thing.

The hair was a bitch to get right. Ahem. After deciding that the figure was still too light overall for the contrast with the background to work as intended, I darkened as much as possible without losing the contrast between the highlights and shadows on the skin itself. Which, of course, you don’t see much of, because the light picture was taken at night and the dark one in day. Sigh. (1.13 AM & 2.37 PM.)

And after smudging… this was the end result.

Charcoal is the best.

No updates for a while, I know.

In part, this is because I’ve given up on NaNo (mental health stuff, long story) and haven’t particularly felt like admitting this publicly. You understand, I’m sure – the undying shame is a bit much. I made it to 18.7k, and am undecided on whether to finish it at some point or not. For now, I’m leaning towards yes, and am tentatively brainstorming plot fixes.

In part, it’s because my cat Shady, who’d been with me for nineteen years, recently died, which has been hard on me. I didn’t feel like I could do a blog post without mentioning that, and wasn’t quite sure how to go about it, so, er, I guess this is it. I’d go into it more, but I’m not exactly sure what to say, so, y’know. I won’t.

In part, it’s because I’m terribly, terribly lazy.

In short – I managed to complete enough work to submit to the exposition, and over the course of the next month or so will be doing a bunch of posts where I show off my process. It’s not a particularly exciting process, involving a lot of pastel dust and tea, but I have to have something to fill up this blog with, right?

So let’s get to it. Drawing number one, also known as “Nekkid #1″ and “Boobies!” and a variety of other names, none of which are suitable for the actual exposition.

My set-up. Lots and lots of soft pastels and pastel pencils, a fancy easel, and a computer to have the reference photo on. (I hear it’s a good multi-tasker, too. It might even be able to use Twitter and check your e-mail while you’re drawing. Just sayin’.)

As far as the drawing goes – this is 50x65cm drawing paper, 200 grams per square meter. Initially I sketched the drawing – including the shading outlines – with a brown pencil, which you should be able to see if you full-view, then went over it with a darker pencil. When I was happy with the basic shape and proportions, I started sketching in the darkest parts.

(This photo was taken on Wednesday, November 4th, 8.56 PM.)

Introduced two new colours. (Photo taken: 9.09 PM.)

… and a couple more, eventually layering them. (Photos taken: 9.17 PM, 9.34 PM, 9.59 PM.)

More colours and more layering. It’s starting to take shape, especially when looked at from a distance. (10.37 PM.)

Adding in a background. In this case, because the focus is on the body, there doesn’t need to be much detail. The darkness is essential, though – both because the intense shadows on the body indicate dark surroundings, and to make the light pop more. With the shape basically there, the trick now is to get the colours to look right, and for them to blend well. This includes an awful lot of layering and blending – which I do with my fingers, which is something nearly every professional will tell you not to do. I’m a rebel, I guess.

Because of the way the light changes between photos – day, night, lamps, flash or no flash, etc. – the colours look very different between shots. In this case, the photo on the right is closest to reality. (Photos taken: Tuesday, November 4th, 11.05 PM; Wednesday, November 5th, 1.40 PM. I’m a late sleeper.)

It seems a bit ridiculous to update photos with so little changes between them, but I decided to go ahead anyway, because… that’s kind of the point. As the times I keep mentioning indicate, I draw fast. The basic set-up is usually done in a matter of hours. Actually finishing it is a matter of days of continuous work. You might not be able to see it, but it’s there, and it’s an equally important part of the process. (2.00 PM.)

And on the topic of silly details… Here’s some other parts of the process. Smudging by hand has its side effects, and working with pastels this intensively causes huge amount of pastel dust build-up. You should be able to see a bunch inbetween the pastel sticks, as well as gravity-defying lines on the paper.

It is generally a good idea to draw/colour all parts of the body at the same time – that way you don’t have to look around to see what colours you used, you don’t suddenly realise you forgot about [x], et cetera.

As a rule, I don’t have good ideas, and will save the face for last. (Thursday, November 5th, 11.57PM; Friday, November 6th, 12.10 AM & 12.22 AM.)

More ridiculous detail work. Spot the differences! (Friday, November 6th, 2.29 PM & 3.11 PM.)

… and then we come to something resembling an end. I’m sure I made more changes after this – among other things, I extended the background on the right – but you get the point. (Photo taken: Saturday, November 7, 11.22 PM. As you can imagine, I skipped a ton of shots inbetween.)

A note on all the times listed: I am an awful procrastinator, and there’s a good chance I did things like check my e-mail, chat online, Twitter, watch TV, eat lunch, pet my cat, and stare off into nothingness in-between shots. This makes those times totally unreliable, but hey, it’s better than nothing.

Also, none of these photos were edited in any way. They’re straight from the camera.

I hope this was somewhat interesting/informative to those of you interested in art – or at least my art, because lord knows this is hardly a how-to guide. If you’ve got any questions, holler, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

And check back in on some day that’s not Wednesday for progress shot on another drawing. Next up: charcoal. My favourite

Yesterday, I left you with a half-coloured drawing of angry unicorns.

Today, we continue.

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I coloured in the details on the orc faces.

I gave the unicorn highlights in their eyes.

I tinkered with the darkness of the horns to help create distance.

I shaded the unicorns, the orcs, played with the manes to give the vague illusion of silver, made sure some of the orcs and unicorns cast shadows on those behind them, made the unicorns in the background slightly faded, tested different background colours, and thought I just might be done.

It occurred to me that, unlike my usual MO, I hadn’t mirrored the image yet.

(As a minor aside: if you’re into art, for the love of a very angry herd of wild unicorns, mirror your images. Flip them horizontally in Photoshop, hold up a mirror if you work with real media. Take a picture with your digital camera and study the miniature version on its display. Hold the actual picture upside-down. You won’t believe the number of mistakes you catch.)

I mirrored the image, felt like weeping bitter tears, and redlined (greenlined, in this case) some corrections.

It might not seem like much, but once you’ve gotten far enough to outline, colour, and shade, it’s a freaking hassle. My bad entirely.

The image was completely tilted composition-wise, so I redrew the unicorn-mass in the background to better balance it. I adjusted the angle of the horn on the left unicorn and made a few other corrections to better balance the picture, including erasing and redrawing a unicorn head on the left and changing the position of the hind legs of the unicorn on the right. The other changes were less integral to the image as a whole, but just didn’t look right when mirrored.

Back to work I went.

Here you can see the difference between the new unicorns (outlines) and old unicorns (faded white).

All those changes made. Another actual-size inset. Another realisation that, crap, I wasn’t done yet – none of the lineweight variations showed up when resized.

(Are you noticing these blocks of text getting shorter and shorter?)

And after several attempts…

And playing with the background colours some more…

Yeah.

Done.

Finally.

Rock on!

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What I Learned From The Angry Unicorns

• Horse heads are funny-lookin’.
• I need to take colours into account sooner.
• I need to not wait until I’m nearly done to mirror it.
• I need more practise colouring digitally.
• I need to do more stuff like this, because it’s challenging as all hell, and that’s always a good thing.

As suggested by the fab Ms. Noles, I might make a print out of this. Can’t hurt!

Tomorrow, we get back to our not-so-regularly scheduled writing updates

The Actually Quite Mellow Plugging
Some quick linkage before I dive into the art-heavy, writing-lite post:
* K.V. Taylor is hosting a contest at her blog – only one more day to enter! Talk about your favourite atrocious-yet-lovable character and win cool stuff, such as:
* A copy of Grants Pass, a truly nifty post-apocalyptic anthology from Morrigan Books with a concept to die for.

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The Angry Unicorns
I thought that with all the focus on writing WIPs in the form of WIP Wednesdays, I thought I’d do a one-time-only WIP Thursday and show my art process in the form of a bunch of WIP shots.

After months of on-and-off work – mostly off, to my shame – I finally finished a commission for Pam Noles. Check it out:

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Why The Unicorns Are Angry
Back in May, there was a not-so-minor kerfuffle dubbed MammothFail ’09, which resulted in a well-intentioned white SF author implying that, before the advent of the Internet, there were no non-white SF/F fans. This ties in to a more common belief that they don’t exist, period. Tired of being constantly rendered invisible, someone on LiveJournal started the wild unicorn check-in, asking people who identify as a PoC/non-white fan of colour to make themselves known.

(As a minor aside: this post was in May. People are still commenting.)

Pam Noles mentioned on it in her blog, suggesting people take that phrase and run with it. The word was spread over a couple of other blogs, I was intrigued by the concept and interested in helping out, and doodled up the sketch to the right.

Pam came across it, dug it, and shot me an e-mail commissioning me to finish it. The rest is history (and described below).

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How The Angry Unicorns Came To Be
First, I focused on refining the orcs. I enlarged the file and sketched over it on a new layer, adding details and fixing the poses where necessary. The orc on the left (our left) needed the most work – I drew the original sketch without putting an awful lot of thought into it, and now it was time to wonder exactly how someone would ride a horse an angry unicorn. The leg worked all right; the arm and head did not. The right orc was equally stiff-looking in the first picture – what I fixed was the leg (which was drawn up awkwardly initially) and the arm (which needed more foreshortening as well as a prominent hand).

At this point, I only used reference for the orcs’ hands, as well as their designs, which were tossed together haphazardly based on Lord of the Rings merchandise and screenshots.

Next, I worked on roughly sketching out the unicorns – more detailed in the front, then fading into the background. I also started outlining on a new layer.

(In case you’re interested – the background colour is there because the standard white background is very annoying to work on. Staring at that brightness and contrast for so long can really hurt your eyes.)

I kept on outlining, and added another unicorn in the middle. The outlines of the front-and-centre unicorns are thicker than those of the others to give the illusion of closeness. Here’s what it looked like without the sketch:

(Note: none of these insets are actual size. I worked on a 10,000×10,000 pixel canvas for this piece. That’s 85x85cm, about 33.5×33.5″.)

This was in August. Pam posted a slightly different version on her blog, which included a lighter background so the lines would be easier to see, and the sketch versions of some unicorns I hadn’t outlined yet.

At this point, there’s a pretty large gap in WIP versions. I finished outlining and started flatting – in other words, colouring on a layer positioned underneath. Because the line-art was all on different layers, this was a pretty tough job, made even tougher by the fact I had no freakin’ idea how to colour it.

Unicorns are traditionally white, which also worked with the picture as I originally conceived it, which has them fading into a big ol’ mass of white in the background, with only minimal outlines. Of course, due to the story behind this picture, it would make an awful lot of sense if the unicorns were anything but white – as they are in other wild-unicorn-herd-inspired art. I shot an e-mail to Pam asking her preference, she said she had none, and so I went ahead with how I’d originally envisioned it.

Unicorns problem solved.

This left the orcs – and at this point it became abundantly clear how little experience colouring I had. The orcs, who wear traditionally dark, grey/brown colours, were incredibly prominent in front of an all-white background of unicorns. (Going with the alternative of brown unicorns wouldn’t have worked, either – that’d just have reversed the problem and made the orcs much harder to pick out.) On top of that, all those desaturated shades made the picture look awfully plain.

I played with the colours, saturating and desaturating them, darkening and lightening, upping and lowering the contrast… it took a while before I found a compromise I was happy with. Neither of the above problems are solved, but they’re minimised.

Without any details filled in, this was the picture at that point -

(This time, the inset is actual size.)

The background is obscenely bright because that made it easier to spot when I missed colouring a few pixels. As an aside, to help with that same contract and to make clear which layers some of the mane/tail colours shared, they were originally bright shades of green, red and one other other absurdly bright colour I don’t remember. It had a certain charm, I must say.

For part deux of this rapidly growing post, in which I actually fool myself into thinking I finished this thing early, check back tomorrow.