Colored Pencil Technique Practice

This was an example of a technique I wanted to try for coloring an image without staring at a computer for 3 hours at a time...

And it didn't quite work out. I thought I'd go ahead and post it anyway since everything that's awesome starts somewhere, and my starting point seems to be a little further along than some. 

The character shown here is one i made up, simply for the sake of having a character, called Chartreuse. The gun she's holding looks kind of awful...but That's the price I pay for trying to design it on the spur of the moment with no real experience with the drawing of technical weapons.

 

Espio the Chameleon

Yesterday was sonic the Hedgehog's 20th anniversary, so it seemed like a good time to do some fanart.In all reality, I started this project just to get a little digital art practice in, since it's been a while since I've made use of the Fireworks program on my computer, and my timing turned out to be pretty impeccable.

The character drawn here is Espio, which comes from the word "Espionage", which has to do with spies and sneaking around. It makes sense considering that he's supposed to be a ninja, which is also why he's one of my favorite characters from the STH franchise. 

This illustration was originally published on Deviantart, so if you have a Deviantart page I suppose you could find it and favorite it if you'd like. For now on my fanart and fanart only will be published to Deviantart as well as to here, so I can get some use out of that old account. Also, If you're a fan of my work, search for "KDVan" on facebook and like my page so you can get instant updates on new projects.

The Champ is here!

 WWE is a family thing at my house. We all watch RAW on Monday nights in the living room while eating dinner, and we almost always have a "party" for the Sunday wrestling pay-per-views. Wrestlemania is our Superbowl. In fact, as of May my parents took me and my sister to see RAW live at the Portland Rose Garden. It could only be a matter of time until I brought this influence into my art, all I needed was a reason and an opportunity.

 Father's Day.

John Cena is my dad's favorite WWE superstar, point blank. He has tons of John Cena merchandise, including T-shirts, a signed photograph, a specialized John Cena Christmas stocking, action figures, and even a life size cardboard cut-out of John Cena himself. So, inspired by my dad's intensive dedication, I decided that I would draw a portrait of the People's Champ for my dad's father's day gift, so he could add another piece to his vast collection.

Quite honestly, it turned out rather well. The image I used to draw him was an older one, so he wasn't wearing his usual orange, or as it is now, red garb. Just black. No fruity pebbles in sight.

This image was drawn with graphite on Strathmore premium recycled paper. I honestly question anything that lists "premium" as one of it's qualities.

Happy Father's Day dad! You are seriously the best! I love you so much!

   

Simplicity

Simplicity. Sometimes things don't have to be complicated or intricate to be worth understanding. Sometimes people don't need to explain tiny ideas with big words just so those ideas can be acknowledged. Circumlocution is what it's called when you dance circles around the point so you don't have to admit what you do or don't already know. This picture was wrought with simplicity. I was given several written paragraphs and told to illustrate the scene I envisioned when I read them for a project. That's all there was to it. nothing fancy, or complex. No circumlocution whatsoever.

I was going to share the paragraphs here, but they seem to have gone missing in action. No matter, I shall merely edit this post later on once they are found. The scene depicted three characters sitting around in a circle deep in conversation. One was a dwarf-like creature, another a painfully thin and skeletal "man" and the last seemed like a harbinger of death sort of guy. I added the fire and trees, since their setting's description was neglected and being the artist I'm allowed a creative license.

This unfinished picture was illustrated with a regular number two pencil, as always, and was drawn on some sort of common white scrap paper found in my art class room.

The Infamously Elusive Mural Design

This was part of the original design me and a few other select students crafted with the intention of eventually  painting the hallway that runs through our high school's commons area. Warrior pride is the theme, but alas we must compromise. As you can see, I try to make things more dramatic then they actually are. Our design was simply a tad too creative. We don't have to start from scratch, however. Knowing what we now know we can start again and find the desired blend of creative innovation and subtlety that is necessary.

When exactly the perfect mural design will be completed is still up in the air. Whether or not it will be painted this year, or perhaps next year as a senior project type deal is still to be seen. Perhaps it could be the premiere project for the art in residence club that the high school was considering to start?

This picture was drawn with a regular number two pencil on scrap paper. I then traced over the graphite with a cheap fine-point sharpie pen.

Special thanks to Shelby, who helped with this project.

Sometimes words aren't enough...

What I mean by the title of this post is that sometimes words just can't explain what it is you want to say. We all reach a point in our lives where we do something or say something that seems careless or stupid at a later point in time. However, when I had conceived the idea for this sketch, it was not one of those times. I have logical reasoning behind this peculiar drawing as well as a simple story.

The character pictured below is named "Rock Lee"- he's one of many ninja in Masashi Kishimoto's manga Naruto, which is also a well-known anime series. A good friend of mine, who was in my art class last semester, loathes this character's eccentric oddities with an intense passion. So, as a joke, I drew this picture of him (attempting to make him appear as ultra feminine and bizarre as possible) and gave it to her and told her she had to put it in her school binder. Having a sense of humor, she accepted.

I photographed this for my electronic portfolio presentation (aka spiffy powerpoint) that was required as a final for my art class. The only medium I used was a regular medium two pencil on lined notebook paper. Actually, to be honest, I'm not even sure what type of pencil exactly it was. It was white with an interesting motif consisting of black and gray paisley reminiscent swirls.