Robots in Disguise

I used to love some Transformers. Scratch that...I still do. I remember back in the day I had the Constructocons who would all transform to this bigger robot, Devastator a-la Voltron...too damn hot. I wanted Starscream because something about his treacherous Brutus ways just gets me. Well anyways...

This picture is of Optimus Prime and Galvatron. And for those who are kinda low on the Transformers lore, Galvatron is the 'new' version of Megatron created by Unicron (okay the geekiness factor is starting to show...) Check the animated Transformers movie to get your game up. Anyways, I love both characters, so why not do a pic with them both in it? Even though 'technically' the picture isn't finished yet. I still have to do the shading on Galvatron's arm thats in the foreground, but I've just been too lazy to go back to it. I will though eventually. No stippling here, just using parallel lines for shading and all that jazz. This one took a while, and I think this was the picture that initially start killing my pens.


Well anyways...the one up top is the rough scan, the one below is the edited one compensating for exposure through Picassa with the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button....standard fare by now. If anyone knows of some good AFFORDABLE art software, please hit me up, it would be greatly appreciated.



**The two pictures in color are not my drawings, those were pics taken from the web**


-Charles

Pieces of a Man

This is a drawing in which I decided to draw more of a picture about something other than just figures in action poses and manga or something else like that. I had this one up as a banner on my other blog for a while until I decided that my pictures didn't belong there and I needed another avenue for my art.

This picture is supposed to depict that this guy, this man, is made of a bunch of little things that come together to define him. And that when you think you see all that makes him up, if you look closer, there are smaller pieces that make up the larger ones (which is supposed to be symbolized by the larger hexagonal piece above his hands). Also, just going about day to day things withers him away, which explains the 'erosion' effect and the hexagon pieces that are missing from his chest flying by his hand.

I used ALOT of stippling in this picture, and it took alot to get the hexagons just right, even though they didn't turn out that way. There are alot of places where I'm not happy how the whole thing turned out, but as a whole, it works. Anways...mechanical pencil, then .25 mm, .35 mm, and .5 mm pens were used. Picassa...'I'm Feeling Lucky'...you know the usual.



-Charles

Unleash the Dragon

This is a picture I drew a while back of a dragon. At the time I was going for a more Asian inspired dragon and less 'realistic', hence the stylized smoke coming from his mouth and flames...and the semi goatee thing he has going on. Don't really know why there's a goatee or why there are in eastern dragon depictions...but whatever...just threw it on anyway.

When I was finished with it, it looked rather plain, then I thought to myself, it would look cooler if he had scales....So I drew those on as well as the snake-like markings on his back. Then the wings looked awkwardly drab, so I stippled them to give them at least a little texture. I think all things considered, I was happy how it turned out. And the usual...Picassa...'I'm Feeling Lucky'...but this time, I resized it so it won't be as big. For one, it took a while to upload the other pics, and two, it should be easier to see the whole thing while still being large enough to see detail.


-Charles

The Notebook Sketch

I remember drawing this in 2nd year during one of my most boring-est classes. I used to sit right up front in Digital Logic Design, and doodle and sketch in the front cover of my notebook. I used to draw faces of the people in my class, my professor making funny faces, and this picture right here. In hindsight, I should've been paying more attention in class...maybe I would've gotten higher than a C+. But anyways...its just a picture of a comic book-like figure...nothing special...and definitely nothing on the level of some of these professional's blogs I've been looking at as of late, which made me even question why I'm posting my amateur stuff at all...but that's something for another day.

Nothing really major worth noting about this picture...except the 'original' which I drew in my notebook, was done entirely in ball point pen and I feel came out looking better than this one did. No pencil sketching first, just straight Bic pen...and I feel it lost a little something when I tried to copy it a little bit to my 'official' sketch book.

Oh, and as always...uploaded through Picassa, the 'I'm Feeling Lucky'...you know the drill by now.

One of My First Completed Works

Well, that title isn't true really...I've completed alot of drawings before this one from conceptual to completion, but this is the first one that I did when I actually started to take drawing seriously.



The picture is supposed to be this character that I made up (I was thinking about using him for a project I was doing, but later scrapped the whole idea) who's supposed to be a cyborg kind of...which explains the mechanical hand and his chest cut open to reveal that he's metal underneath. Its kind of anime inspired a little, I was watching some anime movie and was surprised at all the intricate animation and detail, and then this picture just popped into my head.

I first started out with the pencils to get the basic idea, from the outlines to where I kind of wanted the picture to go. Then I drew the basic outline of the body using a .35 mm pen just to give thickness to the outline. And for the intricate details, I used a .25 mm pen. All of the hair was done with the .25 mm and I used it for the shading as well on the right 'metallic' hand and chest plate. Not many other techniques I think were really used, unless you want to count the 'quasi stippling' I did close to the left hand. And for those that don't know, stippling is a technique that is used to create pictures or images using dots or short strokes. I was just playing around with it here, but in my later drawings, I used it for shading and texture, and it made things more intricate. And as always, I used Picasa to scan my pictures and edited it just a tad, by making the picture slightly darker to adjust for my scanner's tendency to wash pictures out.



Materials Used:

• Acid free, medium weight, lightly textured 50% recycled sketch paper
• #2 0.7 mm BIC mechanical pencil
• 0.35 mm art pen
• 0.25 mm art pen
  
• Picasa 3

-Charles

Charles's D'avid

I drew this picture in like 25 minutes, so that's why it looks a little rough. I've decided to do different drawing techniques other than just pen and ink.

This picture I call D'avid, sorta a take on Michelangelo's David...except he's african american. Well anyways, I know David is a statue...a full body statue at that minus the arms, but I can't sculpt. And I was going to draw it full body, but I know some people are uptight about art and nudity. 'Ewww...why is he drawing naked people??' And for the record, drawing naked people has no say on their sexual orientation, its just that the human body is drawn all the time and considered to be a great specimen to sketch, male or female.

Anyways...I drew a rough outline first, then shaded in everything else. I need to work on my muscilature, because I don't want to make every male figure I draw look like a gladiator.

Materials Used:

• Acid free, medium weight, lightly textured 50% recycled sketch paper
• #2 0.7 mm BIC mechanical pencil
• Picasa 3

I think at the moment, I still prefer pen and ink, because they take longer and I can do so much more with it.

Spotlight: Picasa 3

Product Summary

The Good:
Picasa 3 is an easy to use, very intuitive program that lets you edit things such as photographs and illustrations without being overbearing and confusing. And it's also a free program made available by Google full of robust options that let you do things such as create slideshows, collages, or even upload your creations directly to blogger or YouTube straight from the software.

The Bad:
It's not a full fledged editing software suite such as others made available by Adobe. There's also some photo manipulation techniques that feel as if they've been mysteriously omitted.

The Ugly:
You get what you put out. Don't expect to put in pictures of wildebeests and expect to get princesses.

System Requirements:
Windows XP/Vista or Linux
256MB RAM
100MB available hard disk space

Many users have been using the web based version of Picasa without even really knowing it. If you've been using Blogger.com, and you've been uploading pictures to your blog through the photo upload tool, you've been using Picasa. Its very easy and very unintrusive. By going to the Picasa Web Albums page, you can log in using the username and password that you've been using for your Blogger account and easily access all of the pictures that you've uploaded to your blog during your blog's life cycle.

Not content with just having their software only web based, Google is now offering Picasa as a downloadable, and for the price (free), it goes beyond the definition of a bargain.

The Design:
Upon first downloading the software, Picasa asks to check your computer for different picture files you may have stored. Once you get beyond that step, you're greeted with a very clean and slick user interface, very reminiscent of the one used from Google Chrome, another one of Google's software packages. The opening you get is where it takes you to your photo library. This serves as the central hub where you can select different pictures in your collection and edit them accordingly.

The crop feature is something that I should make note of. Picasa uses a smart crop feature, where it automatically suggests how you should crop certain items, and even has a predefined set if you so choose to use that range from different aspect ratios, widescreen, or even CD cover.

As you can see, I already have some sketches that I've already manipulated and uploaded in Picasa. I'll be using the Self Portrait that I created. From here, there are a host of different options that let you adjust a wide variety of things. You can adjust the contrast or brightness of the picture, add text or watermarks, retouch, and even straighten the picture. Retouching definitely comes in handy, especially if you have a blemish on your picture that you want to remove, retouching takes the pixels thats around the blemish and smartly corrects for the mark. Straightening is also useful, especially if you tend to draw with a slant or take slanted pictures, you can straighten, or even angle if you wish, the photograph.

There's also more subtle photo touch ups you can do. You can change your pictures from color to black and white or sepia hued, you can dd film grain, tints, saturate, soft focus and more. And all of these options happen swiftly and transition smoothly, unlike the photo editing software that comes prepackaged with Microsoft Office. Another neat trick you can do with Picasa is create photo collages. While I don't have many pictures uploaded yet, I do have some that I've taken and created a quick collage. You can also upload pictures directly to blogger, geo tag them and so much more. And for you YouTube aficianados, you can create movies using pictures and different transistions, add text and music, and upload them directly to YouTube to share.


For the price and usability, Picasa 3 easily bests others in the same class (photoshop.com) and does it with ease. If you take pictures with a digital camera at all, I suggest you download this as either a compliment to the software you already have, or even a replacement.

Self Portrait Pt. 2

So, I finished the self portrait. I'm actually kind of happy how it turned out, especially considering that I haven't done a realistic drawing of a person in quite some time. I still have shading work to do if I want to get back to how I used to be. I'm not a fan of charcoals, but I guess I could learn to incorporate other forms of markings in my art other than just pencil. So, the first pic is the raw pic without Picasa retouch.

The same materials were used as I previously mentioned. I went back over a couple of lines and shadows to make them more pronounced. Even though I'm not a fan of the technique, I did do some very light smearing using my drawing hand to kind of mesh the pencil marks together so they don't look as obvious. And the final product kind of makes me look like a criminal you see on TV when the police do their composite sketches.


I also used the same Picasa technique as before, clicking the 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button, which pretty much evens everything out and makes the sketch look darker. I would love to draw more faces and ultimately full figures, because I know I'll get tired of drawing myself soon, but the influx of people willing to model is relatively zero to none. Well whatever, so is the life of an aspiring artist.


-Charles

Self Portrait

So, if I want to officially start a new art blog, then that means I can't slack at all when it comes to my drawing, sketching, or whatever. Recently I found an art book that I had back in high school that I've used maybe 5 times. So, I decided to use that one for all of the rough sketches that I plan on doing and creating for the time being.

I decided to do a self portrait, sort of. Most of the drawings that I do are just in pen and ink, so people don't think I can draw realistically at all...they just think I do comics, anime, or other stylistic stuff. Well, fact of the matter is, I started out doing shading with pencils, then working my way up to still life, then people...it wasn't until I started using color that my focus changed....and then I found out about inking. Well, anyways, I'm a little rusty at this, so I decided to do a quick sketch to see how rusty I really am.

Clicking on the picture will show it at increased resolution. I also did a little photo manipulation in Picasa. I just clicked the 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button, and it auto-adjusted everything for me...aka, darkened it a little. The first pic is the raw scan, the second, the manipulated one.

Materials Used:

• Acid free, medium weight, lightly textured 50% recycled sketch paper
• #2 0.7 mm BIC mechanical pencil
• Picasa 3

I know its not 'pure' to do a drawing of this nature with a mechanical pencil, but that's just what I had available.

Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions in the comments section.

-Charles

The Genesis

This is my new blog, created solely as my art blog. I used to post my art in my other blog, Complex Simplicities (which is currently closed), but I never felt that it actually belonged there. I came to the conclusion that I needed an offshoot blog, a place where I can post artwork and possibly other creative works...but at first, I'm just going to focus solely on artwork. I hope you enjoy the artwork, and constructive criticism, suggestions, ideas, and anything of that nature is greatly appreciated.

Contact Me!

Questions, comments, suggestions or concerns?? Make your voice heard! I'm always open to constructive criticism and suggestions, so if you have any, please don't hesitate to drop me a line. You can reach me by email at Illumistrations@gmail.com. Feel free to talk about anything; pop culture related, movies, music, comics, cartoons, commission info, whatever!! I love to read email. Thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoy the site.

email: Illumistrations@gmail.com

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