Dragon Warrior Drags on and on

Gah. I hate writing something up for the blog. I just never know what to write.

Ok, here's a dragon warrior on guard. Guarding what? Some tyrant of a king? Some enchanted treasure? A magical fruit stand? All of the above? I dunno. Just looking tough, I guess. He's paid to look that way. Kinda like a bouncer.

Bald Headed Cluckerbuck

This drawing took about 2 hours total from drawing to finish. Trying to go for speed here since I have a brand new schedule going and there's not enough time in a day to do everything I want to do. But it's working good so far. Tons of work overall but fun.

Monster of the Day

A monster a day keeps the shrink away.

Friday Fright Night!

Was drawing this gross thing up while watching bro and Dax draw their DC characters on livestream. I totally recommend it. They got me fired up to draw when I wasn't feeling up to it. 'Twas fun! And that is what it's all about.

If I can remember to do this, I might do up a 1 hour monster thing every friday night while they do their livestreams.

Envelocrodile

Bic pen on Envelope
Coloured on Photoshop

Quick doodle, quick colouring.

No sleep, no peace!

Ah, there's no end to this painting at all. I worked on this for 8 hours straight without any breaks, and then some more after I woke up. It seems too awfully long for a piece like this. I wish I worked faster.

It all started from a doodle drawn on the back of a bank envelope (as shown) while I was waiting for tea to boil. It was the only drawing I liked all day so I wanted to post something to keep up with the dailies. By the time I scanned it, I was already fiddling around with it when I meant to scan it, post it on the blog and then go to sleep. One hour went by and then another. I've been up for 24+ hours and then forced myself to sleep around noon. I couldn't sleep afterwards. Then once I did manage to sleep, I only slept for a mere 5 hours. Fun. My sleeping schedule is so hopeless. So I woke up, got up, painted some more and now I'm pretty sick/cranky of this piece. Still looks like a long ways to go but ah well. Eff it.

Jacko

This piece suffered from a mental fight within me. At first it was starting to look like a super-villian with a costume idea. I didn't want it to go that way since my Ego wanted to keep it to a jackolantern theme. So you can see half of it as a villain in the making with the other half trying to go for a jacko vein to it. Now its a twisted mess of either version.

Little did I realise that costumes/superheros/villains go well with halloween. So I should have been more faithful with the original idea in the first place!

Punkin' Pumpkins Pillaging Pennsylvania

Continuing with the Jack'o'lantern theme for the annoys. Each drawing took about an hour and a half or so. Slightly edited on Photoshop.

Hunger calls: Updated WIP

Started working on the merman type of creature by smudging all the lines to get all warmed up with the process. After I have done that, I went over with a paintbrush at 25% opacity to smooth it out even more. So far so good.

Some of the facial features are getting a makeover. You'll notice the cheekbone area being changed which at this point is still not finalised. Hopefully it doesn't deviate too much from the original drawing.

Original drawing here

Hellowe'en Time!

Remember kids, say NO! to bio(technology) foods! They just might eat you instead.

Actually I might keep up with this theme and do a jackolantern sketch every day from now on until Hallowe'en. Or maybe forever if it's too much fun.

Yeah...

Sometimes no matter how bad it gets, I keep going with it for the sake of finishing it and to make it look as best as I can. Although I really do need to put some more effort into the hands. =/

The one on the left was the first drawing of the day so I just went with whatever comes to mind. No judgements whatsoever. It's best to save the critical process for the editing phase. If it ever gets that far...

Those two are not meant to be interacting with each other.

Likes long walks at the Beach..

Cthulhu / Ganesha or both. Or other? Take your pick.

Hunger calls

11x17 computer paper
red bic pen (not that good for desaturating!)

I was staring at my blog banner for awhile thinking of what to draw next until I begin to see/scrye this image drawn here. It really wasn't done on purpose. It just happens. Gotta love it when it works like that.

Treating this as a working file, to be thrown on top of the other working files that needs finishing. Zomg. =S

Creepy and Cute?

Going for a creepy and cute approach to maximise the appeal.

However looking back on it, I think its partly inspired by my dog who earlier in the day woke me up from my sleep by having her leg involuntarily kick me repeatedly. For hours.

Annoy Sketch of the Day!

Original sketch is in red. I edited the final one on Photoshop using mostly the transform tool to stretch/resize various parts with copious amounts of cloning.

Annoy!

11x17 computer pager
bic pen

Yeah, got back into doing the "Annoys" again! I have to say that this was the most fun I've had drawing in a long time. I enjoyed every minute of the process easily getting into the zone thoroughout. I've been drawing/staring at it up close for 2 hours straight. Still not done with the entire shading process but the pen was sputtering out of ink so that was a sign for me to slow down and take a break. =P

Perhaps it's just getting back to my roots again. Who knows. I want to keep this up every day like the way it was meant to be back then. Hopefully I'll figure out a way to make sure it works daily without falling back to the usual rut and typical slacking.

Some things bug me slightly. The hands and one of the foot really irks me. But I figure I might colour it later and fix the hand/feet from there. Gotta update my deviantart with some fresh paintings. It's been awhile.

I must give credit to an exercise called "The morning pages". It's about writing 3 pages worth of streaming-conscious type of writing which must be done daily. It's from the Artist's Way site, the link can be found here but I must warn you as it's in .PDF format so it might be a long load for some viewers. You can go to this link here instead to get a general idea of it. I usually have the PDF link as my bookmark as that is what I usually go back to reading every now and then to refresh on my objectives. I totally recommend this exercise for anyone who struggles to open up their creative flow. Not only does it open you up creatively, it also teaches you to be less critical with everything.

Annoying April

Updated: After messing around with colour combos for over 30 minutes without any satisfactory results, I decided to stick with this colour scheme to see how it works out in the end. I put all the colours on one layer. Then sloppily added a shade version on a seperate layer. Flattened them all and started to smudge them together.

It's very tedious work to zoom in there to smudge them all around like that but it's a necessary warm-up process to jump start my brain. During the process some things suggest themselves in which I would add a dark line, or a highlight onto it to work on later.

Alot of work left to do yet! Just thinking about it sorely tires me out. I need to simplify so I can get alot more done in less time. Maybe one day I'll figure it out.
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So yeah, decided to do thumbnail roughs to get the annoy theme going once again and colouring them up. It's been awhile since I've done an annoy. I was getting annoyed by my recent random posts so I wanted to step it up a notch. Probably will start colouring one of them tommorrow. Voot!

Maybe April is Annoy month? A bit late but ah well. Really need to stick with a theme sometimes as I can take so much randomness at a time before it drives me nuts. Anyways, no idea which one to colour up. More on that later.

Old Annoys.

When I first drew the annoys, they were drawn on the back of cheap paper with 3d studio tutorials printed on the other side. They were a starting point for me to get back into drawing again, especially in my own style after being plagued by issues with the doctrinated styles learned in college. Plus, I rarely inked anything so this was a way to get over it and the fact that it was inked on cheap paper eased the pressures alot more than if it were inked on good quality paper. With good quality paper I feel the need not to waste it so it was really more of a hindrance.

Rabid Rabbits

I meant to post this the other day with this awesome thought that I had about .... uhh ... something ... which I ... uhh yeah, its gone. Sorry, already forgotten it. Maybe it was just a thought of posting the drawings? Maybe. Yeah that could be it.... No, can't be. That isn't as awesomely awesome as I thought it would be... Maybe I imagined I had an awesome thought but because I couldn't remember it is the reason that it never existed in the first place? Did that make any sense? Don't worry, it's probably nothing anyways.

So days later... Ah what the hell, just post it already! So here I am trying to post something and already I'm rambling on. Sheesh mike. Hit 'publish post' and let the rabbits go! Hurry they're dying to be let go ..... Mike stop typing... hurry! Argh.

Maybe that's why (Mike stop typing - Editor) I'm having these bad drawing days right now. It's probably clogging up the cosmic arteries to (Mike stop typing - Editor) Where Everything Flows. Hopefully that'll do the trick (Mike stop typing - Editor) and maybe I'll remember (Mike stop typing - Editor) what this awesome idea or thought was in the first place (Mike stop typing - Editor) and start drawing awesomely again. (Mike stop typing - Editor)

Alright you silly caged rabbits, out you go!

Oh btw, be careful petting them. They have rabies. I dunno if it's possible that rabbits can have rabies, but these guys do. They've been festering inside my head long enough so uh, you know, my head isn't so clean up there so who knows where they got it from...

Don't think about it. Don't imagine where either. Stop before it hurts you too!

(Mike stop .... ah finally! - Editor)

Uh..*struggles* ...er....ART..uh....*strains*....BLOCKS... *sigh*

I don't know how people can manage to keep their deviant art/websites/blogs updated on a daily basis on top of what they do for a living. For me that requires an extraordinary amount of effort and energy. At least at this point of time it -feels- like that.

But I know for them it's nothing to sneeze at as it is just something they're so accustomed to doing (already a conditioned working habit or a simple workaholic trait). I would love to be able to do this on a regular basis but no matter how much I try, it just comes up way short and usually exhausts me out by the end of the day. There are days where I just sit in front of the computer staring at a blank screen, trying to write something or draw something and nothing would ever come out.

Something must be obstructing the Flow of Everything that goes inside my head. I wonder if it's something that I somehow forgot to do and didn't do that is causing the block, or if I just needed a simple workout of sorts, either by hitting the gym or doing some sort of meditation type of thing to get things flowing freely. It would seem to be the case as sometimes alot of things hold me back. I don't know what it is, whether they're personal issues, fear of baring your soul, being yourself, the lofty expectations of your work being shown to the world or what.

Whatever it is, it's maddening and frustrating and part of the goals that I've set for this year is to find out.

I would love to hear from other artists (even non-artists as we're all artists in a way) what they do to overcome their little (or major) roadblocks that set themselves up before them on a daily basis.

Aside from all that, here are two Annoys that started the Annoy series.

These drawings brought back alot of memories. It's cool how sometimes a drawing helps you to remember where you were, what you were doing at the time, kinda like that"Where were you when JFK got shot" type of thing. This goes way back to November 6, 2002.

Man, time flies. =(