Try-hard-atops

Scrying/Pareidolia.

Yesterday night while laying in bed with the night light on, I see this guy casually glancing over in my direction in the hallway. It's actually coming from a pile of cloth folded up and stacked on top of a little table neatly tucked away into the corner. It'll make sense to you if you consider how blind as a bat I am without my glasses so the pile of clothes blur into something else with the way the night light was shining on it. I wanted to get up and draw him down right away, but since I just got into bed, I was in no mood to get up. I was way too tired so I just forced myself to memorise what I can by breaking it down the shapes into colours, the shape of the creature and by using image associations (looks like this, looks like that..) to help me remember. I paid more emphasis on the colours and the lighting than the actual creature.

I'd say it came out kinda close.

Jogeetv Scrying

I took a screenshot over at Dax + bro's show when it was just starting out tonight. I keep seeing a bunch of different images every time he randomly darkens/lightens the piece so I decided then and there that a screenshot snapshot would be one way of recording what I see. That way, I can draw whatever that I saw at that moment in time before his image changes completely.

This is just one such image that I saw. It's a crab looking creature with a really stiffed arm claw on the far right. I didnt want to change it too much because I liked the texture it had. I didn't add too much of what was already on there anyways. Just a few lines here to suggest the shape, darken some bits to shade it and then added a few white to highlight other parts. Pretty simple and fast.

Also, the way he was texturing the piece up so fast with his brushes like that would simply kill my computer. It's an old computer in dire need of upgrades. =S

Screenshot is also 72 dpi so I didn't want to spend too much time dabbling in it and getting carried away.

WIP Update

No idea if this is going to stay but I'm liking it at the moment. Some bits are confusing to me and bugging me atm. It's pretty tough to work this way with blurry splotches, especially looking at it up close from the initial roughs. It's really taking some time to refine the shapes and the lines even further. Either that or I just work sloooow.

There are some floating limbs that are undecided but it's there to be worked on later. We'll see how this ends up as I'm pretty determined to finish this piece.

This post continues from here

Messing around with Pareidolia

This is what happens when I stare at something for too long, either from something I'm working on or something I'm looking at. It usually ends up spawning another idea.

Sometimes I do random copy/paste sections from various works of mine to create something new for fun, to generate ideas or to create chimaera-like creatures. However this one was a little planned because I did see a snailien-like creature in the first place.

Take yesterday's digital speed paint of the bird creature top left for example. The numbered boxes are individually copied and pasted onto another new file to create what you see for the middle and far right sections.

By copying and pasting, this exercise makes it easier to isolate and see new images seperately to give you a better idea of what you're looking at. In the box numbered 2 is a face, very vaguely what appears to be teeth and there is also an eye way up there too. I darkened some bits, added some wetness on the gum/mouth parts and white outlines somewhere to punctuate things a little more and so on. Then I got busy with the shell and that's all I got for now.

Scrying Warmup

Now I did this out of boredom and ended up having some fun with it. I did not expect it to result in anything post-worthy at all. Sometimes I like to look around, browse through something visually abstract in order to peel out images from out of nothingness to generate some creativity. Probably the best way to go at it (at least it works for me) because that can get the creative juices flowing which in turns gets the enthusiasm going. Motivation comes after action afterall.

Top image is something I've drawn as a result from staring at my Firefox browser decorated with a Persona (2nd image down is a screenshot of it) for a long time. I keep looking at a specific corner (as shown by arrows on the screenshot) every time the browser loads up or during lulls in surfing.

For Firefox Personas, go here
Credit also goes to elreviae of deviantart for feeding my soul with the inspiration.

I dunno the technical term or artsy fartsy word for an activity somewhat similar to cloud watching, so 'scrying' will be the word that I'm using for now. Note to self, I really need to write up a "What is Scrying?" section somewhere on this blog soon to avoid repeating myself.

In the end, it doesn't really feel like my work because I'm using someone else's to create another piece. But some parts I could isolate and be happy with that and call it my own. But for now I just love the way it turned out, armour and all, minus the face. I don't care for the face but I wanted it to be a centaur'ish type of creature to begin with.

I am also so very personally tired of the Lord of the Rings Balrog's flaming hair/weapons type of cliche as well, but I ran with the idea anyways so as not to squelch any creative juices during the process. The editing of all things can commence AFTERwards.

Partial Scrying of a Snailien

After spending the entire day drawing with fruitless results, I get this one when I have given up all expectations and decided to scribble a bit before going to bed that night. I love how my muse shows up whenever I'm tired. I was looking at a towel and saw this drawing on it. Stared at it for awhile to memorise it, then drew it from memory.

Some days it comes easy, but most days it's a struggle. A never ending battle against the tyrant Ego. Sometimes you gotta bore it to death in order for it to leave you alone so that the right brain can come out to play. Or in this case, too tired to even stay awake that the Ego had already fallen asleep.

And the process will repeat itself all over again. Gotta keep on keeping on.

Something fishy again

Finally got back to scrying again. This one was off a towel. The textures of the towel suggested the lines and the shadows of the folds suggested the shapes.

It was a tricky session as the shapes were very subtle. It seemed to change shape every time I look back at the towel. To avoid losing track of it, I had to rely on blind contour drawing to get most of it done, really slow. Once I got the segments down I look back at the drawing to fix it up.

The uncoloured parts is the throne where the king sits which also was in the shape of the fish but with wires and tubes at the back, as if its inside a spaceship or something.

Fish hats remind me of mythology all over again, about Sumerian priests wearing fish hats, Oannes as one of the Fisher Kings, dogon tribes meeting fish-like aliens that taught civilisation everything it knew, as well as the Jesus fish symbol which to my theory represents the Age of Pisces that it was in.

Hats of fish, before that, of bison. And the last post was a cat fish creature (either pirate or fisherman) as well. Other than that, I have no idea how to interpret this information. Oh well, not going to overthink it. =P

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

March Madness 15

A scrying image.

I had an incense candle lit up while drawing. The way the candle lit up a pile of papers over at the corner of my desk suggested this image for me to work within. The colour olive green kept flashing before me, briefly, a number of times throughout the process.

There was some difficulty seeing the lower leg area so I left it in as it is, working with new lines, hoping to see something else out of it.

Some slight photoshop trickery with copy/pasting. The rest is drawn with a bic pen on computer paper, as per usual.