Superman - tricot covered flying object

Usually when I feel an urge to draw just something without having any specific topic I end up drawing something that I've seen others drawing a lot, like superheroes, viking warriors, robots, monsters... the list is endless. Well at least I draw something instead of using 2 years trying to come up with extremely original...

Anyway, here's the Superman. In the end I think I had more dynamic postures in the sketches than in the final piece.

In the coloured version I tried to find a colouring method that would fit with a soft and greasy line work. I guess I failed to do that, because the outline sort of lost the vivid feeling it had before colouring. I believe it needs more subtle colours. That kind of line work needs air to breath. So I still need to work on that. Otherwise I'm quite happy. I believe I found some things that can be useful in future.

Zlatan - the real king of Sweden

While waiting today's World Cup 2014 matches I practiced a little bit of my Photoshop skills. It's not that there weren't enough of great players kicking a "brazuca", but still... it would have been so nice to see the magical Zlatan Ibrahimovic with the other superstars. I'm sorry Carl XVI Gustaf, but Zlatan is then real king of Sweden. Too bad they didn't make it to the games.

Here are some close ups.

Soccer time

FIFA World Cup 2014 started yesterday in Brazil. A little bit of honey for all the soccer lovers for a month or so. I may not be the biggest fan, but gonna watch some games for sure. Today I had some time to play around with Photoshop and surprisingly ended up doing some soccer figures.

Experimenting with my students - digital illustration

I just finished a course of digital illustration. Every now and then I do also myself the exercise that I give to my students. Here's such kind of piece - a semi-abstract-collage-compilation... just in case it needs to be categorized. This is also an excellent example of a overworked illustration. That's quite often what I come up with whenever I start experimenting.

Roadwork dragon

Just a random piece of illustration done with iPad and pressure sensitive stylus. I'm still very happy with Wacom's Intuos Creative Stylus, and the ProCreate app is stunning!

An issue with Wacom's Intuos Creative Stylus and iPad Air

An issue? Well, at least for me there's none.

Already some time ago I started to dream about being able to draw with my iPad and utilizing the feature of pressure sensitivity. There seemed to be some styli with such a feature, but they needed a higher version of bluetooth than I had in my iPad 2. Somehow I managed to wait until the iPad Air came to markets and I put my money to it. Then it was time to buy the stylus. I had already done some searching and I had one specific stylus in my mind... but then I found out that it won't work with iPad Air due to some new technology Apple is using in its latest iPad.

Did I have a new fancy widget without a proper stylus???
Googling > Wacom promises that it's Intuos Creative Stylus will work with iPad Air. Googling > a lot of talk about Intuos Creative Stylus NOT working very well with iPad Air. At that point I was so desperate to get at least some stylus that even the few positive comments about ICS were enough for me. So I bought ICS knowing about the risk that it may not work properly.

Long were the days that I waited for the postman to bring me the stylus. Finally the glorious day came and it turned out to be... a glorious. Everything seemed to work very well.

Some comments say that one need to press the stylus quite hard to produce a decent stroke. At least in my opinion there is no extreme strength needed - and I'm not pending iron rails for my hobby. It's also very easy to get a lot of variation for the stroke thickness. Here's a one single stroke with a simple round brush.

Some comments say that not all strokes are registered. The same happens to me every now and then, but it's so rarely that it doesn't bother me a bit.

By the way, ProCreate is my new favourite of drawing apps. It seems to offer so many things that I couldn't even dream of them before. Here's some samples of its numerous brushes.

Also I need to say that I have NO experience of any other pressure sensitive styli, so I can't compare ICS to them. Anyway I believe I have drawn enough to say that the drawing touch with ICS is very good. I'm not saying that those unsatisfied comments about ICS are pointless, but in my case Wacom has definitely earned my faith.

So far I have posted in my blog a couple of semi speedy samples that I have drawn using ICS:
a sketchy robot painting and a coloured line drawing of villager character.

A samurai warrior - illustrating with type

I'll start lecturing another course of digital illustration tomorrow, and I quickly wanted to test an exercise that I aim to give to my students.

Initially I had no clue what I was gonna do... just a character I guess, but after moving elements here and there for a while there was something that reminded me of a samurai. I definitely won't use this technique in croquis-drawing.

Bad hair day ? - experimenting new techniques

I just tried out some new things... and found a new way to amuse myself - drawing huge volumes of hair is addictive.

Trying out a collage illustration exercise

I tried out an exercise I use to give my students when I teach digital illustration; a dynamic, energetic and vivid college illustration out of given elements.

A figure in the dust - Lara Croft

I was lucky to draw Lara Croft for a project I'm currently working on. For that particular purpose it's just a simple spot illustration on white background. After I finished it I couldn't resist doing a very quick experiment and work it a little bit further. Would be fun to something like this more often.