Monday, August 30, 2010

Unable to sketch tonight

Hi everyone.

Well, I had every intention to do a sketch tonight after I finished my first day of the 100 Push Ups program.

Big mistake. I honestly didn't think that the first day would be so hard on me. Especially since I did more push ups in my preliminary exam than the program outlines (don't worry, I'm not making myself sound like a superman; I only squeaked out 23 push ups).

However day one's workout has left my arms shaky and unable to do more than make squiggles. Tomorrow should be fun... and full of lactic acid soreness. Yippie.

Anywho, I'm gonna call it a night and hopefully I'll be able to get a sketch in tomorrow.

Good night everyone.

Friday, August 27, 2010

The Deep

Good evening everyone. And now it's time for the Friday edition of ninjaboy's sketch-a-day.


This evening I present to you a super quick sketch. The actual sketch took about 3 minutes, and I spent another 10 minutes at home playing around with quick colors and gradients.

The sketch is of a diver going deep into the ocean. Is he descending from a ship on the surface high above? Is he investigating a problem outside of an underwater station? Or even worse, is he stuck in an uncontrolled trip to his potential doom?

I'd like to think that he's just investigating a problem.

Anyway, I hope you all get a kick out of the sketch and have a great weekend. I'll see you back here on Monday for a new sketch update.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

The Beast Within

Good evening everyone, and welcome back for my Thursday sketch-a-day.

When I sat down with my bamboo tablet and CS3 today, I installed another brush I got from the magazine and I have to say it's awesome. I really like it. It's really similar to the brushes that I was using the past year in CS3, but it just makes a much cleaner line and feels a lot more responsive and natural with my stylus.

But the sketch ended up being of a werewolf in the process of dispensing some punishment on it's prey. But the question is, is that prey animal... or man? I'll let you make up that decision on your own.


So I hope you like the sketch and I'll see you back here tomorrow for my Friday sketch.

Good night.

Jury Duty and a Relaxing Night

Hi everyone.

Well as you have no doubt noticed, I have missed a few sketches this week. Monday and Tuesday were a wash on account of having to report in for Jury Duty. Then having a bunch of stuff to do around the condo afterwords.

And I missed posting yesterday's sketch as I got home and had a very relaxing evening with my family which caused time to fly by at an exponential rate. So to make amends here is my sketch of Cammy from yesterday.


It was more of an experiment with a new set of brushes I got from the ImagineFX magazine I picked up last month. What a fantastic magazine. And if I ever get some extra cash I will probably subscribe to it. Really a wealth of information, inspiration and free tools.

Anyway, I hope you all dig the sketch and I'll get another one done and posted today.

See you all back online later.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

A super quick posting of Yesterday's sketch

Hi everyone, I only have a few minutes but here is my sketch from yesterday that I didn't get posted.


It is of the iron skinned X-Man Colossus ripping his way through some Sentinels. I didn't have a lot of time to devote to the sketch yesterday either, so you'll have to forgive the roughness of it.
All in all I think I was only in CS3 for about ten minutes, if that.

I'll try and get another sketch done today. Hope to see you all back here later today/this evening.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Terrible Weekend

Hi everyone, I'm going to make this brief as looking at the monitor is not making me feel any better.

I ended up going home early yesterday (Friday) as I caught some type of 'flu bug' and spent the majority of Friday afternoon, evening and night in the bathroom.

I'm actually starting to feel a little better today, but I still have a slight fever and an all over achy body. But at least fluids and food is staying down now.

I did start a sketch on Friday but obviously I didn't have much time to finish it. So I present to you a very unfinished sketch.


Hope you like it and that you all are feeling 100% to enjoy this fantastic weekend. Wish I could.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

So close...

Good evening everybody.

Well I got home this evening, took care of some laundry. Ate some dinner. Did some pushups and crunches. And got my laptop out on the couch to work on my Thursday sketch.

I reached into my messenger bag and retrieved my Bamboo tablet from the main pocket where it can be found when I travel with it. But what good is the tablet without the USB cable to connect it to my trusty MacBook? Not much good, that's for sure.

And lastly, I need my stylus to work, on the sketch... that's weird. It's not in the usual pocket.

Maybe it's in here. No.

Here? Nope.

Damn. I know exactly where it is. My desk at work.

Sorry everyone. I was ready to do some sketching tonight, but now that it's 11 PM, I don't really feel like hastling with my scanner.

I'll get another sketch done tomorrow. and I hope to get two done to make up for this forgetfulness.

Have a great evening everyone and I'll see you again tomorrow.

Nikolaos

Hi everyone. This is actually my sketch from yesterday, revisited.

I only got time to do a quick sketch/outline yesterday and I decided to do a sketch of the character Nikolaos from the book Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K Hamilton. The character was really rather interesting as she is a master vampire with the body of a child. She is incredibly powerful and is one of the more terrifying vampires I've read about (or rather listened to as I listened to the audio book) and this is due in no small part to the fact that she has the appearance of a young girl.

Due to a busy evening at home I completely forgot to post the sketch/finish it, so I thought I'd do so first thing this morning before things got too busy.
However when I loaded up the file I realized that what I had drawn was utter rubbish and didn't accomplish anything I was trying to convey. So I started again.



I wanted to try and show the mania that she keeps hidden within the doll like facade of her youthful body. If I had time to sit down and flesh out the concept more I think I could have a pretty good illustration here, but for now this will have to do.

It took probably about 25 to 30 minutes total (spread over the course of the day) to sketch out then lay in some rough colors. And was done in CS3 using my Bamboo tablet as usual.

I'll try and get another sketch done this evening if I can. So until my next update. Have a great evening.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

If your hand touches my posterior again, I will remove it

Good evening everyone and welcome back for my Tuesday sketch.

I had the sketch done earlier today, but I didn't have the chance to post it till now. Oh well, at least I'm still getting it in before midnight.


Tonight's sketch is of a woman in a turn of the century dress who clearly has seen some tribulations. She's managed to fend off many a jackanapes with her saber, while only sustaining some minor damage to her attire. Not too bad. I'm sure the famous Musketeers would approve.

I was looking at some more of Jason Chan's artwork when I was working on the sketch. Mostly I wanted to see how he 'sketches' this type of dress. If you've been to this blog before, you probably already know about Jason Chan as I've mentioned him at least one other time. If you've never been to his site before, check out the art on the main blog page, then click on the Gallery and enjoy. He's seriously awesome.

And now for the technical stuff. The sketch probably took me a total of 20 minutes spread out over a period of an hour or so in CS3 using my bamboo tablet. A bulk of my time was spent getting the pose to not look like poop. Then the next chunk of the time was spent on the bodice of the dress more than anything else.

Hope ya'll dig. And have a good night.

Coming back from some tech problems...

Hi all. Well after the CS3 crash yesterday, I found myself in a location that had no wifi available to me until quite late at night.

As such I didn't get to post my 'make up' sketch until now. I got inspired by searching the interwebs after loosing my previous sketch and decided to do a sketch of a young woman working with nunchaku. She's in the middle of a kata, where she did a 'back catch' and is moving to another position for the next attack.

So here it is. I'm working on my Tuesday sketch now. See you all back here later.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Crashing Sucks

Hi every body.


I'm kinda miffed right now. I was working on a new sketch to make up for Friday and right after I got the layout completed, CS3 decided to crash on me.


This may be the first or second time that I have experienced a crash with CS3. And frankly, it sucks.


I was totally excited about being able to post 2 sketches today, but now it looks like I might only have time to get one done today.


I'll be back later.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Friday submission, slightly delayed

Good morning folks.

Well I didn't get around to sketching yesterday, so I will be doing it today at some point. I think I'm going to stick to using color flats if I do color the sketch. I used to be pretty good at 'cell shading' my illustrations, so I'm gonna give that a shot again.

Until then, have a great day.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Chun Li's humble beginnings

Well, it's that time again. You guessed it. Time for a new sketch.

I did get to read some of that magazine I posted about yesterday (and it's awesome by the way; tons of great information and tips/tricks), however I didn't really have time to use anything I read about today. Work was finally busy, then this eveningI ended up kinda busy as well.


I took a few minutest to get in front of my Bamboo tablet and wouldn't you know it... I was struck with a bit of artist's block. Inspiration took a flight out of the window. Which is funny because I just opened a window in the condo to cool it off.

Anyway, I just decided to do a sketch along the same line as my young Ken and Ryu sketches. This time I decided to sketch a young Chun Li during her early gung fu training. Her sifu decided to let her take a short break from wooden dummy work. She ended up looking older than I originally planned, but at least the sketch isn't that bad.

Anywho, time to get ready for bed. See you all online tomorrow for my Friday sketch.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Spending an Evening Learning

Hiya everyone. Well I know that I promised another sketch today, but considering the fact that I ended up being pretty busy at work today I decided to spend the evening reading through a new cool magazine I picked up last weekend but haven't had the chance to read through yet.

I'm gonna brush up on some new ideas and concepts, then try to apply these new principles to my next sketch.

Have a great evening and I'll see you back here tomorrow.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Relax and let the Force, guide your attack

Hi again. Well it's time for my Tuesday update.


I can't exactly tell you what made me draw a Padawan and Jedi master training with lightsabers. I always thought that it would be fun to watch or read about how the Jedi taught lightsaber combat.
The one good aspect of the most recent Star Wars trilogy was that the lightsaber combat was more flowing and based on Wushu, while the lightsaber combat of the original (and only real) Star Wars films were based off of Kendo. This progression was realistic as Japanese martial arts originated in China and Mongolia.

However, the timeline progression from Episodes 1-3 to Episodes 4-6 was too short for that amount of combative evolution. It took hundreds of years for Kendo to evolve from the chinese and mongolian sword styles.

Oh well, I'm just being an overly picky martial artist.

Anyway, the actual sketch only took me around 15 minutes today. But I spent another 20 minutes working on the lightsaber blade. It's not the best I could do, but it was good enough for today.

Hope you all dig the sketch and I'll see you back here tomorrow. Good night.

Monday, August 2, 2010

The Problems with Kissing

Well everyone, hope you all had a good weekend. Welcome back for another Monday edition of ninjaboy's sketch-a-day.


Recently the girlfriend and I got addicted to the new show The Gates. It's pretty interesting, and an unexpected find. Yes, it's about vampires and werewolves, and succubus', witches and everything else supernatural. All rolled into a secured suburb called The Gates.
I have described the show as a mix of Moonlight and Desperate Housewives (even though I've never seen DH, I assumed it was something like this).


You should check it out. Some really great characters and a lot of potential for really good stories.


The sketch is based on a girl in high school just figuring out how dangerous puberty can be. I don't want to give too much away. But let's just say it's a story I can't wait to see more of.


Anyway, it's not fully fleshed out as I really only worked on it for about 12 minutes in CS3 using my trusty Bamboo tablet. Maybe I'll finish it up later this week. We'll see how things go at work.


Well, off to bed now. Have a great evening and I'll see you back here for my Tuesday sketch.