Brisk Summers

I was looking for something to draw the other day and Mike DeBalfo suggested drawing one of his Squirrel Girls.

I couldn't resist.

After browsing through his characters on his DeviantArt site, Brisk Summers seemed to appeal to me most.  http://fav.me/d50bsho

Mike is the master of underboob, so it seemed appropriate to figure out how to get that element in there.  Brisk is supposed to be the most athletic of the bunch, so put the two together, and you have a stretching exercise gone voyeur.

At first I wasn't sure if the tail and ears were "real" or were fake, so I kind of drew the ears fake (because that's how he draws them) and the tail semi-real.  This sketch came relatively quickly.

But the proportions were pretty bad: head was too big, torso too short, legs too skinny, and I had crazy problems with the eye.

So I spent some time in photoshop scaling pieces to they fit a little better.  And in my signature cheat: got rid of one eye.

I was pretty happy at this point.  I was feeling pretty good about the tushie, but the overall piece felt a little too static.

So when I went to do the color, I rotated her just a tad to make her lean more.  I also rotated her upper torso to the left more to give her back and overall form more of a curve.

It looks a little better now, but the figure seemed too small.  She definitely looked better large.  Though this might have partly a function of the big fat pencil I was using.  Chris Gutierrez suggested  a tighter crop, so I did that and leaned her even more.

I *thought* I was done, but after letting it sit a day, I found that the leggings were really bothering me.  I tried cropping it right at where her legs crossed but that didn't feel right.  So I leaned her some more, cleaned up the leggings so they didn't grab your attention so  much, curved out the tail a little, and gave her more padding at the top (to better match Mike's character).

Overall I'm pretty happy with it.  I think my favorite bit is the highlights on her tush.

COMMISSION: Genie

One more commission.  This one was quite a challenge.

The original sketch was relatively easy.  The girl came out nice right away.

Here's the cleaned up pencils.

This is pretty far along in the painting process.  I put in some lights inside the fortune teller booth, but they were drawing too much attention.  Plus the lighting behind her was drawing too much attention, and the overall lighting was wonky.

It also at this point that I figured out I had a major perspective problem with the booth.

Getting rid of the lights helped a lot.  And here the lighting's getting better.  And the perspective is better, still not quite perfect, but good enough.  I'm not used to doing this kind of painting in Painter -- it's much more hazardous, where with Photoshop I felt like I could easily and quickly make grand changes, with Painter, that control just wasn't there.

And here's the final.  

And for the sake of completeness, a version with a top as requested by the commissioner.

COMMISSION: Belle Baroque

A few progress shots from another commission:

COMMISSION: Burlesque

Here are some process shots from my Burlesque commission.

Marilyn Book Porn

I came across a really nice photo of Marilyn that I thought would make a good study.  At first, I was just gonna draw the figure and just rough out the face, not worrying about likeness.

But then I couldn't resist at least trying.  As usual, I had all kinds of proportion problems.  Big head, especially.

With the exception of the arm angle, the body was actually pretty easy.  But her likeness...oy.  That took a few hours.  Here are a few of the better heads.  This was a lot of tweaking, scaling, rotating, redrawing from scratch.

And the final lines.

One funny note here: the original reference photo was of a very young Marilyn, with more of a girlish face, but somehow I was not able to capture that and ended up with the more mature Marilyn, perhaps as I pushed it towards her canonical look.

And at first I wasn't gonna bother coloring, but then I thought what the hell, I've come this far.  And this came together surprisingly quickly.  Probably less than an hour.  It's amazing how much having solid lines helps.  Plus, I'm finally finding Painter brushes that I like.

Normally I'd then spend another 8 hrs trying to refine it, but in this case, I think that'd be a mistake.  The rough colors work well enough.  Better to leave it alone.

Mars Vista

I can draw Dejah Thoris all day...

This one was relatively quick, which usually means it comes out good.  It's the slow pieces that usually suck.

Anyway, here are some snapshots along the way.

The first roughs:

A refined version of the sketch:

This is the first attempt at painting.  Note how the body has changed significantly.  It's more apparent at this point also that the foreshortening isn't working.  There's no sense of depth.

Better depth now, but I spent way too much time futzing with her face.  I couldn't get it in a natural pose.  I kind of like the expression here, but the flow didn't seem right.

This one has more tension and action to it, but it seems unnatural.  That flat side view especially doesn't go well with the flow of the body.

Here's the final.  Rocks have been detailed, the face is now a more natural angle.  The overall lighting is more subtle.  I erased the hair and started over again.  Sometimes it's easier to do it that way to get the shape right.

Book Porn

Sorry, I've been neglecting this site.  Too many places to post.

Anyway, "book porn" is a theme that I'd been wanting to do for a while now, with a bunch of sketches that I'm not all that crazy about.

But this one, while rough, has legs, so to speak...

And here's a tame version for Facebook: