Going back to painting in Oil!

Going back to traditional painting. It's been 7 years before I used my oil paints. This is my practice piece before I jump to a bigger canvas for an upcoming exhibit.

 

The Offering Children's Book App Illustration

This was one of the longest and most enjoyable projects I have done. This is my first app project that's why I was so giddy with excitement. The project started last 2014 and is now in the development phase. Here are some of the character studies I made. :)

What i have learned:

Be patient, good things come to those who wait. The timing on this project was spot on. I just finished my svs children's book illustration class and applied what i learned from it. It has been so much better comparing it to my works before. Especially the lighting and composition.

Ask advice from mentors and other illustrators. Having a mentor and friends who does what you do will greatly improve your work. It will let you see your work in a different light. Don't take their critique personally, remember that they also want your work to be better.

I will post more of these when the app is out. :)

Invest in Yourself

One of my goal this year is to improve my skill, especially in children's book illustration. So I looked at classes online and found SVS (School of Visual Storytelling) class. Although it took a bit of my savings (ouch!) $320 is a lot here in the Philippines (Same price to get that 3 days and 2 nights vacation trip to Bangkok!). Spending for my education is one of the best decisions I've made (...or that's what I tell myself, really that trip to Bangkok is really nice haha). ;)

I just finished part 1 of the video and I'm doing the workbook exercises. First task is to design a simplified character. I did a few sketches and decided to render one of them. :) And the winner is this cute pudgy-fied baby bear! :)

Took a photo from my sketch and did the rendered illustration digitally using photoshop. You can see the steps below. As always I started with getting the sketch done, and blocking out the colors using one color to get the values right, then adding color overlays to finish it off. :)

I'm looking forward to do the rest of the exercises in the workbook, will be posting them so stay tuned. :) 

How about you how do you invest in yourself?

Entry for PBBY

Here's my entry for the PBBY. :) The story I illustrated is "Gaano ba kalayo patungong paaralan".
A well spent weekend last month. This was kind of rush, thus the unfinished look. :)

Exotic illustration step by step tutorial

Welcome to another series of step by step tutorial. 

I did this digital painting of monkeys in a jungle for my exotic entry for Illustration Friday. :)
This illustration was quite a challenge, since there are a lot of characters in the artwork. Doing different expressions and making the artwork blend together was my main challenge here.

steps in animation

I started out with a simple line sketching in photoshop. These are very loose quick strokes just to position the elements, these are just guides and will be deleted later on. Next step is to create another layer to make the line drawing. Then blocking out the shapes using base tones. Checking how dark or light the image is. 

Next is coloring the artwork, initially I wanted the monkeys to be blue, to make them look exotic, but when I look at it, they don't blend with the artwork well. So I changed them to brown but made their faces blue. :)

Next are the monkeys!!! This took a while since each monkey has a different character. I only use one brush for this piece adobe photoshop round brush with opacity 50% and flow at 20%.

When I'm done with the details I look on the overall and checked the lighting using photoshop's auto tone and contrast. And it's finished! :)

illustration friday exotic

My entry for this week's illustration friday. Topic is exotic. :)

Comfort Zone painting tutorial

Welcome to another series of my step by step watercolor panting tutorials.
Today's piece was my entry for the  de kahon art fair at the collective. Did this artwork in 4 days. (Monday-Thursday) then submitted it on Friday just in time for the show on Saturday!

I already have an idea in my mind. I just sketched it first and draw it in my computer. I did this to get the values first. When I'm happy with the composition I tried to add colors and experiment. (I used photoshop to add the shadows and colors for the study, since I don't have enough time to do this traditionally, thank you photoshop! :) changing colors is just a click away!)

Step 1:  Wash
Used the wet on wet technique. I used yellows and some greens as base colors to give a warm tone to the artwork. As you can see the paper is very wet, I love how the colors bleed. After this I left the painting to dry.

step 2: Fill in the base colors

When the paper is dry I started filling in the rest of the colors. I checked my study in photoshop for the color palette and started painting. These are just base colors. Note: Used light colors for the base then started building up the colors with darker tones.

Step 3: Adding foreground and overlaying colors

After the base colors are dry, the next step is to add the foreground and to slowly build the colors by adding color overlays. 

FOREGROUND: I added bushes and trees for the foreground. This also helps me frame the piece and lead the viewer's eyes to the subject. 

OVERLAYS: I used darker shades of greens to build up the colors of the bushes. I used my liner brush for the leaves. These are applied using the dry on dry technique.

Step 4: Adding details

Used the liner brush and watercolor pencils to add the details. This took a while maybe around two sessions for the details alone. At this stage the image starts to come alive. Adding the shadows and highlights really made the arwork pop! :)

Step 5: Final Artwork

After this I gave myself a pat on the back and went to sleep! :) Thank you for reading this tut. Comments & suggestions are very much appreciated. 

Ollie & Timmy Speedpainting Video

Yay done making this time lapse video, I intended to post this before our exhibit last august, but alas procrastination got  in the way :(. This Illustration will be the cover of the children's book I illustrated, the story was written by the awesome Sofia Santiago. It will be published digitally, hopefully this September by Halo-halo books. :) note: i don't paint this fast! this took me about 3 hours and compressed it to 3 mins. I hope to get a better quality video next time, most of the details are lost in the video. :(

Wordless Wednesday

The most wonderful time of the year!

I can't believe December is almost over! I only blogged twice this month! Got caught up with so much work which unfortunately I can't post yet :(. So I did this christmas card illustration instead. This took a while since i'm juggling my office work and our xmas party preparation. Christmas is just 2 days away and i'm sooo excited to spend it with my relatives. So glad to be able to do this illustration for the holidays. Merry Christmas everyone! Will post the step by step process hopefully this December. :)

Peek watercolor process

Here is my watercolor step by step process for making my latest artwork peek!
This was inspired by studio ghibli's The Borrower Arrietty.

 I really love this animated film... anyway back to business, I started this one out with a concept in my head and directly sketched it on the watercolor paper (I know this is not the advisable way to do it, I just got so excited that I decided to directly do it on the canvas). Then I added a warm yellow wash and started painting the leaves. I got carried away and forgot to take a photo of my initial process, sorry guys. My color palette was mostly warm greens, yellow and red because I want it to have a magical glowing feel.

 Next step I painted the cute little girl peeking out of the giant mushroom. The trick with watercolor is to do the coloring with very light tones first (to do this just add copious amounts of water) and add the dark tones little by little, since the magic of watercolor lies in its transparency. :)

After that I added the details, shadows and texture on the girl, leaves, flower & the mushroom. And then I was done. Hooray!

That's all there is to it. If you find this tutorial helpful please comment or share.