An illustration of a Paraphysornis for this week’s Animal Alphabets art challenge. I started with this bird being blue but after playing around with the colors a bit it just looked better in red. To experiment with colors I used a layer correction technique called “Gradient Map” that I’d never used before–I’ll definitely have to play with it more in the future.
This week’s illustration for the Animal Alphabets art challenge was an Hesperornis. I started out my sketches for this drawing using silhouettes. I don’t think I had tried this technique since college, but was curious to try this approach again after re-discovering it while trying out some digital brushes recently. While silhouettes might not work well as starting points for some drawings, I found that it work pretty well for this bird at least.
An illustration of a Yellow-eyed Penguin for this week’s Animal Alphabets art challenge. Since the penguin has both a dark and light color to its body, it was hard to figure out what kind of background should go behind it. I eventually went with a lighter background since the penguin is covered more by a darker color in general, and it also gave a chance to work in some highlights into the water.
This week’s illustration for the Animal Alphabets art challenge was a Whooping Crane. I started this drawing with a similar approach to the crane I drew last year, drawing the bird with simple shapes and a minimal background. I really liked that early version to be honest, but since I’ve been doing realistic backgrounds for this series I thought it best to keep within that style and draw what you see here.
An illustration of a Military Macaw for this week’s Animal Alphabets art challenge. I created a custom brush for the last bird I drew in this series, but the custom brush approach didn’t work so well for this one–I ended up having to draw the feathers by hand. I think with a bit more work on the custom brush I could have got it right, but I just ran out of time to experiment unfortunately.
This week’s illustration for the Animal Alphabets art challenge was a Kakapo. The toughest part of this illustration was figuring out how to do the feathers on the bird. I’ve recently started creating custom brushes in Clip Studio Paint, so I decided to make a feather brush to tackle the problem. Kakapo feathers have some pretty random marks on them so I’m not sure I got it exactly right, but I think I came close.
This week’s illustration for the Colour Collective challenge with the color prompt of Moroccan Blue. I drew these cranes in honor of Origami Day. [Note: This post is backdated to the twitter post date. Added to blog 03-01-18.]
This week’s illustration for the Colour Collective challenge with the color prompt of Nougat. I had to do this one on the road, so I opted for a pretty simple illustration. [Note: This post is backdated to the twitter post date. Added to blog 03-01-18.]
My entry for this week’s Colour Collective challenge with the color prompt of Pompeian Red. This one was an unusual one for me–not only did I draw it early in the week, but I drew it in a single evening. [Note: This post is backdated to the twitter post date. Added to blog 03-01-18.]
I rejoined the Colour Collective challenge this week after taking off a few weeks to deal with my 2015 Inktober challenge. Robin Egg Blue was the color prompt for this week, and it led me to think about what might be going on inside an egg. [Note: This post is backdated to the twitter post date. Added to blog 03-01-18.]
