Main Menu

DREDDCEMBER!

Started by pauljholden, 06 December, 2018, 04:12:08 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

pauljholden

Christmas Bah Humbug! I've been doing Dreddcember, a Dredd or Dreddworld related sketch per day. I've been doing these, usually at bedtime, spending 30 minutes to an hour on painting (and trying to teach myself how to paint)

Here's the first few from the advent calendar thread (I'll not be posting any more there) and today's to follow...
DAY 1:

Greyscale simple Dredd. This is practically my signature Dredd Head at this point. Pencilled in Procreate.
DAY 2:

Trying to something different than my usual art style. Painted in Procreate. Dredd from the City Of The Damned, after the mutant has blinded him.
DAY 3:

Oh man, this was frustrating. Would you believe I was going for a Dave McKean-esque, Joker in Arkham vibe and fell so widely from the mark it's hard to imagine to that's even what I was going for. Frustrating. (Drawn in Clip Studio Paint)
DAY 4:

THIS... This was much more successful, really wanted something to have a painterly feel, still has my usual chunky vibe going on but also distinct enough to feel different. A+ from my own personal satisfaction pov. (Procreate, using pencil and flat brush)
DAY 5:

Another frustrating one. Just shit. Not happy with this at all.
DAY 5 BONUS!

Ah this is so much better. This was my winding down and trying something as different as I could get - trying to escape all my bad habits (and frequently bad habits are, basically, your style) (Procreate)
DAY 6

A Superfast painted sketch in procreate (15 mins?). Actually drawn at A3 with 300dpi and faster than CLIP Studio Paint on my desktop for painting.
Liked it so much I refined it...

Just tweaking it in procreate, adding some brighter shades. But then I exported it to clip studio and decided to colour it (since I like some of the clip studio brushes)



broodblik

When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

Trooper McFad

Love these posts PJ and the commentaries are a great insght of an artist and their thoughts on their own work when us mere mortals are just in awe wishing we could draw half as good.
Looking forward to the rest of Dreddcember 👍🏻👍🏻
Citizens are Perps who haven't been caught ... yet!

pauljholden

GET UGLY

Otto Sump.


Procreate mostly with the flat brush, the pencil and the splatter air tool.

I'm not a colour artist, I generally don't do anything in colour, though I have dabbled in painting (actually, the last time I did it was 10 years ago, and I liked some of the results, but quickly hit my own limitations).

I play around with colour having read a little colour theory and picked up things, but I'm aware it's totally non-intuitive for me and the rules I'm applying are almost certainly misheard/picked up wrong.

But here's my (few) rules:
"White" Face can be broken down in to three major areas, forehead - a yellowish colour (thin skin, closest to bone), middle of face a red blush colour (nose, and cheeks) and then chin area a blue/green tone (from the facial hairs).

Then there's also the colour opposites (red/green, blue/orange, etc) that I don't really understand, but I try and apply if I can. And, finally, there's the idea that hue (ie the colour) doesn't matter so much as the one - so you can highlight a blue thing with yellow as long as the yellow is a lighter shade than the blue. I mean it might be bullshit, and maybe as I play with it I'll find that out, but I need some sort of rules to play by otherwise faces all end up a mushy orange colour.

I wish you could see the amazing textures Procreate is able to produce, up close to this image and it looks like paper/paint. It's incredible, really. Even pulled out to actual size Procreate makes it look damn sharp. It's just a shame the export tends to go to mush a bit (it lacks any sort of decent control on exporting, sadly, so best exports are done by exporting at actual size as a PSD, importing to clip studio and then reexporting from there. But frankly, that's a pain in the butt)

I've got to start thinking bigger with these pics, there's a point where you KNOW you can paint a face so it's time to try something else or you'll go nuts and start thinking ALL you can do is paint a face...
-PJ

Fungus

Otto!
Up till Otto, I didn't think the blinded Dredd would be topped. But Otto is captured fantastically. The goofiness is there and the hair is rendered so simply but so well. More experiments, please  :)

Colour Theory, I'd like to understand more about and kind of see where it's coming from. It's an enormous subject - if an art teacher I spoke to recently is to believed - but after some basics I wonder if it would become too scientific? Less impulsive? Joyless? One minor quibble I have about digital art is the endless potential tinkering of colour. Wouldn't it drive you a bit nuts? Ramble ends!


pauljholden

No time for anything g experimental today. Here's a pen and ink and watercolour sketch (actually a private commission)

Dredd by the numbers headshot. I draw this style of dredd a lot (I think I do it ok, but I've gotten so used to it it feels like I'm always repeating myself)
Added some Payne's grey watercolour for the background just to pop him a bit.

First time I've drawn pencil on paper in about two months though, been all digital for a while... (my eyesight, while not appalling feels pretty rubbish compared to how it was 10 years ago even, glasses for computer work, glasses for reading, and the drawing is some where between the two. Real pain in the butt)

Rogue Judge

That Otto is fantastically grotesque!

That Dredd commission is awesome - The water colour adds a lot. I see Ian Kennedy adding splashes of water colour behind his commissioned figures as well and I think it really gives it a polished/complete look.

As much as I like digital artwork (especial the colouring), you just cant beat good ol' pencils and inks imo (I like the tangible aspect of paper art - although it is sometimes difficult to tell, that Painted City of the Damned and greyscale Dredd look real enough to me)

Thanks for posting these!

Bolt-01

Lovely work, as always PJ. Really like the little texture lines on the eagle in the commission.

pauljholden



How many different ways are there to draw old stony face? A LOT. there's a LOT of different ways to draw him. More realistic, more cartoony, more like a human more like an impassive slab of granite. I think it's why he's so much fun to draw, it's hard to get him right but within the word "right" there's so much variety...

Painted with a blue background, was explaining to my 10 year old son that the red here in dredd's helmet is closer to a brown, but with all the blues around darkening the image down it has the effect of making it look like a red. Even the yellows are much more muted than you imagine.

My favourite colouring trick with blonde hair is you often end up painting it green (well, closer to khaki) which just looks blonde, weirdly.

Anyway, hope you like. More to come.


-pj

pauljholden



Not a particularly great image. I should really have abandoned this at the rough stage (but oddly, I'm often quicker to abandon pencil sketches if they're real pencil sketches, I think because I think I can save digital later because of the edits you can do in digital... I was wrong here though), but I actually wanted to try inking something in procreate. Sometimes small. It's... not a success. Still, maybe I'll attack the idea again and see if I can't make it do what I'm expecting it to do. Still another Dreddcember.

Andy Lambert

Absolutely loving this thread! Amazing work!

TordelBack

Magnificent boots there!

pauljholden


Trooper McFad

Great Santa Dredd even though the beard covers old stoney face you can still tell he's not in the Xmas spirit 😄
Citizens are Perps who haven't been caught ... yet!

Proudhuff

Quote from: pauljholden on 10 December, 2018, 10:40:21 PM
BONUS!



And here's me colouring this up:

https://twitter.com/pauljholden/status/1072245567537995776

I'm sure that's covered in Dredd's Comportment.



Loving this thread, but the boots need to be bigger and tighter... and on Dredd too.
DDT did a job on me