Jan – April 2019: Brushing off the Dust and filling in the blanks

*Post is written May 29

I have left this blog hanging for so long. I was looking forward to keeping track of my art journey here but I never got around to doing it properly. Before I got/set up this blog, I was recording my thoughts in Google Docs. I debated whether or not I wanted to put those posts here because a lot of it was written very messily as I quickly jotted some thoughts down, and there are a lot of posts that didn’t make sense, or I simply didn’t track my progress at all for certain topics, so my older posts feel a bit disjointed. Still, I think there were some valuable lessons for myself that I recorded so I’m in the process of cleaning them up (making more coherent sentences/figuring out what I meant and rewriting it), adding images, and finding links that I forgot to record. Past me would write about these tutorials I came across but I’d forget to link them, which frustrates present me to no end!

So my goal going forward is to spend more time writing and organizing these posts!

Here are a few things that I have been working on that were not mentioned in previous posts (that I can remember at the top of my head!)

JANUARY

-Comics (add images later)

FEBRUARY

A month of tutorials. Since I am using files from Lynda, I won’t be posting those!

MARCH

A month of putting my knowledge of Illustrator intro practice.

A simple design that took quite some time. I was learning how to use Illustrator so I used this little project to guide my journey so I had something to work towards. I struggled a lot with pathing and colouring the roses, but I came out knowing how to work with the program a bit more.

A quick little design to refresh/help cement knowledge of Illustrator. The balloon is a little too big but it was good practice. I followed a hot air balloon tutorial to make this.

1920 x 1080 Wallpaper version of my summery design. It was a project that initially was supposed to be very different!

This is the final design I made for a phone case/wallet design. I like the wallpaper version more as there is more to “see”, but for the sake of the project, a square shape was needed.

For my SO’s birthday, I wanted to design a phone case/wallet. Their phone case was falling apart and needed replacement. At first, I wasn’t even planning to do a phone wallet design because on the large sites like RedBubble/Zazzle/Threadless, they mostly offered iPhone cases (and some wallets) but very little offered a good selection of Samsung Galaxy cases. Phone wallets were basically non-existent, so I wanted to do a T-Shirt design of some sort. I wanted it to be unique but also something I could do within my level of artistic expertise (haha). I agonized for about a month, bouncing in between ideas, and failing their executions before I finally settled for a summery design, it was also my last attempt before I bought some other gift as my SO’s birthday was coming up. (Spoiler, I finished the case before the birthday but the custom order didn’t come in until 2 weeks later, Happy Belated Birthday Gift xD).

I happened to find a site (Ego Sketch) that made phone wallets for Samsung phones and I was just sold that I would make a phone wallet. The company is based in the Netherlands, so I thought it’s a nice coincidence as my SO is Dutch! The shipping took a while, but it wasn’t the fault of the company, I ordered the case on the weekend, and they weren’t working, but the day they started working it was completed and shipped out on the day (I was watching the updates like a hawk for like 2 weeks straight). And the case basically chilled in Canada for a while before it was sent to my home.

The first WIP are the flora design. I had a lot of fun making them look vibrant! And after a string of failures, this turning out looking decent gave me a confidence boost.
Early stage of design.
Little baby chicken before it got all its details.
Playing around with a lot of brightness and saturatio, but I decided it was too much!

Quickly doodled a head portrait (unfinished) so I could play with colours and blending modes in Photoshop.

I like drawing people and wanted to practice. The background was inspired by the purple/pink theme from the girl before and also I’ve been looking at zodiac art at the time so I added the symbols in the background with stars,

I dug through my old files and I kept some old layers, so I thought it would be interesting to show the evolution. This was around the time I was studying values and using grayscale, so as nightmare fuel as the middle image was, it was a way for me to practice drawing portraits and defining shapes with values. In the end, I removed the values that defined the nose as I ended up with a more “cartoon” drawing, as it looked weird with a defined nose.

APRIL

I got into doing a bit of recording on YT, and it was a pretty good motivator to draw as I needed thumbnails. I didn’t “clean” up the images too much as the thumbnails are pretty small, so messy lines aren’t as noticeable. This was a nice was for me to quickly practice art without worrying about needing to polish things a lot and having a goal to work towards.

Loving Tower Unite‘s Minigolf minigame. I played when this game was still in its early days in GMOD. I love the concept. I hope the devs keep updating and supporting Tower Unite. It doesn’t have a lot of players, so I’m hoping it can thrive in the long run ><.

The top right drawing is NOT done by me, it was done by the lovely creators of the visual novel for the Ludum Dare 44. I don’t want to list the name directly here in case I draw some questionable traffic x). THIS IS AN ART BLOG OK!

Quick art I drew for my YT icon.
Quick banner I made for my YT channel. I’ll update it more in the future. For now it’s a nice placeholder! I miss making pixel art…