Its that time of year again!! I can't believe its Christmas Eve!! It's a
weird feeling being graduated and being home for Christmas. My sister
is home for winter break and graduates in the spring next year. It's
great having the whole family home for the holidays :) ! Below is a
speed paint I made yesterday. I was listening to this song called "Santa
Claus is Coming to Town" by The Crystals off of a mix holiday album
called "A Christmas for You from Phil Spector". It's such a great song
that got me inspired to make a funny drawing of my chihuahua/corgi mix
Willy. He loves to beg and sits on his haunches when he does it. Anywho, this is all I have for today and will have more next week to show since everyone will be busy celebrating. Drive safe and enjoy the holidays!! :) MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!
Hope you all have had a great Thanksgiving! Looks like my trip to visit
my sister got pushed towards the last week of the semester. So Ill be
leaving tomorrow and will return about Christmas Eve. Between the last
post and this post Ive been working on several drawings. Ive made a self portrait, and a funny drawing of my once chubby chihuahua, Lulu(she has lost some pound since then, so I wanted to mock her). My turkey
drawing is almost complete, so youll be see that one as well. Ive even
decided to post a sneak peak of what the blog background will look like.
Its not totally done, but I thought it'd be worth showing. Ive also
went ahead and inked up my design of my dog Glory from the last post. Im
super excited and posting them because they now have this "marker"
effect that makes my poses look bold. You know, now that Im thinking
about it, Ill just go ahead and make that the first drawing in the
series for tonight's blog post.
Im pleased with how this spread came out. Ive put alot of thought into
the look of both Glory and my stop motion film she will be in. I dont
have concept drawings yet of how the backdrops are going to be, but I
watched several paper stop motion films and discovered two obscure
paper/experimental stop motions by Yuriy Norshtein from Russia in the
70's. His two films, "Tale of Tales" and "The Hedgehog in the Fog" are
BEAUTIFULLY made and well animated! The overall ethereal quality of both
films captured my attention immediately and I KNEW that these had to be
my inspiration! Here are the two films below:
I picked these two films because I wanted to preserve my drawing style into my film. The use of texture I observed intrigued me since I love details! The lighting fascinated me as well! I dont think Ill have dark lighting in my film since it'll be more of a comedy, but I'll go back and watch these maybe two more times to see if there is anything I didn't pick up on before. I've also viewed some Lotte Reiniger films as well. She is a wonderful paper stop motion animator and is a master of the silhouette of her characters! Lotte will prove useful for me as well since her films show strong poses against a total black silhouette.
Moving along, here is another look at my turkey that is almost done. I did alot of work to the leg and looked at many turkeys to approach the feathers a different way instead of what I was doing before(as you can see on the right side of the bird and in the top left). I feel really good about it, and will continue in that direction to work my way around this piece. I found that using the brush mode "multiply" adds some really cool effects to the colors as you layer them! When you paint more than one stroke using multiply, it darkens the color as you go. Ive also played around with the different modes with the layers so that it has a different tone effect when layered underneath another layer. This means that whatever mode a layer is on, for example I may have used "color burn" in one of the layers for the red area. So by moving the layer around, it may appear brighter when I place it over top of a darker layer. Hopefully that makes sense.
Ive always been trying to get better at making a self portrait of myself. At first with this drawing below, I was just testing myself to see if I can come up with my own human character. Along the way, I thought of my new winter hat and drew that on her head. Then it came to me that I should just do a self portrait while I was already so inspired from this piece below. So yes, for now its on the back burner. I dont know if I'll ever finish this character I have. I just wanted to show what I was thinking about prior my finished portrait.
Below is my self portrait. I played around with the opacity of the brush as well as with different brushes to get the effect you see. I'm very happy with the outcome. Although, I would have to say it doesn't look 100% like me, but I still like it.
Now for my drawing of Lulu! I was thinking of one of my favorite films starring Kirsten Dunst called "Marie Antoinette"! I had this idea of dress Lulu up like her and just surround her with food. With her breed, they have this "Napoleon Complex", and think they are in charge and rule the house. So yes, Lulu does think she's in charge! Lulu is a very nice dog though. Anywho, my family and I don't overfeed her, but tends to steal some food from my other two dogs when Im not looking for a moment. She's a funny little dog :)! This drawing is still new, so I'll be observing more dress to lock down her dress more. I did research Marie's outfits too.
Finally, I'll wrap up this blog post with a sneak peak to my blog background! :) I've played around with different color modes too as far as the hues go. I will be taking my sketchbook up with my while I visit my sister for awhile. So I MIGHT post a drawing next week. Until then, for those who have snow and ice, drive safely! If I don't make a post next week, have a wonderful holiday and a great 2012 New Year!! :)
