Aye Aye!

Last weekend I tried drawing on paper; mainly sketches and such. I ended up scanning two drawings. I planned on making one a vectorized drawing, and the other a rasterized drawing. The vectorized one, in this case, is a collection of eyes. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but a character's eyes are a thing I really like to focus on. As it stands, I have a tendency to continuously draw the same general type of eye, so this time I tried drawing several different ones to see if I can vary my approach somewhat. The original drawing has a handful of eyes that are missing from this picture, as I wanted to present a smaller set to avoid cluttering up the picture. It took about six hours or so to finish, from sketch to vectorized version.

I encountered a peculiar problem when trying to export the picture from Inkscape. It appears that, at least on my Windows platform, Inkscape filters tend to be a bit on the unstable side. This is readily apparent when applying a heavy filter to an object (or a group of objects) and then trying to resume work. The program will start to exhibit noticeable lag, especially when zooming in and out. This wasn't the main issue here, however. I noticed that when I tried to export the original image (over a thousand pixels in width and over seven hundred in height), the filters were lost during export. Luckily I only used three simple noise filters, which were light and weren't really necessary in the first place, so potentially I could have done without them. The solution was to export the picture in a smaller, more manageable size. This kept the filters intact.

Mirrors of the Soul

Vectorama

I remember mentioning that I entered a logo competition earlier this year, so I thought I'd post about it now. I didn't win (as should be expected at this point), and as such I can freely publish my entry here. It was meant for a certain union of university students, and was to promote such values as co-operation, learning and responsibility (among a few others). Without further ado, the picture itself:

I tried to emphasize all said virtues primarily with my colour choices: blue for responsibility, cooperation and openness - yellow for the rest. The hands should portray cooperation and openness, with the abstract book in the background signifying learning. It took about four hours to finish.

I'll just leave this picture here as a bonus! It's a result of my fiddling about with vector art, inspired by logo-art and socialist propaganda. It's a logo for a fictional space mining company. It took an hour or two to finish. Both this picture and the competition entry were drawn as vectors, with no freehand drawing involved.

Kis Kis Kis

Previously - I was somewhat surprised to learn that there isn't a suitable word in English for what my new hobby means in my native language. After some searching online and otherwise, "Fitness Boxing" is the best I can come up with. It's like boxing, but without actual bouts with another person. It's mostly about exercising one's muscles. Even though my arms feel like lead bars after a short while after each session, surprisingly the feeling doesn't last long. It's said that the impact from punching the sack relaxes the muscles, thus leaving less strain to deal with later.

Good God, has it really been this long since my last post? Tempus Fugit and all that, I suppose. Work and holidays have been taking up my time, not to mention vidya games (but that's pretty much a given in my case). This is the final entry for the sketch-stretch. I won't give any clues for this one, suffice to say that it doesn't directly refer to what it portrays.

It took me ages to complete the damn picture. It was my first encounter in drawing fur, and it was far more time-consuming than I anticipated. In fact, I hadn't really considered the ordeal at all; I think I was focused so much on the line-art (in my usual fashion) and thought that the fur was simply a coat of colour. To make matters worse, I had a moment with where I was satisfied with the work so far, but I had to go and make a little tweak here, a little correction there, and soon found myself sinking easily over a double amount of time into the drawing. I honestly lost count on how may hours I spent on it, but let's say around eight.

So, enjoy the thing I guess. I still think it looks like a damn mutant, but by God I wasted too many hours of my life on it not to showcase it. At the very least, I can leave it here as a warning as to how not to draw fur / animals / similar themes. That being said, I think I might switch to vector-art for a while, as I promised a few posts back. Let's see how that goes, shall we?

Sketch-Stretch 5