I washed my wallet

Those copperstains are very difficult to remove.

My wallet is this yellow thingy, and I don't know why but this morning I got the urge to clean it. It having lotsa dirt on it helped of course. And so I took my wallet and got to it. One of the discoveries was that the wallet itself, without its content is actually very soft and agile. The other discovery was that the place where I keep the coins is saturated by the copper coins liquid. Yes, I'll claim that coins sweat, just for the fun of it.

And behold, my two walls of art, on the left is other peoples work (oteplorks) and on the right is my own stuff. Yeah less impressive, but still it fun to have a wall full of drawings. Suddenly my nose detects the lovely smell my wallet is giving away right now. A good thing I used a good soap for it.

In other news:

I present you with A, the sketch for the drawing I posted on DA yesterday. B, a drawing I'll ink to hang up in the store. In the hope to persuade the kids a bit more in participating a drawing contest that the company organised. And C:\ A sketch I'll ink and color later on.

That last sketch was kinda an odd situation. A fellow artist asked if I wanted to draw her characters in my style. I was contemplating on doing it, but wasn't sure if it was worth the trouble. But since the idea was in my mind, I couldn't help and be curious to what the result would be. Thus I was tricked again, into drawing at least some of the characters.

Archimedes and trees

Who needs an excuse to run around naked through town?

A few days back my brother informed me that the story of Archimedes might be a funny thing to draw. And true he was. It took me only a few minutes to figure out the basic idea of the drawing. But then somehow I just couldn't finish it. I had the lines, and even the basic idea of the colors. So getting it done wouldn't be so hard you'd think.

Boy was I wrong. I tried a realistic look for it, then I went for simple outlines like illustrator. I tried using flash illustrator and photoshop, but non of them did the trick. I just couldn't finish it. So in the end it seemed like the old fashioned way was just the way to go. Simple outlines, basic color, and not to much stuff on the shadows. So finally after a long battle that took me some days I got this as an end result.

Archimedes by ~wulfnstein on deviantART

And for something completely different. A few days back my I received a pooster, some A6 cards and a magazine in which one of my works was placed. It was the tree I made about the four seasons. It was for a danceact with which my cousin helped to make the addvertising. It had taken some time and effort. But when I finaly saw the pooster and the fact they got a doublepage sized add in a local magazine, I was very happy.

After all, it was definatly worth all the time and work I put into it. Especialy since they put a lot of effort in spreading it to the world. I'm gratefull they did that.

A whole bunch of little things

I'm amazed by the chear amount of anime dance moves.

In the link above you can find the song "caramelldansen" which is/has been a hype. Its understandable why, funny song, cute dance and crazy characters. A rather fine mix for the internet people. I'm mentioning this only now cause I was reminded of that dance last sunday at the convention, where some people did it. And now that song has been in my mind for the past week. Very oddly, even in my sketches.

Also you can see the original sketch of my slugish drawing on DA. With this sketch I tried to decide what colors I had to cut out of my book, and what parts were to be colored. I figured I'd make the darkest parts on the sketch colored in black, and the grayish was to be cut out. A good thing I reversed it. Cause black salt really isn't salt at all. Salt has to be white or else people won't recognize it.

On another note. I went to Brussels this week. Big town over here in Belgium, you might have heard of it. To get my certificate for being a comic author. I followed a course of "comic auther" last year, and this week I got the notice that I could come and get the certificate at their office. Sure it might not really be of any true vallue on the market, but its something. And something is better then nothing.

Now while I was in town I figured a strole down the cities shopping street might be a fun idea. It turned out in sketching a building on some square. Isn't it strange how ancient greek/roman buildings ended up in a modern city. Frankly here in europe its understandable, having been part of the roman empire and all, but what about america. The romans never even got there.

Aah, History, how you can be so odd when it comes to building stuff in honor of rich peoples ego.

Keep on updating

Sometimes I'm really just updating for the update ',:|

Frankly I wouldn't dare say anything different. Cause today really is more or less just an update for the sake of updating. Today I present you with another colored work, and a funny speed painting from the making of. There are some nice ideas bubbling in my mind. But those will be for another day.

Thus I bring you this thingy. Over here are two version of the global image. I couldn't decide which one I thought was better. Over there you can find the cropped version, with another composition, and a missing green gitarist. I think that version is an ok mix of the two over here. And underneath you can see the making off from this drawing.

As a little extra I bring you this little sketch I made during lunch break at work. So it took me about 35 to 40 minutes at max.

So whenever you don't really have anything to say, just upload a lot of pretty pictures to distract the viewer from the lack of thoughtfull blogging.

Going to made in asia

I know you! Good morning.

Made in asia is a sort of con here in belgium that covers most of the media stuff that comes from asia. This includes games, manga, animé, some historic stuff, art and a few other thingies. It caught my interest, for I do am interested in those things. So this sunday I had the time to go there, yeah work is a bitch. My collegue Katia, also known as Cage apparently, was kind enough to join me on this quest. "Always nice to discover new things" as she said.

The bus lines on sunday are hell, they only ride each hour, so I had some time to kill cause I was a bit early. Which is ok, cause that allowed me to make some sketches. Sitting there on a bench I got some stuff on paper. The view was a funny thing on its own. All the cosplayers, kids with spiked hair and lotsa colorfull clothes that passed by. I belief there even was a little photoshoot going on behind me at one point. The con itself was very fun, lotsa nice stuff to see and apparently you only had to pay one time to gain entrance to two other cons, one about modelbuilding and another about creative hobby thingies.

But the intro was awesome. The entrance door itself was on the second floor so we had to go down with an electrical staircase. So imagine this, standing above all the people, having full view of everything, and then gently descending into the sea of asian wares. Definatly a nice entree.

One of the activities was a cosplay show, and there were some pretty good ones this time. One of the groups were transformers, which I also had seen at f.a.c.t.s. 2009. They were still nice.

The best part however is what happend a bit earlier. Me and Katia walking through the people, and suddenly she see's someone she knows. Nothing to special, but then it appeared to be Yoko, whom I know from school when I was 14 or something. They knew each other from highschool. And me and Katia know each other from work. And all three of us have been to the same school at one point in time. Now for it to be a coincidence I gotta say, it's one of the higher levels. I mean, if there was a coincidence god, I'd say, "nicely done dude"

On another note, there were big drums that got played by a pikachy and some other people. A free hug animal too and I got my ass kicked by Katia in some tekken like game. She never plays games, apparently she's just better at button smashing then I am.

But luckily I got some sketches to show you now. And yes that is a brain in a wheelchair!

I just love remakes.

And years later he took it upon him to copycat his own ideas, le gasp! :o

Fieuw, this was a close one. I had made a few drawings earlier this week. But as my brother pointed out. I couldn't use those as updates for this blog. Cause I still had three days before the update. So I asked him for an idea. But sadly I didn't continue on that. What I did do was the following.

I dropped my lazy buttoms in my bed and took a bunch of older drawings, from 2003 or older I belief. While browsing through them I was looking for a specific drawing that I could remake. Finaly after some concideration I stumbled upon this little bugger.

The girly was called Indja, and she had this sort of magic that made her control a string of magical substance. Sorta like a rope or moldable matter. Cause it could take on any shape, even a protective wall, you never know when stuff is going to explode now do you.

So this was definatly worthy of a remake. Though I can't really say that I have based the characters on this sketch.
I only copied the action scene and the use of magic. But all else is mostly brand new. If you can call a remake new.

Thus it came to be that I made a sketch on monday evening, inked it on tuesday morning, and got to color it wednesday evening/night. I finished it at 2 a clock in the night. Probably not the most responsible thing to do, concidering I have work tomorrow. But all for art! The original size was A3. Which made me remember why I hate my A4 scanner. Way to much trouble assembling the seperatly scanned pieces. They almost never fit.

Thus I leave you with this wise advice. Buy an A3 scanner if you draw a lot on A3 sized paper.

Check it out on DA

Magazine sketches

Those hot ladies in beauty magazines pose in the most boring way possible.

For this weekends bunch of sketches I searched out one of them advertising that they stuff your mailboxes with. Very usefull for high resolution images, but terrible for interesting poses. I'd have a better succes of finding an interesting pose on deviantart. At least that one has a better dynamic move to it.

Of course its not all bad what they place in ads and magazines. There's also a bunch of good stuff, but once you've seen one magazine you've seen them all. But then again, I could say that about movies, stories, pictures, and a whole lot of other stuff. So I'm not gonna complain to much about it. :p

I should find myself someone to pose for me. At least then I'll be able to get a pose I want in exact the way I want it. Of course, I could get myself one of those little paintdolls, I mean a proper one. Cause the one I have now is very limited in its movement. Frankly, sometimes it looks like some toys are actualy better. Ow well, for now I'll just keep on practising a bit more. I really need more practise. I'm still to slow, and not good enough at it.

So keep them adds coming, cause I need fresh sketching material, and I need it quick! And yes, that is a fish in there.

Speed paintings

Not really a speed painting, more like a fast forward movie actually.

Speed paintings is a relative famous phenomena on youtube. Great artists who film their desktop while they make a painting. And then speed it up. Cause really, nobody wants to watch hours of slow painting. Plus youtube only gives us ten minutes. Most of those clips are awesome drawings in the making. Highly detailed, and probably hours of work.

Now, I've always wanted to do something like that too. Never really got to it though. Except this time. Via Deviantart I noticed a drawing of Jollyjack, great artist, and he had made a speeded paint movie of it. I don't know why, but suddenly I figured, "There's no better time then the present". So I hopped down to google to find me a desktop record program and started drawing.

At this moment I didn't really care about the painting itself, I just wanted to make a speed painting movie. So I just copied the idea of Jollyjacks drawing and frankly didn't care much about composition or storyline at all. But I think that's quite alright. I still had enough to learn about what specific options to use with the program, and how that windows moviemaker works.

It took me an hour to draw this thingy. Which is probably way to long for it. But that was not the problem. I had recorded it in real time. So I had to re-record it in a faster time. Luckily I was able to do that, but I had to wait an hour again. Now I'm sure there are better and easier ways of speeding up a movie. Its probably an option in the moviemaker software. But yeah, I was being silly and didn't check that. Still havn't checked it. (note to self, check it)

While I was watching that movie of myself drawing the painting I noticed a lot of mistakes I made. So its really a good way to learn. Since I'm watching it from a different perspectif. Cause while I'm drawing I'm sorta in "the zone". But when I'm watching the movie, I'm not in the zone anymore and I notice different stuff. So its really helpfull.

This is the final result, both the drawing and the clip. I hope you enjoy it. I know I do.

As a final note I will add that I like Jollyjacks work way better then mine.