Still working away on this new comic picture. Haven’t really been pushing myself with it so unlike what I wrote yesterday, about how far along I’d be, I’m not yet finished with it.

Here’s where I stand right now though:

I’m finished with the tee-shirt and the arms although I haven’t quite finished the hands yet. Had my mother pose for some photos to get the shadows on the arms to look not so fakey. There’s this difference in my head over what I think is realistic verses how shadows really fall. Sometime I make myself practice by tracing photos so that I’m forced to draw what’s actually there and not correct what my mind’s eye sees as wrong.

I’m not an honest artist. When I draw something it gets bent and distorted to what I believe is attractive. But when working with making things realistic I have to force myself to actually put down all the flaws… lighting for one thing is not consistent in the slightest. There’s a general source but light is reflected off of almost everything so you get those weird shadows and highlights. This is the thing I have the hardest time with. I too often default to a light and shadow shape that doesn’t take into account the true form of an object. I should probably gave an example because when you see this it’s really obvious… later, heh, this is getting long enough as is. =]

I did take lots of breaks on this because I’m lazy.

I’ve been slowly updating the old art on my website. Right now I have about 125 images posted but by my count I should have about 181 images not counting new ones I post or old old ones from two websites ago. I think it’ll be about another week before they’re all up. My new website is of course here if you’d like to look around: http://www.ghostcircles.com/dxs/index.php/

I also watched the first episode of “Loveless” that my friend downloaded raw for me. They’ve got Yun Kouga’s art down pretty good all and all. I’ve always loved her bendy eyes. However it’s the first episode so hopefully the budget won’t go the down the drain too severely. I’m hoping there will be a fan subs at some point because the story has always confused me. Still, the manga rocks even if it makes no sense to me and my sad sad Japanese skills! I use to be able to read this stuff. ;_;

Anyway I fly. I’ll try to get more done on the comic today but first food!

I’m working on a new comic finally. Have decided that I’m over most of my issues with comics… well, at least long enough to start working on something new. So to that I present tiny previews of the page in progress.

This was where I was last night. Painter 8 is actually being pretty good to me instead of the way it usually treats me, which is of course to try and cut me with a knife. I think I may getting a handle on how this program works.

I think I’ve also figured out why this style is so familiar. It feels a lot like messing with Charcoals back when I was in collage. Even though at the time I really hated Charcoal.

Here’s my progress earlier today:

I found out how to adjust my favorite Blender brush in Painter so that it now adds color while blending. It’s taking much less time now to get the tones how I want them. Here I’ve got the head finished and I’m getting close to being finished with this character’s shirt.

This is just the tone layout for adding color, by the way. Once I start the color then I’ll get to see just how long this project is really going to take. I’m just happy that it’s so much fun to work on. When I get to the color part I’ll also have to figure out whether I feel up to tackling it in Painter or if I want to go back to Photoshop for it. But that’s still a little ways off.

Hopefully I’ll be finished with the tones tonight. Then I can set this page into the comic template and add the dialogue before heading into color. Good thing the script is finished.