The Devil Draws

My name is Jenna, I'm an art student studying biological, pre-medical, and scientific illustration. This blog is my collected turpentine-tainted musings. I'll be posting art, my own and the artworks of others. I'll also be talking about art technique, tools, and mediums. As such feel free to ask questions, anything from "How do I do [X]?" to "What would be the best material to make [X] in?" I'll answer them as swiftly as I am able.

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Okay, I’m pissed. The above photos are pictures I took of the portfolio book in All Pro Custom Tattoo in Davenport, IA. So the above are two different owl tattoos inked onto two different people as done by All Pro Custom Tattoo. As you can see All Pro Custom Tattoo copied Jeff Gogue’s owl tattoo  not once, but TWICE. Two times they copied a custom tattoo and shittily traced and carved it into two different people.

Not only that, but the rest of their portfolio was full of other copied images made into tattoos, clip art, and crappy lettering. Stealing original custom tattoo artwork is preposterous and unethical, and beyond ironic since the shop’s very name is “All Pro Custom Tattoo”. Pros make only custom tattoos, and not a single tattoo in those portfolio books at All Pro was custom. Disgraceful.

More of their tattoo work is shown below:

Some perpetually surprised tattooed eyebrows.

All custom? Google says this is clip art.

The above tattoo is a copy of a drawing that’s a trace of another drawing.

All original.

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Grim Natwick, anatomy studies. 

Image c/o Stephen Worth / Animation Archive. 

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Created using 500,000 fish hooks 

Isla (Seascape) by Yoan Capote

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I am out of the hospital! :D

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amberblade:

Tutorials done by Stanislav Prokopenko who is an instructor at Watts Atelier.

Right click + New Tab to see the images in their original size. There are 10 images, sorry I had to chop them up because Tumblr has a image size limit and starts resizing.

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Ok, attempting to demonstrate something…

So this is Ned Stark. And I’m going to render a section of his hair. This is good practice.

I start by laying basic colors, marking off shadows and highlights. If you’re still getting the hang of measuring things, try drawing at a different size from the original. The point is not the size or shape so much as the lighting.

His hair is naturally light brown (look on the other side of the photo where there is no sunlight), but when the sun hits it, it looks almost white. So I lay in colors accordingly. I start big and get increasingly more detailed.

It might sound unexpected, but if you’ve watched Bob Ross paint, keep him in mind when you’re doing realism. You don’t have to draw every little thing. You only have to give the impression. In photorealism, you only have to draw what you see. In the original photo of Ned, you don’t see every hair. Instead, you see blobs of white and ovals of black and orange squiggles. Draw what you see, and draw only enough to believe it.

A few more points:

Human hairs are individual, but you will never see all of them individually. Instead, you’ll see triangles of white and black, blobby shapes, and dots. Draw that stuff, not the hair. Look for places where the shape, color, and tone changes. That’s what drawing is: conveying a visual change.

Also, be deliberate. Lay on solid colors as fast as you can. Do a base coat of color. Don’t leave any white space. Don’t hesitate. It’s scary, but practice it. It’s much easier to deal with a digital painting if you already have something on the page than if you have nothing. 

Paint first, then draw.

I’ll have more in the eye drawing coming up later. But this is a good start, maybe?

I think the biggest roadblock people run into is patience. It’s going to take you a long time to be able to draw like this. There’s no way around that. It will take you a long time just to see this stuff—even just to figure out what you’re looking at in one little section of hair. You’ll be WTF AM I DRAWING THIS IS A SENSELESS MESS a lot of the time. That’s okay. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what you’re looking at. Sometimes it’s hard to stop thinking “hair is supposed to do this” and start letting your eyes see what’s really there. Give yourself time. It takes practice. That’s why practicing on little sections (especially eyes, which are nice because they give you pretty little drawings in the end) is helpful.

Right then. :)

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So here’s the other demonstration, wherein I draw the eye of Ned Stark.

The thing about eyes is:

The whites are almost never white. Here, the whites of Ned’s eyes look sort of gray/pink.

The iris isn’t necessarily round. The pupil isn’t necessarily visible. You might not see any eyelashes. Draw what you see.

Eyeballs have shadows on them just like everything else.

The thing about skin and realism (and photorealism) in general is:

Thinner skin looks redder and more saturated because it’s closer to the blood underneath. Thicker skin looks yellow, more opaque, and less saturated. That’s an anatomy rule to keep in mind, but it’s not necessarily a visible thing that you can draw. Sometimes, anatomy goes out the window, especially if you’re drawing only what you see.

Relatedly, in photorealism there can sometimes be odd colors in weird places regardless of skin quality. This is called an optical effect, which has little to do with anatomy and more to do with the photo medium, whether it’s a film or a photograph. A good example can be see in screencaps. Check out this page of SPN screencaps. Notice how things look greenish? That’s because of the camera. Remember: when you draw from a photo, a camera saw it first. Different cameras capture different things. Not only that, but editors, directors, and photographers armed with their own equipment might have had a go at the image before you came along (one of the many reasons why, no matter how much you might think it does, no screencap, no graphic, and in some cases no fanart can ever be your property). This is not the case with life drawing, where the only optical effects are what exist in the room with you, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Like with the hair demo, I started big and gradually got smaller with details. The very last detail I did in this drawing was the white highlights on the eyes. 

It’s not the way everyone paints, but it’s how I do photorealism. Hope it helps you. :)

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“Teratophoneus WIP3”, by Sergey Krasovskiy (~atrox1)

“Teratophoneus (meaning “monstrous murderer”) is a genus of carnivorous tyrannosaurid”

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“Scientific Restorations” by Nima Sassani

Titanosaurs

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Hospital blues

Hello all, sorry for the limited postings and not being on. I've been laid up in the hospital for the last two weeks or so. Probably I won't be on much in the future either. We'll see how things happen.

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The above are photos of the fossil remains of Thylacoleo Carnifex, commonly known as the "Marsupial Lion".  Pound for pound, Thylacoleo carnifex had the strongest bite of any mammal species living or extinct with a massive skull and cutting teeth. T. Carnifex also had long thumbclaws and is estimated to be faily fast moving. In all it's a ferocious predator. Science and art often must come together in the re-creation of extinct animals. The bones are often drawn by scientific illustrators who study the remains, and extrapolations of muscle build coat color and possible behavior are made which culminates in illustration restorations of these magnificent animals.

Two photo comparisons of T. Carnifex skull shown next to an African lion skull (Panthera leo).

Illustration of bone fragments done by Richard Owen.

Wells, R., Murray, P., & Bourne, S. (2009). Pedal Morphology of the Marsupial Lion.

Illustrated restoration by Mark Hallett.

Illustration reconstruction by Adrie and Alfons Kennis.

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Riusuke Fukahori Paints Three-Dimensional Goldfish Embedded in Layers of Resin

Japanese artist Riusuke Fukahori paints three-dimensional goldfish using a complex process of poured resin. The fish are painted meticulously, layer by layer, the sandwiched slices revealing slightly more about each creature.

A must-watch video!:

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Without looking at the numbers on the apples, can you guess the programs used?

I often hear the claim that digital art is easier because the computer or the program does the work. Added to that I hear complaints form people who say “I don’t have Photoshop” as if the lack of Photoshop is a fine excuse for a lack of skill in digital rendering.

But it is not the program or the computer that makes digital paintings good, it is the skill, experience, and education of the artist. A god artist can take any medium, and after learning it can produce great works. Why? Because a good artist already has mastered the fundamentals of art such as form, shape, color theory, value, light, and they’ve already trained their brain to draw what they see. Just as it is not the pencil that enables drawing, it is not the tool that makes the beauty of the artwork, it is the hand and eye of the artist.

To prove that it is not the program, but the artist that makes all the difference in the quality of digital art a friend of mine Arshes Nei, made a series of apple paintings all done in different digital art programs. I will post the answers in my next blog.

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"Repetition" by the skilled Ryohei Hase.

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Concept sketches by Katie aka "Rowkey".

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Concept art by Cory Loftis.

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A few of my personal reference photos. I prefer to work by viewing the specimen first hand, and rarely use photos. But keeping my own photos of specimens allows me to easily reference them on the go so long as I have my laptop handy. I encourage everyone in the art fields to take their own reference photos. Take lots of photos! You'll use them and copyright infringement on other artists' photographs is a very real danger.

A young domestic steer (Bos primigenius), a young coyote (Canis latrans), and a brown rat (Rattus norvegicus).