General Discussion

[#1]

Chris suggested I begin a thread where everyone could show their works in progress and talk about them. A place for sharing ideas, tips and constructive criticism. I was lucky enough to be among the very talented and gregarious crowd on beta testing for 2010. We had a thread like that there, which was very popular and informative. Let's see if we can make this one like that, but even more so.

I'll kick it off by lobbing this one in. There was a friendly challenge over at Imaginefx.com themed 'JADED'. Being me and loving bad puns, I decided to corrupt it to 'Jay Dead' and went for a nasty fairy idea. Didn't finish in time for the deadline unfortunately and haven't had any time to spend on it since. This is as far as it got. I will finish it later when I 'm not so busy though.

It started out more or less monochrome, using various texture brushes I've knocked together - as you can in the 2010 version. Fantastic addition to the arsenal, that. I then started adding layers of colour at reduced opacity. It allows for more subtlety and happy accidents. Stops it looking too mechanical. You do tend to send a lot of time tidying up and erasing on layers though, so not the most efficient way to work.

The background 'texture' was just filled in using a large brush I made within SKB.

[#2]

Hey Nick, I just want to say once again, great job. I really like your style.

[#3]

a WIP for my next comic chapter:

[#4]

I tend to use Sketchbook Pro just for sketching, on my Tablet PC, for fun and relaxation. Finished work tends to be done in Photoshop on my desktop machine, but I do a lot sketching whenever I have a spare minute. The new features in SBP 2010 are really useful, especially the rulers and symmetry.

Here's a couple of character designs where I made use of symmetry to save time:

[#5]

And some more stylised character designs, the girl is inked with a custom brush that I created to mimic the look of a real brush with ink.

[#6]

Finally a sketch done from photo reference - I do a lot of these as well to try and learn everything I can about reality. The ruler tool was pretty handy for the guitar neck.

PS - is it possible to remotely link to hosted images on this board? The attachment system is very clunky.

[#7]

Yo Nick! Good idea to start this up again!
As always I love your work... Here's a few lil' pieces I recently did trying to find my
"inner artist" rather than do my typical cartoony crap.
The First is titled "The Artist" and the second is titled "The Politician". Both were done with the new SBP which I am really enjoying...

[#8]

Hey Everybody,

I'm new to these parts and fairly new to SBP as well.
Pretty much fell in love with the program and it's now my de-facto sketchbook.
Still have a ways to go before i start whipping up "finished" pieces with it, but I'd be glad to share pages of doodles and what not till I get there.

Jay Geldhof
http://dimmydraws.blogspot.com/
http://www.jaygeldhof.com/

[#9]

Really dig you stuff, Jay... so glad to see you here!

c.

[#10]

Hey there guys,
Great to see you here, Mike, Longboarder, Itchy and nice to meet you Jay. Lovely to see your fluid and fun style too.
Looking forward to seeing more from all of you chaps and more. Soon ?

Meanwhile I found out that SKB 2010 is so nice and compatible now that I can even import stuff from budget, vector software, Serif DrawPlus X2. Just so long as I export selected objects as tiff with transparency, it turns up bitmap perfect on a new layer, ready to be integrated, painted on, whatever.