Illustrator FUN!

Hey there back again thought I put some thing up that has been done on illustrator again.


The last few weeks I have been helping to build a new student intranet at the college I go to. and this is some thing that was built for an image slideshow.

so this was created following a tutorial and all that was used to do it was creating a line then useing the 3d option in illustrator to extrude it out into the back ground.

So this is the final look for it imported it into Photoshop add the text to it all. well if you can make it out the text is  from a rule pack for one of the games workshop tournaments. Hopefully no will notice that :) this was a fun and stress piece of work to create as I wasn't too sure on what to do for the back ground but i thought i keep it simple and have it a see through bg. 

So an Update

Well I know I haven't been that much on here for the past few weeks and like I said before Uni is taking a lot of time up so I am going to say this. I know we all have our own personal things happening in the outside world and  at time those things end up taking over everything. I am not worried if you can not find time to post some thing ever week. This for me is meant to be fun and enjoyable and if you need to take time away from this that fine.

So on a brighter note Here is a some thing I have done in Illustrator.

was going to use this for something but ended up deciding not to use it. but still looks cool

Searching for Inspirado

What do you do when you are in a rut?
 How do you find inspiration to help you back on your way?
 I do what I do in every other situation and turn to YouTube. Seriously, I rely on that site so much, it is becoming ridiculous. But I do love it so much, and one of a good thing to watch is someone else drawing (see below).
 
Because I am a little bit stuck, I felt I would give advice to people who may also be stuck in a rut. It may sound a bit rich, but trust me, as an artist there is no worse feeling in the world, than not being able to create something.

So I am going to give you 5 tips of getting over that creative rut.
1) Do something to take your mind of the subject of non-working. I know it sounds crazy, but focusing all your energy on something which isn't happening is depressing and does no good. Putting pressure on yourself to do something, can back fire, and can make you hate what you are trying to do. So try and relax, watch a movie, read a book, just de-pressurise yourself.

2) Find what inspires you. Again, sounds a little silly, but it works. Listening to NWA's Straight Out Of Compton, got me through my HNC in Art & Design, it really motivated me. I can't explain how it worked, but it did. It made me excited, and that's what you have to do. Find something that makes you excited, something that makes you take on the world. At the moment, for me, it is The Lion King. I feel so creative when I watch that movie. The good thing is, if your inspiration relaxes you, that's point 1 tackled too.

3) Write a list of what needs done. Something you were probably told to do at school, along with making a study timetable. It is recommended because it works. Write a list of EVERYTHING you need to do, and prioritise. If you have a lot of heavy duty stuff to do, you may want to put something light hearted in between them, just to give yourself a break. And just work through the list. The idea behind this, is that it helps you visualise what you need to do. Most of the time, you write a to-do list, and realise that most of the stuff isn't as important as you first thought.

4)Free yourself from distraction. I am the boss of finding a distraction, so I know how much this can set you back. If you are struggling, your mind will automatically start to wonder. And if it wonders onto a site like Facebook, bang goes hours of your precious time in a heartbeat. So switch of the distractions, log off of twitter, switch your mobile phone off, just put the temptation away. If it is too hard for you to stay away from temptation, do it in bits. Schedule yourself 45 minutes away from the Internet, and have a 5 minute check-up.

5)Don't give up. I am aware that this point contradicts some of my previous points, but it is true. Whilst I am saying try to relax and not pressure yourself, it is important that you don't give up. If you can't get something done, give it a break and try again later. The hard part of anything is perseverance. Giving up never achieves anything, so keep on trying. If one thing isn't working, go on to something else. You can always come back to things later.

These are all points I have used throughout my life since School, really. Everyone has a point where they want to give up, and that they feel they are no good, but keep your head up. You can do this. If you couldn't, then you wouldn't have been given the opportunity to try.

PMA every day!

Abstracted

I guess one of my favourite things to create digitally are abstract pieces. And most things come around with practicing with some techniques.

^^This image reminds me of a flower. There is something about, with its appearance of layers that I really like. I like the pink outline as well. I think it is simple, but it also has a depth due to the overlapping parts.

^^This image, is different, but still was made through experimentation on Photoshop. Mostly with swirling the cloud effect. I like the smoothness to it.

I'd like to be like the guys and say how I make a lot of things, but I need to be honest here. Most of the things I make, especially digitally, happen by mistake. And I don't even want to think about how a tutorial for making mistakes would work? Actually I can, it wouldn't work.

As you can probably see, this is a swirly thing. I went through a phase not too long ago, where I used the swirl effect on anything on photoshop. And, by playing with things such as 'glow spread' and how solid the lines appear, something quite cool happened. I am not a good teacher, I am more about doing what you feel and trial and error. Which is why I am kind of reluctant of telling people how to do things.

I guess you can say I am in an art rut right now. Nothing is coming to mind, to create something. Though I am taking part in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), where I have to write a novel of 50,000 words throughout the 30 days in November. This is something I have been preparing for, and I have been putting a lot of energy thinking up the storylines. There is a chance that I may be inspired to do something artistic alongside my writing, but right now I have a one track mind. But I am really excited. I take on projects, because I look at them inspiring me in other areas of my life. So if I am trying to picture a character in my story, I may draw them. I did before, and it does give me overall inspiration.

Late Late Late

I come ready with an excuse. I have been ill today, and have spent a large portion of the day in bed, only leaving it to go to work. So appologies, as this is late. But, I decided to go with variety again. :)

This is an image of a lovely lady, taken from a figure drawing class. She is chalk and charcoal on sugar paper. I never got the chance to study figure drawing at school, mostly because the school wouldn't have someone stand naked for students to draw. So I had my first experience at college. At first, it was something very awkward, as it is very strange looking at someone and trying to draw them. Even worse, when they looked at your drawing.

But, it is and always will be the best way to draw a person. I can always draw figures better, from life rather than a photograph. You get to see the dimensions properly. Also, when in a drawing class, the teacher will often get the class to preform tasks, such as 5 minute sketches, where speed is the key, as you try to capture proportions. It is something that learnt me a lot, and helped to me get proportions correct, after years of struggling. It is an experience that I think every artist should enjoy.

Some thing New

So this is a really early edit for me but hey why not. Today (Monday) I had a couple of really good ideas during a lecture for motion graphics (and yea I was paying attention to the lecture) so during it I was trying to scribble these ideas down and add more to them. Now your asking what are those ideas? well one is for the motion graphics final hand so I'm not saying anything just now, but the other one is for my portfolio site. and yea its Awesome!

can't really put it in words so I will show you.

Whats THIS!? Glad you asked.

Well this is the overall look to the new portfolio site. The gray hills with the trees in the back will be moving from one side to the other and repeat it self so its a constant moving image. There will be a sign that appears when you click on a menu item that holds the content of that. The next stage after getting those things working will be moving it into Drupal if that works (fingers crossed).

Star wars

well here is my themed image this week a day late i know. To be honest I had this done a week ago but just took my time to scan it in.

as you can see its a JEDI. found this rather fun to draw and well been trying to get back into drawing stuff more and more now. Not really meant to be after any character from star wars but just a random one. You might get a treat in the next couple of weeks and have it coloured in but my brain hasn't gone that far yet.

From the Vault

Again we become brave to dive into the vault that is my pc folders to find old sample of work that were done in the past.
So my brain has been running low on creativty this week not the funnest of things to have go on. I thought I would put this up as it is one of the more interesting ones that I have done. I have tried a few things in photoshop to this but they never really work as it already look fine as it is just being shaded in with pencil. Yea not much to say about this is was done a few years back now.

Hopefully I have more of a creative week after I figure out where my brain ran off to..... too many dark places for it to hide...... well hope you have a good weekend and yea we'll see if I have that creative spark back.

Skullduggery

Trying to show a bit of a different take to the last few edits I have uploaded. A lot of the editing I do to my artwork tends to completely distort it. This is one of my favourite things I have ever draw. It is an anatomically correct skull, which has had the colouring changed in photoshop.

What I like about it, is the fact that despite the slight editing, you can still tell it is hand-drawn. Like so many of my creations, the effect is actually accidental. I was playing around with different colourings and looks, and this happened. And it was a cool accident. But, just don't ask me to repeat it, I have no idea of the exact process.

That is a good thing about art. The majority of it is experimentation. So the textures and colours you make, are discoveries of trial and error. Which is what makes art so exciting. And it is also why it is one of my biggest passions.

Sue Smells a Journey

Today I am showing a piece of abstract art, which is taken from something I uploaded to Deviant Art, although I am unsure this is going to work. I am currently using one of the PCs at work to post this. If it doesn't work, I'll fix it when I get home tonight.

It is supposed to representing smell and journey. I put these two things together because I feel that they are interlinked. Mostly because if you smell something, it can take you on a journey. Even if it is an emotional one, where it takes you back to a period of your life.

Again this is a mixed media piece. With patterns originally painted with arcylics, and then distorted using photoshop. As I have said previously, this is the kind of art I seem most happy with. Because it has the traditional aspects, of which I love, mixed with the fact that the meaning is whatever the viewer deciphers it to be. And to me, that is the magical thing about art.

Blue

So here we are again another week come and pass. Here we have an image that was created early on in the week (top) which I have just finished sorting out and creating the other image (bottom)

Red Monkey

 

Well this was created from a jokie thing I did on facebook or Bebo one of the two. Where for your update thing I just went and put in Red Monkey and this is what it looks like to me. I had a couple of friends then go naming other animals in different colours along with it. But the best one was that I got a reply back from Sue saying her orange penguin killed the red monkey. So now I am wanting to see that fight.

Sue Likes Watercolour

Watercolour is something that I took a long time to get used to.


Watercolour is a very difficult medium to use, mostly because it is something that is built up in layers. It takes a long time to finish a water colour. And it is very understated, in it's nature. It is light, and gives a completely different look to other types of paint.

The cottage above, is something that took me 2 weeks to paint. It was the first time I really used watercolour. It was a bit of a learning experience. It is best recommended to an artist who prefers a sketchy look for their work. Well, that's what I think anyway. If you are experimental with your work, then watercolour may be for you.

As I have said before, I like to use a variety of medium in my work. I guess, that's what I am using my first few post for. To show a variety of what I like.

digital creation

Hey, once again it's Friday.

Well this week I have been trying my hand at web comics and creating them fully through Photoshop. It's not easy as I discovered when i was doing this. It was my first attempt at this using Photoshop so it might not look the best but it was a fun to do and now I have 4 others waiting to be done now.

 

Like I said not the best thing in the world but I would say a good start at doing this stuff. All done through Photoshop and a graphic tablet (Wacom for the win). A quick run through of the process. 1) blue outline showing what I was going to draw. 2) Went over it in black on a new layer. 3) New layer under that adding colour to the image. very simple approach to it but it works. That is me for this week and I will have some to the those over web comics done for this or something else. Till then Cya.

Sue Scribbles With Pencils

Out of all traditional art materials, I have always found pencils the easiest to use. Mostly because there has always been some lying around. It is very easy to pick up a pencil and sketch something on a piece of paper. And anyone can do it, you don't need to read through tutorials or how-to guides. Anyone can pick up a pencil and draw. I think that's why I like it so much, because pencils are very accessible, and cheap. And they can help create the most wonderful pieces.

This Lhasa Lapso dog is a sketch of something which was my first commission. A colleague from my work asked me to draw a Lhasa Lapso for her mother's birthday, as they were her favourite dog. I did paint the dog in watercolour, and they got a printed version of this sketch. I personally like that you can see the pencil lines, but that is maybe just down to taste.

This horse, is another pencil creation. She has been dubbed Tegan, after a horse I used to look after when I was younger. I always wanted a horse to myself, and I used to spend a lot of my free time drawing horses. Drawing horses is an art form all on it's own, and I believe it is because they are so beautiful and majestic.

I feel too many artists dismiss pencils as a child's way of making art, and that saddens me. Just because you used them as a child, doesn't mean that they are for children. Pencils are the one medium you can carry with you anywhere. They add texture and shade instantly. I used any form of coloured pencil, and even have a batch from the local 99p store. I don't believe that it is the tool that makes the artist, it is the technique used by the artist who creates art. You can buy the most expensive products you can, doesn't mean you can be a successful artist.

And with that, I bid you farewell. So see you next week. xo

Doodling in the margins : Dragkon

Yea Hi there.


This is my Day for Posting so Keep an eye for what gets posted.
Part of the first challenge we gave to each other was create image showing ourselves in what style we want so now we have two that I did.

 

Well what can I say I have always had creative side to me and that is mainly from some of the youth activities I did when I was kid. It is really my mum's doing that this creativity side of me kept on going form the church things that she was part of. So I thought during my time at high school to take art and graphic design, well cut a long story short I sucked really badly in those two class's, got a low mark for art and dropped out of graphic design (and some how I have a HND qualification in it now). moving on from that it didn't stop me from doodling in the margins of note books and that is how I improved what I could create. I am still a vary harsh critic on my own work, the habit of looking at it and then going that is wrong, this is wrong, that is out of proportion but then again any one who creates stuff can always be harsh on their own work because it in a way it show that they know where they went wrong and they learn to improve those areas.

So a bit more info about what type of software I use when I create my work, it's really a mixture from tradition methods to digital ones. Most of the time I just use a pencils and inks to create much of my art work just because it is much easier to go some where with a pad of paper and draw what you want to draw. Normally after I have drawn a something depending if I want to do more work to I would scan it into the PC and use software like Photoshop and muck about with the layers and filters to enhance the drawing. But lately I have been using Corel Painter and seeing how much better it is than PS, it's what i used for the image I created for today's post. I was using a Graphic Tablet and created it from scratch using the different tools that you have on there, like I said before I just started using it so hopefully I will get better at using it also I am getting more of a urge to back and draw things again.

Introduction: Sue

Welcome to the first of many posts on Splitting Ink. As you can gather from the title, I am Sue, and I shall be your entertainment every Monday.



My love affair with Art, is the longest lasting relationship in my life. The romance started when I was really young. Between drawing on my own, and doing crafts with my mum, to keep me and my brother busy, it became a major passion in my life. Studying it Higher level at school, and eventually studying it a college, where I was lead down the path of graphic design.

My style tends to be a mix of traditional art with more digital methods. Painting and drawing is where I feel settled, but I find myself using Photoshop, to help enhance what I create. I am messy, emotive and like to show myself through my creations. I do not have a long list of technological tools to help me, because I a) have broken what I did have, or b) I like my paintbrushes better. But I do think I steer toward traditional art because using a computer to create art is quite new to me still, as I have only been incorporating into what I do for a few years.

I blog as I would converse, very open and honest. Blogging is something I do a lot, and is another passion for me. For some odd reason putting blogging and art together, didn't really come into my head. I am looking forward to see what this blog brings, and I am sure it is going to be a great journey.