I've brightened up the colours on the bar and refined some stuff. I think I like a dark green tinted blue for the t-shirt colour.


Also playing around with composition just to be crazy and tried a similar design on grey. I liked the grey this morning but now I'm not keen.

I like this one a lot. Struggling to find a colour to sit it on though.

I'm having so much trouble with these. I want them to look scruffy, the problem is printing them. They just aren't coming out the colour I want. BAH.

Sketchbook stuff from the Thrice mini-project.

Initial sketches for another part of the narrative, showing the ride in motion.


I've spent the best part of today starting to organise my portfolio. I hate doing it so much. I'm a sketchbook person. *grumble*

OH, and btw, in case you wondered, that's glue and paint and years of being arty on my floor. Needanewcarpet.

I've got other stuff that needs scanning, but in the mean time i'm working on other images which will go with the main one for the Tengu design which tell more of a narrative. This is a queuelien devide where guests choose which side they want to ride, red or blue.

Kyle linked me to Thrice's blog where they have announced a merchandise design competition. I thought I'd give it a go, but since I'm short of time I'll work it into my self defined project for uni work. Here's my first idea based on the song Wood and Wire. Acrylic and gel transfer on paper.

I think this might be essentially done. I'm pretty sick of looking at it, though, so I'd hard to tell. Need to print it in various ways to work out what needs editing. Took far too long.

Gengar. Just doodling in SAI. :)

Work on practical projects has been slow because I'm rather engrossed in an essay, and I figure whilst there is enthusiasm for it I should make the most of it and get it out the way!

...But yeah, I've not done much to this...

what I've achieved since the last update. Rocks are just as hard to paint as I remember them being. The red blobs in the trees will be lanterns, hopefully I can make it look like they are lit, too. It looks a little halloweeny, but I think that's a good thing. Japanesey, but dark and mystical? without being too Oriental-cliche, whilst still using regonisable features for a Western audiance. Still unsure about cherry blossom.

Lethargic this morning. I should be painting.

Some photoshop doodles from today.

Pretty sure I'm going to do the "final" images in photoshop. It's just the most practical. However, I want the non-structural elements to be freehand drawn to retain the fluidity accomplished in earlier watercolour experiments. So frees and details such as rocks and ornamental pieces will all be drawn freehand. Was experimenting here with how I can get cherry blossom in without loosing the dark foresty appearance. The first image has a colour filter that I forgot in the second.

How I usually do line work...

If you're anything like me, you hate the idea of potentially ruining a nice drawing with a slip of the hand when you outline it with pen.

I use this same method for fixing drawings too.

You will need a scanner, photoshop, and a printer.

If you've got a drawing that you want to ink, or a drawing that needs editing, scan it into photoshop. Add a new layer and fill it with red. Set that layer to "Screen". This turns the drawing red, which is easy to remove later, allowing you to ink over it or fix areas whilst tracing the areas that are perfect.


Print it. Another benefit of this method is you can enlarge tiny drawings, or shrink large ones so you don't have to do so much linework.

You can now draw over the red sketch, fixing errors with pencil, or if your happy with it just going over the lines with pen. If you make mistakes with pen, don't worry, you can get rid of them in photoshop!

Re-scan the drawing. To remove the red, click the channels tab on the layers window and click the red channel so that it's the only one on. All the red will dissapear!


Go to Select - All and Edit - Copy and paste it into a new document. It should only be the black lines. You're gunna need to change the mode to RGB because it will now be on black and white. Image - Mode - RGB Color. Don't flatten.

Go to Image- Adjustments - Brightness and Contrast to make the white whiter and the black lines blacker.

To remove all the white so that you can paint under the lineart in photoshop, go to Select - Colour Range and click the white area. You can now delete all the white.
Alternatively, you can just set that layer to "mutiply" from the same drop down that you selected Screen from earlier. This makes all the white see-through and allows you to paint underneath.

Sounds confusing at first but you soon get used to it. :) I like this method cuz it's also useful if you draw off the page and want to add more to the image. Hope this helps some people out. Or you might think I'm doing this arse-backwards and have a better way, I'd love to hear how you do it if that's the case!

Been slow with this recently, been concentrating on theory work. Most of the elements are now drawn up. Decided that I'm going to draw some things digitally, such as the trees, so it doesn't feel so static. Drawing trees with lineart is just impractical.

It occurred to me this morning how lazy I was being with this project and not going very in depth into designing the different elements. Nor was I utilising my research to it's potential and I jumping ahead of myself way too often which caused me to leave out vital things and just have a bunch of cliches and bad drawings.
That crap stops today. Refinements and designs based on research but with relevant changes and creativity for the subject matter from now on. In this case you can see thought actually going into the entrance design. Shock horror. I worry myself sometimes.