Monday, March 4, 2013

Illustration Friday - Storm

Keeping up with Illustration Fridays, one of the themes came up as 'Storm' and that got me back to my adorable Hermes again. It's his irresistible charm . . . I know it. But this also got me thinking about Hermes' backstory too, like it did with Wool. Hermes is the son of Zeus and one of the Greek Pleiades, Maia. Because if you know Greek mythology like I do, Zeus wasn't all that faithful to his wife Hera; because he was VERY promiscuous with other women. But when you think about it, Hermes must of had a lot of pressure on him with his daddy being Zeus, ruler of the Olympian Gods. In fact considering that he was responsible for a lot of children, you would think that he try to keep their acts together. Then again, he should try that tact on himself, too.
Thus, for the new theme of Storm, I thought that Hermes should be shown with something else . . . a storm cloud sent by his daddy to give him chase, punish him or just because he was annoyed with him for playing a prank. I doubt that poor Hermes will get away without getting his rear fried. Poor Hermes is not having the best of days.

With the rough done, I went on to tracing him over in pencil on tracing paper. Again, you will see a little snippet that the scanner caught of another drawing that I made on the same paper. Don't worry, it won't show up in the finished product.
Just like the last works, this picture will be polished up in Adobe Illustrator. The pen tool lines will be edited later to look more refined.
Another screenshot of the picture with base colours. The cloud here might cause me some grief to match it up with Hermes' colour scheme, but then again these are the base colours.
With the flat colouring done, I moved on to adding highlights and shading to the picture. I changed the cloud's colour a couple of times to get the right look down.
Lastly, I added in the background on a separate layer behind the other two layers for the characters. I tend to make another starburst for the spot where the lighting is hitting Hermes for more affect and made the background a dark navy blue gradient to show difference between the foreground and background elements. Unlike the other starburst effects that I used for other Hermes pictures, this one has less spikes, to kinda give off that feel of cartoony lightning. I removed the speed marks because I thought that they really didn't go well with the shock effect in the background. Run Hermes, Run!
NOTE: Please leave a comment after reading this article. I appreciate any and all feedback on my artwork and any helpful tips from viewers. Spamming and trolling is forbidden.

Illustration Friday - Wings

Wings are probably one of the many themes that trigger many inspirations from nature to fantasy. However, when I thought about 'wings' my mind went back to my Hermes drawing for 'wool'. I enjoyed drawing that character to the point that I want to continue using him more. I can't help it, he's too cute! However, I wanted to incorporate him into his adult form, the adult Greek God that we recognize him as, while still keeping him cute and adorable like before. So I sat down and started to draw adult Hermes. What came out from it was actually pretty good and mimicked the style of my previous drawing and rendering.
Hermes, now in full God Mode, is wearing his distinct winged sandals, winged cap and chiton garments. In his left hand is his kerykeion or Caduceus, his sceptre that has become a popular symbol over time since antiquity. It is often mistaken for the Rod of Asclepius which is the symbol for medicinal practises. However, a caduceus has two snakes entwined around the rod while the Asclepius Rod has only one snake. For my rendition of the caduceus, I had the snakes start out as a rod and branch out into two heads, like a two-headed snake ((I find snakes to be fascinating, maybe it's because I'm an Earth Snake in the Chinese Zodiac; too bad my mom and my grandma are afraid of snakes)) with an orb where they meet and wings flanked on both sides. I gave Hermes an adorable wink, giving off that essence that despite being a God, he still has his mischievous side.
After making the rough, I traced over him into a cleaned up pencil drawing. Here in the next picture, there's a little snippet of another rendering that was caught on my scanner. I drew the roughs for the Wool, Wings and Storm themes together on the same page to save up some room on my drawing clipboard.

As with the other Hermes drawings, I decided to scan it into Adobe Illustrator to make the final picture. Here's a WIP of the rough outline which will be refined later.
Another screenshot of the picture, this time with some basic colouring. I'm hoping to make the colour scheme a bit brighter on this piece and hopefully add some shading and highlights. There are also some vectored shapes that need some refining which will me taken care of now that the colours are set in.
On a new layer, I added highlights and shading to the rest of the picture. All of the reflective parts of Hermes' body (eyes, hair, helmet, bracers and rod) are given white highlights. As for the rest of the body, I shaded using deeper colours that match the areas needed to be shaded. I don't like using black or grey for shading a bright picture like this, besides, the colours give it a more appealing feel to the composition.
After a few adjustments, I made a new layer behind the previous two and made the background to the picture with him in a clear sky with a starburst behind him. The picture is finally complete and a God is born!
NOTE: Please leave a comment after reading this article. I appreciate any and all feedback on my artwork and any helpful tips from viewers. Spamming and trolling is forbidden.

Illustration Friday - Wool

For one of the Illustration Friday topics that recently came up, I was quite surprised that I found 'Wool' as the theme. Really, 'Wool'? Well, if you say so. This one made me go into thinking mode for a while. What can I link my art into that has to do with the theme of wool? Well, wool comes from sheep, maybe I can do something with sheep since they are the main source for wool besides goats, llamas, camels and the like. But then I looked at my current artwork and thought to myself, how can I link this to the myth/fantasy theme that I have going at the moment? So I went into my Rodin's The Thinker pose and tried to remember what kind of mythological or fantasy-like aspects that I can link with wool in mind. Then it hit me . . . Hermes!
Hermes is probably one of the more well-rounded of the Greek Gods that is not only the messenger of the Gods, but also the Greek God of trade, commerce, luck, transitions and boundaries. He also was more involved with mortal affairs and was the patron God of travellers, herdsmen, thieves, orators inventors, tricksters and so on. In his youth, he was a trickster and love to steal sheep as a mischievous prank to play on herders. Ergo, for this topic, I chose to draw a young, cartoony Hermes playing with some sheep. Here, little Hermes is lifting up one of the sheep near him as if he's a strongman. Also, he's wearing what I call a wool loincloth. Can't have him running around naked like a little jaybird! He's drawn using a blue drawing pencil on paper.

After getting the concept on paper, I decided to clean up and transfer the drawing by tracing over it into pencil. Not to mention trying to do the finished project with a light blue pencil drawing as a base is hard on the eyes. Here, all of the structural guide lines are removed for a more polished piece.
For this work, I chose to make the completed work on Adobe Illustrator. I outlined the drawing with the pen tool and took into all of the curves and shapes. This is a WIP of the rough outline, I'll edit the shapes as I do the colouring.
Here's a screen capture of the basic colouring of the drawing. So far the colours look alright to move on with, however I want to make adjustments to the piece later.

With a few tweaks to the vector shapes, I made a new layer and added the highlights and shading to the characters. I changed a few colours here and there to help balance the colourful composition.
With the characters set, I now complete the image with a background. Little Hermes is on a hill, showing off his strength by holding up a sheep like a strongman. Way to go, Little Hermes!
NOTE: Please leave a comment after reading this article. I appreciate any and all feedback on my artwork and any helpful tips from viewers. Spamming and trolling is forbidden.