Pencil and White Composition Sketches

Pencil and white pastel crayon on brown paper.

I have finally gotten around to try drawing on non-white paper, using white pastel for light. Its a lot of fun and a nice change from having to work everything down from pure white.

The sketches themselves are just of the imagination, playing with composition, similarities and differences.

Study in Oil - Man With Staff

Oil on paper 24 x 32 cm

While it is awfully hard to put aside my digital ways, I try; at least to broaden my horizon. This is a study from photo, done over a few hours.
The purpose was to experience skin colour and shape in paint more than to make an accurate replica of the photo, although it should of course resemble the source. Still I regret the slightly stupid look of his left eye.
I was foolish enough to think I could sit in the back of the room, away from the windows, by a combination of energy saving and halogen lights and get decent colours. As a result the image is slightly greener than intended, as the overly orange light had me compensating.

The Injured Trekker

Steadler HB, 2B, 4B pencils and an eraser.

I went to break in a new sketchpad I got for my birthday at a cafe with some good pencils and a beer.

I decided that I wanted to draw the first thing that came to mind, just to relax and not worry too much about the lofty aspects of illustration and art.
Flipping through outdoor magazines in preparation for buying a rain jacket must have made an impression, since I ended up going with an injured woman in outdoor outfit.

Max The Curse of Brotherhood and Nordic Game Jam Poster

So both of these are more than a year old, but since they were both part of projects with launch dates and stuff, I coulnd't post them right away and then kinda forgot.

Well here they are. Both represent probably some of the most time consuming pieces I have ever done. Especially the Max poster went through a bunch of iterations and colour experiments. With such a big project as Max a lot of people have opinions, luckely most people liked the poster, only the appearance of Max age was up for debate.

While Max is now out on Xbox One, I am really looking forward to seeing in on the Xbox 360 and when the One comes to Denmark, so my countrymen can actually play it!

Check it out here: Max The Curse of Brotherhood

Unlike the Max poster, which had a lot of stakeholders, the Nordic Game Jam poster was a totally blue skyes project. They approached me for the poster, saying I could do whatever I wanted as long as it was in tune with the NGJ values.

Having attended the NGJ before I knew the vibe and wanted to catch the feeling of working late night using broad strokes and making strides trying to reach something unique and interesting. Mixing in the "Nordic" and maybe particularly the Danish, I ended up with a robot up of things which aligned with my idea of the area.

The Portal Mason

After doing a little more work on the poster for Max: The Curse of Brotherhood (which came out yesterday, woop woop) I felt like doing some proper painterly stuff again.

So this is The Portal Mason, a stone artisan, specialised in the art of scribing magical symbols and geometry in order to craft portals.

It took several shorter and longer sessions over the course of a few weeks to make this A0 sized digital painting, I don't know exactly how long. Finally a shout-out to my colleagues at Press Play for giving comments and critique for the final tweaks of the image.

Sir Chin-Alot

Spent a short hour doodling after hours at the office, before heading out for a night on the town.

Quite unfinished its nothing special, only a bit of fun with proportion and wrinkles.

Foreign Envoy

Riding the train is still one of my prime motivators for working analogue. Pencil & eraser.

So this is my foreign envoy. Much like the farmer he was made during a train trip. I never decided what his mission is, but judging by his face, I reckon he is getting the deal he was aiming for.

Wheelchair Warrior

Wheelchair Warrior - Lineart

I wanted to draw some fantasy madness and take it over the top, inspired by the art from Torchlight which to me caries a great sense of volume and weight.
However, to twist it a little I decided to make a character which wasn't just a run of the mill hero. Might get around to colour it sometime.

6 hours in photoshop, using a photo reference and the hard round brush.

While painting digitally after a photo of a nude model isn't "the real" deal, or very original, I enjoyed working somewhat traditional. I didn't use any adjustment layers, effects, clipping masks or blending layers, just ye olde round brush. I didn't really time it, but my guess is that it took around 6 hours.
I quite like the outcome.

Oh and the ref was nicked from http://figuresfordrawing.tumblr.com/

Here's some process

Thugxedo

Ink lineart over a pencil sketch and with pencil shading; gangster style.

Signe offered me that I could decorate the first page of her new notebook with whatever I wanted, so I decided to draw one of my series of characters with apparently mismatched looks.
This one became the thugxedo. Ink lineart and mech pencil.

Oh and don't tell her what the left hand means...

Barrel Treehouse

Bringing your sketchbook to long briefings can prove fruitful.

This is kind of an oldie, from late summer 2012. But since my scanner was unavailible until december, this thing has been burning in my sketchbook to get added to the series of treehouses. Kind of extraordinarily for me, I did this without sketch, simply going straight into ink. It was quite the mental exercise, having to plan overlapping items and such in advance.

Farmer Man from Sketchbook

Going to western Jutland, I just couldn't help but think of farmers.

With a nice new set of drawers that we got for Christmas, I finally have a place to put my scanner! This dude I drew this weekend, in my sketchbook, going to western Jutland by train for a thing with my girlfriends family. I guess farmers was what sprung to mind when I thought of western Jutland.

Doodled for a short hour after work. I had fun playing with the clothing, but overall i find the drawing kinda bland. Also even though the snowy white background was thought in when I reached that my doodle should be a man with a map, its still really hard on the eyes.

Treehouse Hamlet

Had some hours to kill in the train and decided to add a +1 to my series of inked tree-houses (the rest which were made before this blog). So unlike the digital things I've posted so far, this was made with a trusty Micron pen and a sketchbook.

I spent a little time after hours Friday having a beer and drawing a zombie.
There' something timeless about drawing zombies, the muscle anatomy, the skeleton and the surface structure just makes for great fun, no matter how morbid they are.

A procrastination demon enters the canvas. "Yarr. Why focus so much on actual designs, when you can bring me to life instead?"

Ca. 2 hours in photoshop, using random photos for startup canvas noise.

Opening up my brand-spankingly new blog with the result of a few hours of doodling. Nothing like deciding to do one thing and ending up doing another.