Coloring Practice

I'm reasonably happy with this (probably my favorite 'speed painting' to date) so I'm breaking it out into a single post. My reference for this particular piece is Victorria Johnson (the model for Morrigan in the Dragon Age: Origins.) While I was doing the usual Google-Fu for references I happened across an interview she did and she seems like a huge Bioware/Dragon Age fan and all around interesting person so that certainly added to the fun of making this. 

Victorria Johnson

 Total time: ~4 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

Bonus~! 
Dragon Age: Origins Sacred Ashes Trailer ... because I think Blur did an awesome job with this and so I love to share it.

Coloring practice

Reference Photo

 Total time: ~4? Hours... I lost track of time since it's the weekend.

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

Well, I love Leverage and since Parker (Beth Riesgraf) is one of my favorite characters she seemed like an excellent choice for my painting practice today. The blue really helped to make this a little more interesting... it was a little flat and weird before I added it. 

Coloring practice

Reference Photo

 Total time: ~2 Hours

Media: Photoshop / Intuos Tablet

I figured I would start out my week of coloring females with Claudia Black because I'm a massive Claudia Black fangirl Farscape fan... not to mention it goes along with my Dragon Age love since she does the voice acting for Morrigan. How great is that? At any rate, I'll probably revisit her once I've managed to polish my skills more because she has some seriously amazing features. 

Secret Swooper Gift

I've only managed to finish one drawing this week and that is for the Secret Swooper event on the Livejournal Community Swooping Is Bad. I did also manage to get quite a bit done on the Morrigan art nouveau style companion piece but it's not finished just yet. Hopefully I can get it up before I head off to see my family for the holidays :)

Sketchbook

I've been having one of those "everything I touch turns to suck" periods with drawing lately hence the lack of updates over the holiday weekend. I'm re-watching all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer recently so I figured Amber Benson was as good a subject as any. I didn't do a preliminary sketch or  anything so I'm sure there's some wonky bits even though I had a reference photo.

Music To My Ears

I've been posting WIP versions of this piece on my LJ but, for some reason, the idea of posting it here didn't cross my mind until just now. This is for the bi-weekly theme at DA:O Challenge but since I started it after work this Wednesday I didn't get it completed in time

WIP #1: This is generally how I start all of my sketches in photoshop. I use different colors to help differentiate between parts as a way to keep my sloppy line work from being overly confusing. At this point I hadn't really decided on the outfit so I was teetering between the Chantry robes (which I honestly don't like because they're pink and she's a redhead and ugh) and the outfit from the Sacred Ashes trailer... I ended up going with the robes because they had more flow to them and it just worked better with the Mucha-ish thing I was going for.

WIP #2: At this point I had managed to get most of it drawn in and some base colors added. I had intended to add Andraste's Grace to the botton side panels but I just couldn't find a useful reference for it and had to abandon that idea. ... I also forgot to re-draw Schmooples. Oops. 

WIP #3: This was my stopping point before going to bed last night. Sans some random shading and detail work there hasn't been much change from this point. 

Finished Version: 

Full Size: 1250 x 2074
All told, I'm quite pleased with the finished version. I can't exactly explain why it just seemed right for Leliana to be barefoot even though all she does is talk about shoes in game. I'm tempted to do more 'Mucha' style drawings with other DA:O characters but I'm not sure if I'll follow through with that. 

Sketchbook

More doodling and coloring from today. I'm actually pretty happy with the Alistair on the right hand side so I might pull the line art out and do something more polished with it to post later on. I'd probably shrink the dumbo ears a little though ;)

Dragon Age Fanart

Full Size: 1500 x 800