An Unused Preface to the Prep Boards

I love fantasy. High fantasy, urban fantasy, science fiction, crackpot theories – as long as it’s bizarre, I’ll read it. Watch it. Whatever. So in Sec 1, when coursework seemed like a big fun chance to do whatever you wanted, I decided that my coursework would be firmly rooted in fantasy. That sentence was not an unfunny joke.

I first had an inkling of what I wanted to do my coursework on during the December holidays last year. Being a LOTR fan, I had read the books, watched the movies, then borrowed more books on the art of the movies. Those were really amazing: to see all that concept art, all those designs and hard work just for one film. Okay, one epic blockbuster film, but one film nevertheless. Anyway, the point is that there were a lot of great character/creature designs done for the LOTR movies – especially since the world Tolkien created was so rich and there was so much source material to work from. Having also recently watched Guillermo del Toro’s film Pan’s Labyrinth – which had several really cool monsters in it – and also read a childrens’ book series I found at the library called The Spiderwick Chronicles, I was more or less set on doing creature or character design because…well, it’s cool.

At first I wanted to try designing things for South-east Asia, or even Singapore – like “A Guide to the Native Faeries of Singapore” or something like that. But then in 2009 I discovered the excellent urban fantasy webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court, which features all kinds of interesting creatures inside a very cool school. That was when I decided to focus on designing for the school. Since coursework would be my last big project in this school, I figured I might as well repay the school for all it’s done for me by infesting it with imaginary monsters. I wanted my coursework to be something juniors would look at when they were bored and hanging around the canteen. I wanted my coursework to be engaging, not just pictures that make you scratch your head and guess at the Meaning of Life when you view them. What’s more engaging than books? A lot of things, actually, but I like books, so there.

I kept wanting to do character design even until two months before coursework was due, because I like drawing people, but in the end I abandoned it because coursework was ultimately still an assignment. And in assignments, you do what gets you marks. Not what you want to do. Though you can certainly try.

WIP – Anduril

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The it looks really bad now that I’m viewing it on my home computer. The computer I used at school has a very saturated & contrasty display, so it looked much better when I was painting it.

So, it’s Andúril, Flame of the West. I should probably get started on an entry for a competition, but…it’s Andúril. How can I not complete it? Did this after we checked AEP scripts this afternoon. I got 79%. Fail. Our teacher says it’s a ‘good’ mark.

Prep Boards

Alan Lee

Oh there’s one drawing of mine if you scroll down a bit.

Biography

Alan Lee was born in 1947 in Middlesex, England. He studied at the Ealing School of Art.

He moved to Dartmoor in 1975. He is best known for his work as a fantasy illustrator – most notably, he seems to have become entrenched in everyone’s memories as “the Tolkien art guy” more than any other Tolkien artist. I mean, when I talk to people online about the Hildebrant brothers or even Ted Nasmith and they give me blank stares (or the text equivalent of it), but mention Alan Lee and they will go “oh, the LOTR guy, right?”. This is because he has illustrated for The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Children of Húrin. Together with John Howe, he was also a lead concept artist for Peter Jackson’s film adapatation of LOTR, and the two of them have been contacted by Guillermo del Toro to design for The Hobbit (shooting won’t start till 2010, if it starts at all – funding for the movie is still a bit murky right now /wrings hands ).

Another one of his more famous works is Faeries, together with Brain Froud. Alan Lee has also illustrated Rosemary Sutcliff’s novelizations/adaptations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and done concept art for The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, which firmly roots him in the fantasy/mythology category. He won Best Artist at the World Fantasy Awards of 1998.
I managed to see some footage of Alan Lee sketching in the LOTR DVD edition’s Appendices (12 hours of bonus footage, interviews, behind-the-scenes at Weta [yes!] photo galleries, concept art etc. It’s fantastic.) Now I will let you know how I was inspired by him: I tried sharpening one of my really short 3B pencils to that length. And then I tried copying some of his drawings from The LOTR Sketchbook. Here is the result.

So anyway, on to his work. I own the illustrated paperback edition of LOTR (in three parts, as it usually comes packaged nowadays) and so I have had a chance to peer at his work in slightly more detail than most will be able to, viewing the images online. I’ve picked some of my favorite illustrations and put them here:

From observing his artwork I think that most people would agree on using “lyrical” to describe his drawings and paintings. His outlines – when visible at all – are delicate and wispy, and the shading is extremely subtle, nuanced and sensitive. His figures look distinctly Grecian, which is very obvious in the paintings of Luthien (pale woman on darkish background) and Galadriel (tall woman, hobbits looking into a fountain). The pencil is gorgeous as well – from what I remember of the artbook and the brief DVD footage, he shades not with hatching but with loose scribbly lines. He seems to favor very fine, squiggly lines actually – if you look at how he draws hair for some of the Elves in his pencil work it will be quite obvious. That method of shading conveys the quality of hair (and form overall, I guess) very well, though it probably only works for his type of style.

Next Up: Matt Stawicki and Lucio Parillo!

iClassic Design

Well, there’s actually write-up text on the image already, but here it is again:

My design incorporates elements from both graffiti and music. The repeated use of vinyl records, equalizers and plant motifs show the close relation to music, and how music is an organic being that changes with the times. The grunge/graffiti elements and abstraction of the design fit with the theme of “graffiti”. The design pulls together many different symbols with a unified theme and color scheme, much like how despite music has many genres it can be appreciated by all. Graffiti-fying the music – this design shows it all.

Right, now that that’s done, here’s a bit more on the design and the competition. The theme of this competition was “graffiti-fying the music”. Yes, I can see you cringing. 

I did this design in the school computer labs, and the colors looked fine to me then. However, typing this out on a Mac now the design seems so bright and saturated that I’ve lowered the brightness of the screen to 20%. Your mileage may vary; I suppose you can adjust the brightness on your display until the green of the equalizers looks like the color of grass.

The piece was done in Photoshop last year. A monster of a file if I ever saw one – each save took like half an hour or something. The pattern you see screened onto the records is taken from some hip-hop graffiti. I think it was someone’s name tag. Anyway I used it because of the theme – graffiti. On the laptop you can see some evidence of the watercolor texture I overlayed onto everything else. I think I set it on Overlay or Screen, or maybe Color on low opacity. Anyway, I did that so that the design would be more unified with by a common color scheme and a bit of the watercolor texture. Same with the lines – I drew them with the Pen tool, then just weaved them in and out of the designs. Actually I was thinking more of a musical stave, but that proved to be too limiting (and cliched) so I switched it to that.

Happy Dead Fish Day

Photographs. Taken on 20/09/2009. Treated with some Curves cross-processing in Photoshop. I like the kind of colors and the whole mood you get with that. The fish lasted 2 hours, if you’re interested.

Stress Relief 2

MEMORIAM

odosketch

5 mins

Doodles

Uh Chiachia posted some doodles as well, so I figured they count as art too, right? So here:

 

Latest one, done yesterday during coursework (it was a legitimate break-time thing! I swear!). This is a ~15 min (sans distractions) There are some problems with the nose and mouth (I always run into problems with that, in general) but I kind of like the eyes. And the big hoop on the earring.

I don’t often draw people in a realistic/semi-realistic style. So I’m fairly pleased with how this turned out, taking into consideration that I didn’t even draw guidelines for the face this time (probably the reason why her features are bleargh). I think the shadows on her neck and face don’t match up very well though. The shadows on her neck are really dark – especially if you compare to her hair – but on her face the darkest value is like probably her eyebrows. So I have to learn more about how light falls on a face.

Trying out the Letraset Tria markers that we found in the art storeroom. I’ve never used any markers other than Copic Ciao markers, which have a fat chisel nib as well as a brush nib. Compared to those, I feel the Tria markers are more rigid (literally). Apart from the chisel, the Tria markers also have one really thin flat nib, which feels a bit like drawing with a fineliner – you can see its effects in the crosshatching above, and one larger bullet nib,which I used for most of the color application on the skin and hair. Oh and I used Xinhui’s fancy nib pen to do the lines. It’s hard to work with.

Originally this was going to be an illustration of a young illusionist-in-training character of mine. But stuff happened, and I just can’t seem to do the whole high fantasy thing, so her clothes and attitude changed to fit an urban fantasy setting instead.

Anyway what I don’t like about this is my treatment of the folds, especially on her skirt. Originally in my pencil thing it was all right, but I drew the folds wrongly when inking. So lesson learnt: don’t overdo the folds.

This picture was something done during recess about a month (or more) ago. Basically with this one I had a cool composition, mood, everything in mind already but I lack the skill to execute it. Well actually if I tried really hard I might be able to do it, but [insert excuse of your choice here].

Oh man this one is really old (from March!). I was trying out the ArtRage 2 software, which is available as a free download (there is a full [pay] version as well) from Ambient Design.

And this one is positively ancient. You can click it to enlarge, I think. The date on the scan is 19/10/2008, which puts it at about 4 months into my LOTR obsession. Anyway the main figure is Eowyn, copied from Alan Lee’s Lord of the Rings Sketchbook. Which reminds me, I keep meaning to do an Inspirations post on Alan Lee and John Howe (those 2 names seem to go together all the time, don’t they? But I prefer John Howe’s paintings) but I keep forgetting [update: you can find it here now]. The head at the bottom right is also copied. It’s a helmet design, as you can see.

Believe it or not I am actually fairly proud of the Eowyn drawing. What I am not proud of is that I was unable to tell Eowyn apart from Legolas. >_> Uh anyway I drew this in me mam’s office one day when I followed her to work. I’ve found that when I copy artworks I really learn a lot in the process of trying to emulate my idols’ styles. For example here Alan Lee’s lines are delicate and wispy and his shading is very sensitive. So I tried to get that in my own attempt, though I think my shading was a bit heavy, especially on the face. But the hair was very fun to draw! As far as I can tell (i.e. this is probably wildly off the mark) the hair for many of his figures is done with just many very fine, squiggly lines. As in, really, it’s just lines. Not planes and blocky stuff like in my drawings. I think that conveys the quality of hair very well for curls and things, but it definitely doesn’t work for more stylized illustration styles.

…did I just say “stylized style”?

A star field. I think I’ve posted it before. Created from scratch with the noise filter, a planet texture, default Photoshop brushes and the smudge tool.

OK last one. This was drawn after reading a book about fantasy art by a guy I think doesn’t really have the right to write books about fantasy art. But. Anyway. It was also drawn after reading a book about fashion illustration. So like the guy’s style is fairly exaggerated (hence the hair) and fashion design led to the slouchy pants and overly-long legs. Yup.

Stress Relief 1

Click for Flickr, etc. Coursework is stressful. And boring. Mostly boring. 15-minute doodle (wasted like 5 minutes fixing the nose and mouth) while taking a break from extracting the third creature.

Might develop this into a proper picture.

odosketch!

These are mouse sketches done on Odosketch by Odopod, a Flash-based drawing tool. It’s pretty awesome. The color palette they give you is very harmonious and earthy, which contributed to the feel of the pieces. I think it’s quite cute actually. Oh and if you can’t tell (don’t worry, most people can’t), the first picture is depicting a girl collecting Armarillia fungi, which cause internal decay in trees. The second one is just a kid and a snowman. I was thinking of Calvin and Hobbes. Hmm. Must be the snowman.