Digital Sketches.

A couple of Photoshop drawings.

Canadian infantry in winter.

Sig Arms SIG552.

A Few Drawings - Super Busy August

I need to keep this blog up to date. There are many things happening all at once and I'm not even sure I can keep up with things. First of all the Singapore Toy Games and Comics Convention will happen this weekend August 31st 2013. Its a great platform for my non-Military art. At the same time I'm talking to several clients for jobs that will keep me occupied for the next 8 months or more. Exciting times.

I do keep up with the sketches but I'm losing track of things and all the small snippets of details kept getting forgotten. So before I forget, I'm putting up sketches from the past 2 days.


First up, just playing around with Photoshop trying to figure out things.

Next up, a more familiar late-night pen drawing.

Last Week's Sketches

Mk48 Rework Progress Update

2 steps forward one step back. Triple check source materials to confirm everything, then triple check again. This is why it takes me a while to get these done :D

Mk48 Rework

A lot of the groundwork for this piece had been done a couple of years ago. But one thing after another left me unable to get it wrapped up. Something else bothered me a lot about the pose and I decided to give it a full rework.

New Sketchbook Test Drive

Bought a new sketchbook. Its a new version of the Monologue sketchbook. The original version had a more flimsy cover and slightly yellowish paper which is on the thin side. The new Monologue has a stiffer cover (so much so that its hard to open the book up to draw) and has bright white paper which is slightly thicker. The good news is the paper still takes water like the old version, yet because its slightly thicker, tend to not buckle so much. Its not bad considering its SG$12. Only 72 pages though, but you get thicker paper so I guess its a trade-off I can live with.

Different Covers


Paper has different color. New version on top. Obviously gotta take it out for a spin.


Works well with inks.


Testing out a new pen too.  One of those brush tipped Uchida Marvys.







It handles watercolors fairly well.  But the downside is, being pure white, the inks does show through if you use both sides of the paper.  Personally its not a major issue for me since sketchbooks are really just practice for me.  Its a decent sketchbook for its price.  I hope to finish this book quickly so I can get another.

Say No to Moleskine

Overrated. For its price, the Moleskine sketchbook paper isn't versatile enough. Its smooth surface isn't bad for inks, but when you try to apply a light watercolor wash it just doesn't take water. I'm just trying to finish it up never use another one again.

Wheels

Concept Troop Transport


Rollin' on quad bikes.

Big Cats

Leopard 2A6 rolling through. Once again, pardon the inaccuracies. This is just a practice sketch and I try to work with watercolors directly. So there's really no planning.


I have a few 1/144 miniatures to take reference from. As well as photos on the internets.


Update. Leopard 2A4 with pen and watercolor.

Dirt

Merkava IV, winged it to test out the Moleskine Watercolor Pad. The paper isn't too bad, not as bad as the really crap Moleskine Sketchbook but nowhere near the orgasmic feeling of an Arches Hotpress. Direct watercolor sketch, so pardon the inaccuracies and the non-sharpish angles.


Workdesk shot.




Concept Jeep on another cheaper sketchbook.


And a detail shot.

Momentum

Yeah You Guys Know The Drill

Took Me Long Enough.

Yep...took me till 15th of Jan to put in my first post of 2012. Busy with a startup. Not so busy that it killed me, but busy enough that I had to stop doing what I usually do. Went sketching with friends earlier today and I feel rusty.

Accuracy International AX 338

Self explanatory. Took a while but here it is.

PMC Dude - With K9!!

Started work on the K9 German Shepherd today. Took a while to get the proportions right but I think this is pretty good for now.


There's a full dog underneath that K9 vest. It takes longer, but I usually prefer to work with a full body below whenever I want to overlap something. Also because this image is dual purpose, for the web-portfolio and for my collection of dog drawings.

Putting the 2 together:


I'm fairly happy with this update. These set of characters will be worked into the main web-portfolio interface at some point. There's an additional IRobot 510 Packbot to be added. Still in basic stages of line construction. At one point today I thought I lost the working file. Turns out its not in my usual working folders.

Updating Some Old, In-Progress Artwork

There's a lull due to the holiday season here with the Chinese New Year celebrations. So I thought, I better dig up my older stuff and get them completed before moving back into the current stuff I'm working on.

This piece was last updated maybe 6 months back or more. To put it into context of how fast the world moves (or how slow I work depending on how you see it); When I started out doing this piece, I was looking at using the UCP camouflage for this guy's uniform. As of a few months back, the US Army in Afghanistan has swapped to the OCP - Operation Enduring Freedom Camouflage Pattern. Better known as MULTICAM.

(I checked, it was almost 9 months ago)

To get the details into the gun, I use Adobe Illustrator to path out the features in vector and try to separate out the overlapping areas. After the pathing is done, I can bring the vectors over onto Photoshop to paint digitally. With the pathing and overlapping areas planned, I can then use Photoshop layers to its fullest. This way I can make minor adjustments even after I've done the coloring for the weapon.


This is how it looks like pieced together.


I'm not looking at any real deadline for this. I'm currently concentrating on getting a Natural Science portfolio up to buff my capabilities and also on the lookout for incoming jobs so I'll see how it goes. Shouldn't be a problem.

On to something a bit fun. I got carried away while working on that Year of the Rabbit greeting card and just went nuts with the variety of guns. I just wanted to create one but ended up doing over a dozen and I'm adding new ones everyday. I intend to release them for free use soon - but not all at once. So here are a few to look at - I'll post the vector packs once I'm ready.

Year of the Rabbit

In a few more days, we'll enter a new Lunar Year and the Chinese will celebrate the year of the Rabbit in their Zodiac. Now, the animal zodiacs as followed by the Chinese were used more for their values than their iconic imagery. That's why there's also a Rat in there (being first among the 12 signs). Rabbits are supposed to be lively, fun loving, popular, good company and so on. I should know - my dad's a rabbit and he's got all of those virtues. But of course he can be a bit thick at times :D

So here's to a prosperous and fulfilling Year of the Rabbit. May good fortune be with you. Here's a little something inspired by Cat Shit One:


For those of you with a little more explosive tendencies....




Also some progress on the European-esque town where the battle will take place:


And a couple of the combatants on one side:




This is an ongoing thing. I'm not even sure I will even start this project. But hopefully I get some spare time to do things here and there.