Even More Favorable Odds (J)

Sometime early last year I decided to draw some side characters from the Hunger Games.  I drew a few, meant to color them and then forgot.  Well, last week I finally got to two of them, so here's a little PS to my last HG-themed post: Finnick and his lady love Annie.

Here's a secret: I don't actually care for most of the Hunger Games characters.  They are little more than names to me as far as emotional attachments go.  But I did like Finnick, and though I don't really care for Annie's character, it seemed nice to do the set.  Here's another secret: her outfit=100% inspired by Survivor.   

Overall, I liked how they turned out.  They were both pretty quickly done, but it's easier to get decent results with less time.  Improvement?  I like to think so.

Favorable Odds (J)

As much as I hate to take the top spot from the last post, it's been WAY too long since I had anything to say on this here blog.  A while ago (ie, several months ago) I reread all the Hunger Games books.  I like them, though I don't love them, but I wanted to draw the three leads again.  

It's always interesting to see what happens along the way from sketch to finished thing and in the case of these, Peeta is the only one I prefer finished.  This year I've been trying to face my fear of going lineless, and I think doing these helped (though I didn't get rid of ALL the lines...baby steps!).  Even though I have some issues with them technically, they did turn out pretty much exactly how I envision the characters and that counts for something.

(Sorry you're so flat, Katniss.) 

 

Here are the sketches for comparison.

Hogwarts Peeps (J)

Lately I have been feeling an absence of Harry Potter in my life.  Next year I'm going to read all the books through again but in the meantime I did some arts to fill the void.  Earlier this year I started playing around with this method of coloring and I gave it another whirl this time.  It all took a lot longer than I anticipated, but in the end I like how they turned out.  Ginny is probably my favorite, and I did her first, go figure.

Hopefully they are all pretty self explanatory but just for the record it goes, t-b/l-r: Ginny, Luna, Neville; Hermione, Harry, Ron; Goyle, Draco, Crabbe. 


Now to work on something with fewer people.

Princess Charlotte (D)

This has been in the works for months!  Ever since I did my Tiana portrait I've wanted to do a sort of companion piece of Charlotte.  In my head it was such an interesting contrast to Tiana, in character and color and feeling, so I thought it would be a fun project.  And then it finally happened and turned out just how I pictured it!  An explosion of pink!

Princess Charlotte, digital

It wasn't as difficult to get her look right as it was with Tiana six months ago, though a little research proved again helpful.  I don't think her wonderfully absurd dress is quite poofy enough, but I didn't want it to overwhelm the canvas too much.  Oh, Lottie, you'll get your prince one day.  You're certainly driven enough!

Like I did last time, just for fun, here's the black and white outline version.  You can color your own!  I'm sure back in the day when I loved coloring books I could only dream that one day I would be able to make my very own.  (Though my crayons these days are a little more sophisticated.)

Princess Charlotte (B&W), digital

Miss Tiana (D)

Over the Christmas holiday we watched a couple of favorite recent Disney movies (it's been too long!), which inspired this piece featuring everyone's favorite New Orleans princess:

Miss Tiana, digital

It was surprisingly difficult to get her face to a point where I was satisfied.  She was prettyish in the initial sketch, but she wasn't Tiana.  But then I did a little research and made a few adjustments, and there she was.  It was also fun to find and work with some new star brushes.

As a point of interest, and to provide a little insight into the process, here's the lineart that I finalized before adding color:

Miss Tiana (B&W), digital

I really like how it looks.  If you feel so inclined, you can print this out or drop it into Photopshop and use this as a coloring page and do your own Tiana!  "Cranky waitress"?  Nonsense!