Latest WIP

I had the massive urge to draw a very old character of mine earlier. In fact, Cadfael was the first ever character that I created back when I was about 14 years old. He's developed a lot over the years, and I decided that it was time that he was developed again.

Before I post the first 3 WIP's for this image, I'd like to show how I have developed Cadfael over the years.

First Design
Second
Third
Fourth
Fifth

I find it really funny how awful some of the earlier images of him are, but it made me realise that he's probably my most developed and most drawn character. I remember that although I wrote down the description of his human form, I never drew it, and so wanted to combine both his human and lycan form together in one image. So I came up with this.

WIP 1



WIP 2



WIP 3


I used this as a reference for the human figure, as I couldn't draw straight out what I was envisioning in my mind. I also wanted to use this as a chance to practice my male human anatomy.

I'm really having fun with this, and want it to be quite a rough and raw piece, and look forward to doing more with it.

Newest artwork

These are probably my newest pieces. The first is in my quick and sketchy style, whilst the second was more of an attempt at semi-realism.

This character was drawn as gift art for a friend, Seraphania, and I loved painting a creature with really saturated colours again. It was a nice change from the fairly natural and neutral colours that I usually use myself.
I used this as rough reference.



This is a quick sketch of two old characters of mine called Ike (bottom right) and Switch (top left) who I haven't drawn in ages. As my main weakness is drawing men, I thought it would be a good exercise which I believe to be fairly successful.
I used this for reference for Ike and I used this as ref for Switch. And just to show the progress that I've made in 2 and a bit years, here is the last time I drew these characters.
Drawing these two has really made me want to develop more male characters, and learn to be as comfortable drawing them as I am with females.

Story's Sunset

I worked on this piece over a period of about 9 months, and struggled horrendously with it. Some of the process can be found here and here.
In the end I changed the piece quite dramatically, and I can honestly say its a piece that I'm still proud of, and am especially pleased with the atmosphere the background creates for the character.
Story belongs to a good friend of mine over on Deviantart, Seraphania, who was kind enough to do an art trade with me. Again, I learned so much from the piece, particularly how to paint fur quickly and fairly effectively.

Continued

Some more pieces, first a revamp of an old character and secondly a reference sheet for another of my species.

I really enjoyed drawing this particular piece, and I really feel as though I've actually managed to convey the characters general personality through the pose and expression. It was at this point that I was starting to force myself into simple backgrounds, and I think I'm just about starting to get somewhere with it.



This particular piece really surprised me. It turned out to be my most popular piece over on Deviantart, and has even resulted in people drawing and creating their own Sun Cheetahs as they are an open species. To see that other people seemed to like my designs enough to create their own really gave my confidence a boost, and it has really made me think that I might be getting somewhere with my art.

More finished images

The sketches of some of these were featured in my last PDP blog, and I'm pleased to say that I finished them.

The idea and sketches for the image below have been lying around for a good two years or so now, and I was finally really happy to have finished what I started. I like the roughness of this piece, and I really enjoyed working on it as I didn't spend hours and hours to the point of getting stuck.



This one is pretty much just a random doodle that I did, I think at that point I was starting to become more confident with colours and shading, although I know I still have a long way to go.



This was a competition entry for over on Deviant Art which was held by Seraphania. The creature is called a Panthalassian, and I always find that I immensely enjoy drawing other peoples characters and creations. I really don't like this one any more, but it was good practice all the same.

Ardor the Slayer

This is the final piece that I documented in last years PDP, the WIP posts for which can be found here and here. It was only after completing the image of Medusa in my last post that I really understood how to finish this one, and I was fairly pleased with the results considering it's quite a loose piece. I now realise that the border doesn't particularly work well, and I've since stopped framing all of my pieces in this way.

Quick pieces

To my great surprise, over the summer I managed to complete several quick character designs and studies. Some where done just to relax with, whilst others were redesigns or practises. These pieces were really about trying to find my style of painting, which I think I have succeeded in as I now feel more comfortable painting digitally than I ever have.

The image below was all about trying to improve my colouring skills, and I think it was with this image that everything just seemed to "click". I followed no tutorials, and really just played with this until I found a way of working that was both comfortable and fast.



Below was a quick logo of sorts that I did for my DeviantArt ID, and is also another character redesign.



Another redesign, it was drawn ages ago but I never coloured it. I'm really happy with the design, although I can see all the major anatomy faults in it, primarily the shoulder and chest area.

Night Phoenix

This image is what I worked on the most over summer, and is something that I will hopefully come back to in the near future.

Unfortunately I lost the initial sketch to this piece, but you can see the general way that I've gone about painting this. I tried to do something different for once and really try and challenge myself by doing a night scene, but by also using as few layers as possible.

WIP 1



WIP 2



This last image is where it is at now, and hopefully there will be another update in the near future.

Introduction

So this is my Personal Development Project blog for my final year at Glyndwr university.
Here I will post all of my work that does not relate to my main university project, and will also review games, tutorials and films. I will also detail any interesting events that I attend.

First though I thought I would share the art that I worked on over the summer. A lot of it was never finished, but non the less I've learnt something from every piece.
Some of these were posted on my last PDP blog, but I feel that it is important that I post them here too.