Cottage Cheese

My brilliant idea this time up was Tudor Cottages. I was looking for maybe 80% accuracy with the architectural style. Apparently Tudor house frames are prone to severe warping and this may be part of the reason why there isn't a whole lot of reference on them aside from the high end houses and buildings as Kellz can attest to (she was looking at the Tudor revival halls going "I'm gonna kill him...")

I am not sure entirely how I did it but I totally managed to suck the life out of this drawing. The cottage looks so sterile to me. I'll have to revisit this in the near future with more sketches to see if I can figure out what went wrong. Speaking of more sketches... I am including some study work for this one. In the first image you will see my lil cartooned up cottage. This was my thumbnail for the idea. It was mostly so I can see what concepts I wanted to incorporate into the cottage so that I could figure out how they would look before I actually went in and did the cottage. Also on this first image is a close up of the support beam looking things detailed up. I've never seen documentation of these things being ornamented but thought it might look neat. The owner of this cottage may have been a wheat farmer...

The second image is a study for the balcony (again, I've never seen reference of balconies on this type of Tudor, but... I wanted one!) and of the front door. This was referenced from a photo. Another big difference you may notice between the thumbnail and the full is that I switched the roof material. Originally I wanted a nice tiled roof but I was so unhappy with how lifeless it looked as I progressed that at the last second I decided on the more common thatched roof style for this type of building. My hope was that it would give some of the more organic feel I was looking for. I dunno if it worked. But there you have it!

Stutter

Wow, hella good challenge from Kellz once again. This time, 19th century sidearms. I strongly suspect this has something to do with her fascination with steam punk >_>' I had to research the subject on a couple of separate occasions. turns out particular wording (i.e. sidearm vs. pistol) will get you wildly different results. Dunno why, doubt I ever will. Regardless, I got MUCH more interesting results the second go around, so I went with a Pepperpot Pistol. It's a .36 caliber, other than that I can't tell you much about it. Also, it's amazing how often it seems like a straight out profile shot of a firearm is apparently deemed sufficient photo documentation. Really people. c'mon.

So anyway, let's see... filters were my friend again. I want to say I used a grain filter for the metallic parts. I tried very clumsily to re-create the diamond carving pattern on the grip by making a layer of a little wedge shape (two different light values) and setting it as a multiply layer at 25% opacity I think. I'm not satisfied with the way it came out. It's missing something. The idea is there, it's just... it doesn't look quite right. I also used an etching pattern from the side of another pepperpot that I had a much better photo of. I created this on a separate layer as well and used the distort tool to get it at about the angle I wanted. Brush tool, multiply and adjust the opacity again.

The Trouble With Trees

The hilarity of random tasks continues! This time it was my "great" idea that we do trees! I've learned a couple of things from this so far. First, I need to be more damned specific, and B: Filters are fun!

I was far too general with the sketch before hand. I think it would have been a whole different piece if I did a little more with the line. Next time I think I'm going to opt for pen or pencil only. just to see, you know? On a scale of 1-10 I'm pleased with this to the tune of about a 6, maybe 7. Maybe.

This is why we can't have nice things!

Oh what was I thinking right? I of course come to my good friend Kellz and go "hey I got this really great idea... Why don't we come up with like... 'art challenges' and we have to draw what ever either of us comes up with! you go first!" and you know so of course, right off the cuff, she comes up with Batman...Batman... See? I knew why I knew this would be a great idea. Never in a million years would I choose to draw Batman of my own accord! /facepalm. But hey! my plan worked! We are both doing something creative and challenging! Well... challenging for me anyway >_> So now, I'm not into superhero comics much at all really. I'm familiar with most of the batman movies of course, but then I got to thinking about the Adam West TV Batman and I was like oh I wanna do THAT batman! So I tried to capture not so much the "whacky" from the show but like a little more... I think starkness? anyway I really just liked the idea of drawing the TV show Batman. So here goes. Awesome selection by Kellz!