Cardstock Part 2

Hello, folks. I'm back from an interesting, stressful, educational holiday season, with many projects under my belt. I'll leave a few commissions here for your viewing pleasure. These serve as a response to Yoji Shinkawa's work in the Metal Gear series.

More Cardstock

Still experimenting with cardstock. The surface doesn't hold darker values well, but the smooth texture is wonderful for my workflow. Very cheap alternative to using Hot Press illustration board, especially if you plan on a digital finish.

Graphite, coloured pencil, digital

India Ink, digital

Wallpaper!

I've been on a blog kick recently. Within the last two days I've saved over four-hundred images. If you like fashion inspiration as much as I do, you'll check out Twisted Lamb. It's run by a fashion artist in the game industry, and she is superb. 

The two drawings seen here are from that blog. The full-sized image is 1920x1080, so feel free to make it your new desktop image!

Chaotic Figures

Following the portraits, I decided to offer figurative commissions in a slightly different style. The focus was on keeping dynamic strokes and gestural quality through to the finish (something I try to do normally). Below is the collection of finished sketches:

Next up is are ink drop portraits. Hope this example encourages more people to try this style:

--\-

The dash-dash-slash-dash ( --\- ) is a signature I started using over a year ago. You'll usually see that symbol hidden somewhere within my images, but what you probably don't know is why I use it.

The symbol came about when I was eating a cookie. I looked at the shape my bottom teeth made when I bit—turned out one tooth was crooked. I liked that pattern enough to use it. But sometimes I forget how to  do my signature and have to bite something as a reminder.

Search the symbol in Google and see what happens.


Not very many results at all, huh? It's far more exclusive than "Jonathan Duncan", or even "Jonathan Vair".  Eventually, it will only post to my work. My goal of having an unobtrusive and effective signature will then be realized.

It will eventually come in handy when someone posts your work on Tumblr, it gets famous, and the original poster never credits you. And to all the folks on Tumblr, it's graphite, not charcoal. :)