Value Composition: Follow up

Well, I didn't actually get to art as much as I wanted to this week.  I did some thumb nailing but mostly I was doodling bad doodles trying to get myself out of an art block.

I'm going to give this Value Composition another week so I might product something up to a colour sketch of something.

So, here is my page of thumbnails. I was trying to find a composition for battle charge style image. There are a couple I like (6,12 and 14) and that I might expand into more detailed larger thumbnails to explore.
#12 is not exactly a battle scene but I wouldn't mind expanding on it into a different type of illustration. or adding details to it to make it a more subtle battle waiting scene.

Anyway, not so interesting but making an effort to spend a little time posting.
I'll leave behind 2 sketches I posted last week.

Weekly Art challenges: Value Composition

I've realized that a lot of the on-line art sharing websites just don't suit me. I've tried so many but most of the W.I.P. or critique based websites are CG heavy and as a result no one knows what to say or look at in regards to my semi realistic cartooning style. I didn't get a lot of useful feedback. DeviantART used to be the place to go but its overrun with trolls and comments and critiques have taken a side step to favouriting like crazy (Instagram style). So I've decided to take a different approach.

Weekly I'm going to choose a specific topic/theme to focus my art one, and just post the results of my focus here. Feel free to critique what I post, and feel free to post your own work in the comments and we can critique eachothers!

Okay, for my first week challenge I'm going to work on my Composition in regards to Value.
I tend to use bright colours and while I've got a decent amount of contract in my images I still feel like I could use some work on my Value Composition and silouettes. Muddy Colours recently had a great blog post about this which inspired me to get off my tuckus and work on this. I've been thinking about it for a long time. My comic, Conflagration is going to have a lot of intense scenes in it, in black and white, probably. Which means the better I get a handle on this now, the better chance my comic is going to be appealing and be successful.

I've taken a few of my recent art works and adjusted the threshold on them to see where I am at. I think 1.. maybe 2 of these are kind of successful a little bit but clearly I have some work to do.

Well, I'm going to get to work on thumb-nailing some ideas!!

Here are some great articles and Videos
Muddy Colours- using shape and value for better composition
Muddy Colours - Composition basics: Value structure
Muddy Colours- Composition Basics: Sketching Thumbnails
James Gurney - atmospheric distance and Value
James Gurney - Cure for middle value mumbling



 And I'll leave some of my newer art here too :)

Lots of tutorials, Deviantart Alive again.

I've started using my deviantART account again. I've posted some art on there, and I'm going to make sure to post lots of sketches in my scraps. I'm trying to find some more artists to follow on there because most of my DevWatch represents my interests of 6 years ago and doesn't necessarily thrill me any more.

I've done a TON of tutorials for Copicmarker.com and for everyone's convenience I've been keeping the list on the resources page of my website.I've done 15 since the last one I posted on here. Wow. They must really like me...

We've sent our Gateways to Beyond comic to the printers. We're expecting the first batch April 4th. Cutting it close for some of our conventions but barring any major issues we should be OK.

Heres some recent art work - all created for Tutorials, oops. One day I'll do art for me, haha.

Profiles by Marker-Guru on deviantART

Victor in leather and fur by Marker-Guru on deviantART

Stacy in Furs by Marker-Guru on deviantART

Pehny purple cape by Marker-Guru on deviantART

Fundraising to print our anthology, Gateways to Beyond

Gurukitty Studios is currently working on our 3rd anthology,Gateways to Beyond, and we have  launched a crowd funding campaign to help raise the funds needed to publish this book.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gateways-to-beyond

The campaign has many perks and donation levels where you can get digital and physical copies of our new and previous anthologies, including pre-orders ofGateways to Beyond. If you are unable to financially support the campaign, thats okay, helping us spread the word is extremely helpful, as well.

If you could spread the word on your social media sites such as twitter and facebook it will greatly increase our chances of successfully funding our campaign.

Gateways to Beyond will have 23 black and white sci-fi comics from artists all over the world.
The wrap around cover art was done by one of the contributors, Jason Hart.

Sample comic pages from the anthology will be posted periodically on tindiegogo campaign. We will also be posting concept work and sketches.

Thank you for supporting Gurukitty Studios.

Fire Dragon

VCon is next weekend, and I wanted to have a fresh drawing to have some new prints. I was doing a tutorial for Copic Marker and finished it early. The tutorial will be posted in a few weeks (I've frequently done tutorials for Copic) in the mean time, here is the image which will be available to buy as a print at Vcon this weekend.