Suarez Art

Girl Look Toned

This is a bit of an experiment in Photoshop I'm going to be trying out for a while. The thing is, I've been looking for ways to add more value to my sketches. Specifically, ones I've already drawn in regular sketchbooks. In real life it's easy because all you need is toned paper and a white pencil.

I tried to achieve this effect in Photoshop before by adding a gray layer set to multiply and then pulling out highlights with a white brush. And it works pretty good, except that the gray is kind of overpowering and dulls the drawing a bit. But it does wonders for value and highlights, a few example are Zombie Face, Azuka, Heroine Full and The Hope.

So, I've been thinking what else I could do. I thought maybe finding a nice neutral color that I could use as a mid-tone would be better than gray. But, I couldn't think of a color that would look right.

Then, it hit me! If I wanted to replicate the effect of using toned paper, I could just add toned paper to the drawing in Photoshop. So, I set out to find a good paper texture and then adjusted it to the right color and and played with levels until I was happy with the tone. After that it was just a simple task of pulling out the highlights with a white brush.

It's a pretty easy and quick process, and the result is pretty close to what I wanted. I'm still going to see what else I can do to tweak the technique, and find ways to improve the texture.

Next step: Getting actual scans of blank toned sketchbook pages.

Also, I know it would be a little easier to just draw in a toned sketchbook from now on. But I still have 3 regular sketchbooks left to fill up, and I'm not about to start on another one. Plus, I wanted to figure out something I can apply to all my drawing to take them another step further.

Adele

A character I was working on for a comic idea I had written out. I say "was", because I'm just letting it sit for now. I'll probably take it out one of these days and see if I still like it, look for stuff to improve and see if I can add anything new to it. I feel it easier to look at something objectively when you see it again with fresh eyes.

And this is just a very preliminary drawing for her character. I mean she looks nice and all. But, there's nothing really memorable about her, nothing sticks out and it's just kind of boring right now. I need to do some brainstorming and thumbnails to see what direction I can take her in.

Small Update

Found some drawings that were 90% done in my sketchbook, so I took advantage and finished them up so I could scan them in.

The Pyramid Head was real tricky, he's given me a lot of trouble. If you want to know exactly how much trouble he's given me, let's just say I started him before the movie came out.

From the Small Pen Sketchbook

This is a small selection from the small sketchbook I usually have wherever i go. They were done with a set of 4 different sized artist pens. Usually, I only used 3 though.

First update in a long time!

Even though I haven't updated it doesn't mean I haven't been drawing. I just didn't like how my blog looked that much. But, I made it a bit prettier so I'd want to fill it with content.

Now the only thing left to do is scan the endless sketchbook pages...