Remember when you kind of felt sorry for this guy? I mean, the poor guy was injected with alien DNA and always had those gentle blue eyes. Now Ralph’s bringing some fight back to the real monsters that did this to him! The gun isn’t finished yet, neither is the hand that’s holding the weapon, but I’m still satisfied with how today’s progress went.

I got to working on this pretty late today as I’ve felt tired and a little bit miserable for most of the day. I sat down at my computer to draw, a little bit frustrated, turned on some tunes, and added those little bullets on his leather strap there. Once finished, I realized bullets were a stupid idea as I was thinking of giving him a big hammer or something. So I googled some modern real life rifles and couldn’t find anything that looked good. Or even anything that might spark an interesting idea. So I then tried alien weaponry and found a whole lot of interesting cannon designs. I decided to take a few ideas from a couple of those pictures and create my own. Even without detail, his gun looks pretty badass, if I do say so myself.

I’ve also added an explosive that’s held in his tentacle there. I’m pretty satisfied with the design of the bomb, however I’m not 100% sure everyone else will know what it is right away. I’m thinking of added two slots in his weapon that would holster these bombs. With one being empty as if he just removed the explosive. Having them housed in his alien cannon might help signify that they are indeed weapons.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as a perfect piece of artwork. I don’t think I’m ever fully satisfied when I finish a drawing. With the project I’m currently working on (The guy above), I’m spending as much time on him as possible. I’m not sure if I’ll ever reach the point where I’m satisfied. But rather than moving on the moment I get bored, or inspired to try something new and exciting, I’m keeping my focus on this one picture.

I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on this one today, though I did manage to draw up an armored pauldron and a leather strap to go with it. The strap isn’t finished yet though, as I’m not too happy with how it’s turning out. I’m quite sure I’ll have to go through some video tutorials on creating my own leather textures tomorrow. The metal on the actual pauldron looks pretty cool though!

Tattoos! That’s what this guy was missing. It makes him a little more intimidating, and gives him a new feature that detracts from all that bare skin. While he does look just fine as he is, I still feel like there’s more I can do. It would be really nice if I could figure out a way to remove his black outline, but it doesn’t look proper when I simply remove it. I’ll look into that more tomorrow. Yup, at least one more day with this guy, I think! He deserves all the detail I can add.

Alright, what else did I do today… Those horns! I think they look pretty cool. They definitely needed some kind of texture. Now they have an added dimension, which they sorely needed. The only other thing I can think of that’s new with today’s version is more skin detail all over. I think mostly on the rest of the lower body. I left that unfinished yesterday.

Lastly, I created a Facebook fan page for my artwork (which can be found here). I’ve been meaning to do it for awhile now. I just didn’t think it would be a big deal, so I put it off. Boy, was I wrong. Where the heck are all these people coming from?! I have so many friends and family pushing so hard for me to get as many likes as possible. I think almost 10 people shared my page between last night and today. That’s ridiculous, guys! I have over 50 likes. Do you realize how much pressure that puts me under? 😉 Seriously though, you guys are all rock and stuff. Thank you so much.

I’m excited about doing my drawing again today. I suddenly see all kinds of possibilities with the current project I’m working on. I’m really happy with all the little details I’ve added. It might not look like too much of an update from yesterday’s post, but I did work on this guy for about 2 hours this afternoon. The skin looks noticeably better with lots of extra details. We also have the exposed muscle there with some new colors mixed in. Then finally I included a shadow for the face tentacles.

The primary reason I’m getting excited about this project again is that I think I want to redo a lot of the black outline to add even more detail to the overall shape of this guy. I want to do this because now that outline is standing out for me. Not in a good way. I just want to add more curves and small details as I go along the black outline.

I really think I’m just going to keep working on this guy until I feel he’s the best I can possibly make him. So that might take awhile because I think just about everything I’ve done previously I’ve completed to satisfaction, but I’ve never gone beyond that. I always think, “Hey, I think I’m done with this. Time to move on.” but now I’m going to try sticking with one thing and adding more and more until there’s nothing else I could possibly add. This might turn out to be bad. But it’s worth trying.