I was more excited to get going on today’s creative project than I’ve been in a long time. I’m really loving how this is turning out so far. However, when I look at this photo, which was actually taken under proper sunlight, I don’t get the same feeling as I get from looking at the actual piece on paper. Not sure why that is exactly. Maybe the colors are more washed out in the photo, and I think it’s a littler blurry in places. And that’s pretty lame.

I’ll do whatever I can do to continue trying to take better photographs to represent my artwork in the online space. You know, that’s one huge reason why I really love doing digital work; it always ends up at the highest quality as far as something that’s inherently pixel perfect goes. I’m no photographer. Creating artwork with pens, pencils, and literally getting my hands dirty in the process, just feels a whole lot better. I enjoy the process more when I’m creating with my hands with many tools, than when I create anything digitally. When I put it that way, it sounds dumb, because I’m sure every single artist will agree with that. Well, probably…

I’m just going to throw this in here at the end, but is it just me or do you also get a Millennium Falcon vibe from this drawing?

I planned to work on the Photoshop painting I started yesterday, which I’m sure I’ll get back to sometime, but instead I made this. I got somewhat set up to do my Photoshop stuff today, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I’ve enjoyed working on paper with these pens and pencils more than I realized. Using my drawing tablet and fiddling with the tools in Photoshop just didn’t feel right. Not to mentioned that I just don’t have anywhere super comfortable to do my digital drawing.

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Almost finished! As I suspected, I only had a little bit of time to do my creative habit. That trunk looks pretty amazing, I think. I don’t want to add anymore detail to it for fear of messing it up. Right now, it’s looking pretty great. I’ve also completely finished the outside tendrils. The last couple didn’t turn out the way I was hoping, but all the colors blend pretty well.

I still have a few more details to add to the leafy part of the tree because I’m noticing that it could use a little more dimension to help it stand out. I’m hoping that I can pull that off properly. Then all there is left to do is color in the sky with a light blue, maybe add some clouds, and perhaps a grassy hill towards the bottom. Then I’ll move on to something new! Finally, eh?

So, I had a buddy over today and we watched the original Star Wars. No, not A New Hope. Star Wars. I downloaded an original edit from…. somewhere, and it still looks fantastic. There were only maybe one or two moments where you kind of noticed some special effect issues, but they in no way took me out of the movie at all. It was fantastic as I’ve never really watched that version. Not since I was very young anyways and I was more occupied by video games than most movies. Except maybe the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies.

The Star Wars we watched didn’t have any of Lucas’ famous edits. No little yellow droid being replaced by a giant dinosaur, the special effects were all original (you know, made with hard work and dedication), and Greedo was killed before he even knew what happened. I’m not a huge Star Wars fan. I just didn’t grow up with it. But I really love this version of the movie, so much more than what I’ve been watching every few years when I go back and do the Star Wars rewatch.

I figured since a new Star Wars film is coming this year, it was time to go back and watch the original movies. I’m so happy that I found widescreen versions of the very first three Star Wars films. Being a creative person myself, I can really appreciate what Lucas was able to create. I don’t think there’s anything I can say about Star Wars that hasn’t been said repeatedly by many a Star Wars fan previously, so I’ll just say that I’m not a fan of the remastered versions with all the changes, and watching this version really made me appreciate how hard it must of been to build everything in that universe. Or galaxy, as it were.

I made more progress on my drawing today. I was able to finish it early enough in the day where I was able to use natural sunlight to help take a better photograph. However, the photo still doesn’t look quite as it does in real life. I’m sure when Spring is here, it’ll get easier to take decent photos.

I’m going to leave it at that as I’ve said all there is to say about what I’ve been working on. I’m going to say that I expect to be finished with this piece in two more days. Tomorrow, I have company coming by, and I don’t expect to get too much drawing time in. Probably enough to finish the tendrils there and maybe the trunk of the tree. As always, we’ll just have to see how it goes.

Hope everyone’s having a fantastic Saturday!

For today’s work I added more orange to the tendrils at the top, as well as starting on the green. Then I finished all the diagonal space/night sections, which includes the coloring of the moon near the center. I still want to add a few colored stars as I find, in space/night photos, you usually notice a couple colored stars/lights in the sky.

So, all I have left to do is finish the rest of the tendrils, which should take a couple more days. And then get started on the other scene in the middle. It will end up being more than just the tree. I plan on having some blue sky, clouds, perhaps some sunlight coming from the top right. Hopefully it all meshes well enough. I’m a little worried that it won’t, and I can’t exactly put my finger on why. I just hope the tree scene doesn’t look too… cartoony.

Other than that, I really don’t have much else to talk about today. My hockey team is losing (big time. Like… record breaking big time) and today was kind of a boring day. Nothing really going on that’s standing out to me as important enough to talk about.

It’s Friday though! I hope everyone is having a fantastic day.

I think a pretty neat idea would be to create a template, similar to the above image, to use in Photoshop. All the basic lines in this image, for example, would be the borders I would use for a series of paintings. I think it would be neat to start with free-hand drawing the border (in this case it’s the colorful tendrils) and the diagonal slices would separate opposing paintings.

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