Kris Cartoon

Sketch, Draw, Finish

Really Great Video Tutorials

Matt Kohr gives some great advice on improving your digital painting skills, bonus he has a great voice for narrating and the videos are pretty sort.

I’m working on getting a commission page up soon. Here’s me as Bride of Frankenstein, pin-upish style to give you an idea of what I’m doing. If you’re interested, you can go ahead and drop me aline and I’ll give up some of the details.

How to start your illustration career

How to start your illustration career

People often ask me how I got started as an illustrator and if there is any advice I can give them in becoming a professional illustrator.  I think having a successful illustration career comes down to the following: Unique Consistent Style, Technical Skills, Marketing, Tracking Work and Attitude. Hopefully, you will find something useful in this article.

simonist:

Forest Interior tutorial by dpaint

Here is a way to organize the complex information of an interior forest. This will work no matter what your rendering style happens to be. Whether you are an impressionist painter like me or a realist, the basic building blocks for the picture are the same the only difference is how far you want to carry the finish. This photoshop demo is based on a traditional painting I did a while back.


The challenge is to arrange the information to give you the illusion of space where no horizon is apparent. Forest scenes work best when you use clearings to establish a foreground or middle ground to help divide space in the scene. It doesn’t matter if you are painting jungle or alpine forests the abstract qualities of design still apply.


It helps to visualize the anchor points of the composition first. These objects will have the most detail and can be flagged or spotlighted for greater effect. They will give your eye a place to go in the image allowing you to use areas of less detail as counterpoints.


I always start with large areas of color keyed to the average for that mass this helps to unify the shape. I set up the different layers and work between them to balance color value and shape. Once these are established to my liking I begin to develop and refine the painting adding interest as I go.

(via tutorialsforartists)

OH man, I am loving Paint Tool SAI so much. WIP

OH man, I am loving Paint Tool SAI so much. WIP

Donna Summer. I had a lot of fun with this one, I think I should do some more celebrity caricatures.

I’ve decided I’m going to start posting art related stuff, advice & tutorials, along side my own art here. I haven’t post anything in awhile, but I’ve been practicing with my new Copics and Paint Tool Sai and having fun but not doing anything worth posting (yet)

The early 21st Century has not been allowed to develop a unique aesthetic because we are too busy bowing down to eras past. I think it’s time to kill our idols and change that.

—Aaron Rose (via highlikefashion)

I think this goes for more then just fashion.

Uhg, ever work really hard on something, then totally hate it? :(

Uhg, ever work really hard on something, then totally hate it? :(

drawnblog: Ray Frenden reviews the too-cheap-to-be-true Monoprice graphics tablets. How do they stack up to industry standard Wacoms? After spending a week with the 6.25“x10” Monoprice, my Yiynova and Cintiq remain unplugged and I gave my Intuos away to a friend. The Monoprice tracks subtle pressure variances and small movements with less lag and more crisp fidelity than any of the others. It is, put crudely, fucking awesome, in both OSX Lion and Windows 7 x64. Thanks Ray Frenden, you just saved me about $2,000 and months and months of saving. Instead of getting the Cintique, I’m going to get the Yiynova 19” MSP 19.

drawnblog:

Ray Frenden reviews the too-cheap-to-be-true Monoprice graphics tablets. How do they stack up to industry standard Wacoms?

After spending a week with the 6.25“x10” Monoprice, my Yiynova and Cintiq remain unplugged and I gave my Intuos away to a friend. The Monoprice tracks subtle pressure variances and small movements with less lag and more crisp fidelity than any of the others. It is, put crudely, fucking awesome, in both OSX Lion and Windows 7 x64.

Thanks Ray Frenden, you just saved me about $2,000 and months and months of saving. Instead of getting the Cintique, I’m going to get the Yiynova 19” MSP 19.

Y’all, I am having the worst fucking day in a long ass time. All I want to do is order my stupid copic markers and my banks is making is hella difficult. OMG I JUST WANT MY DAMN MARKERS!!! fuuuuuuuuuu

Clients From Hell: Join the Launch of The World’s Longest Invoice

clientsfromhell:

Editor’s note: I love contributor’s anecdotes about their humorous client interactions. Judging from our growing list of followers, you do to. But I don’t enjoy hearing about all the unpaid bills, shady practices, and downright immoral behaviour most of our readership has to deal with to make…

For all my freelance friends and followers!

Looks like I’m going to buy some Copic Markers

Everyone gave me some really good suggestions, but I secretly wanted the Copics all along. Thanks for validating my guys lol

I’m not totally sure I’ll have $700 once my car is paid off, and I pay my husband back for my brand spanking new computer, but if my Math is correct I’ll have around 600ish, so I think I’ll get the A & B set of Copic Ciao, and put the rest towards a Wacom Cintiq (I’m lucky to have an intuos) . If I’m wise with my money (I’m usually not) I should have enough to order the Cintiq is November. Sound like a good plan?