The start of Jaime Lannister!

Well, my laptop is still working! I also had a fantastic holiday, I didn't want to come back, who would with pictures like this?

Porto Cristo, Mallorca

The day after I came off holiday I decided to make my back yard a usable space, it's a good suntrap for the afternoon and early evening, and it was just a dumping ground before. Now it's nice: 

Anyway, I've not done much art again since coming back (and I did zero on holiday), but I've been working on Jaime Lannister today:

I did do another Cersei Lannister test on the new paper, and I really didn't like it, so I've gone back to my original paper that I did Cersei Lannister on, and I'll be using that going forward. Plans for next week it to just carry on with this project :) There's a website coming back online, I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, it's called Briefbox. They were hacked last year, and took the opportunity to sort out their security, and upgrade the website too. I'll have a look at it when it's back online. The owners post briefs online for you to work on (ie logo design, graphic design, illustration, etc), but they're made-up. It's quite good to use to practise. The old website is still accessible: http://briefbox.me/

I've also come across a concept I like the look of: A bullet journal, you can read more on it here:  https://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelwmiller/how-to-start-a-bullet-journal?utm_term=.do6YMLDBQb#.brOxvy6M3A

Anyway, I'm off to watch the Canadian Grand Prix (my favourite, Jenson Button has just dropped out of the race as his engine set on fire), so I'll leave you with my Pinterest of the Week: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/314548355205688849/ For once it's not anything arty, but I feel like since just before my holiday and after my tolerance to idiots is improving!

Game of Thrones: Still working on Cersei Lannister

I've not had much time to work on my art this week; I've restarted Insanity so I've been going to bed early to give my body time to rest after the intense workouts. I did finally pick up the paper I think I'll get on with, but I only got it yesterday, and I've since been in Derby visiting family so I've had no time to do anything with the paper yet. I have done some work in Photoshop this week though while I've waited for the weekend to come around so I could buy the paper:

I can't show you the timelapse video for this; it took nearly an hour to render a video that was poor quality, so I'm not going to upload it to YouTube. I've also since broken my laptop, it still works for now, but I dropped it while it was plugged in, and I dropped it on the edge it was plugged it, so the case and ports in that area are cracked and bent out of shape. It does still charge (fortunately, but I'm now uploaded everything to the cloud incase the laptop gives up the ghost), but I'm worried when I try to fix it I may damage it more. Currently I can't shut the lid. I'll have to see how it goes.

In other news, my long-awaited holiday is next weekend! I'm away for 2 weeks, so there won't be any blog posts. I will take a sketch pad on holiday with me, but the likelihood of me drawing anything is pretty slim, as I will be sunning myself round a pool drinking beer.

So, as I don't have anything further to update, I'll leave you with my Pinterest of the Week before my laptop dies a death: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/314548355205811079/ I just think it's a very pretty piece, I love the colours and the concept of the peacock big cat.

More of Cersei Lannister, in different mediums

I tried to paint Cersei with watercolour last week, and although I like the medium, I felt I couldn't get the detail in her face that I wanted, and from working the paper too much with colour and water the paper started to disintegrate:

So I've now had several types of paper so I can carry on with coloured pencil:

Original drawing from the previous timelapses, 150gsm acid-free drawing paper, 100gsm copier paper

So the paper on the left is the coarse paper I don't like, the middle paper is finer, and the paper on the right is copier paper, so smooth. I like the middle paper best, as I can get the right amount of colour on the paper without the texture showing through. On the copier paper, while it was smooth, I couldn't get the saturation right, and the more I worked it the paper started to disintergrate. The only trouble is, I don't have the paper I prefer in A3! So I need to wait until next weekend before I can start to draw, except I'm out next weekend, so even if I can get hold of the paper I want I won't be doing any drawing.

In other news, we had a Bank Holiday on Monday, and in the town I live in we have Charter Day, which marks when the town was founded. It's more for family and kids, so we usually give it a miss, but I had to buy groceries, so we had a wander into town. I went round a local art exhibition (same one I went to last year, although I think most of the artwork has rotated round), and also went to another place which is a local store and the Tourist Information in one (as they also had an art exhibition on). I've seen a summer course I'm going to sign up to, it's just a general art course for the school holidays (6 weeks), and it's working with oils, pastels, watercolour, tonal drawings, still life, etc. I'm not entirely sure I want to do it, but I'm hoping it will give me a purpose to my art.

I've also seen a university course I want to do, it's only a short course (10 weeks), and it's for graphic design. The guy that runs the course is a practising graphic designer, and I'm really keen to do this course, except it doesn't start until April 2017! Oh well, it'll give me plenty of time to save the money for the course.

Well, that's the most I've posted to my blog in the past few weeks, I hope you made it this far! As usual I'll leave you with my Pinterest of the Week: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/314548355205709851/ I love the simiplicity of this watercolour, plus it's a rabbit, which I'm a sucker for.

Game of Thrones Cersei Lannister timelapse finished!

I finished up my piece on Cersei Lannister in colour, I made 2 more timelapse videos:

I managed to stop the overall colour in the video changing too drastically (I shut the blinds, as the changeable British weather means the sun is always popping in and out of clouds), and I put the video camera on a different surface to the one I was working on, so it stopped the camera shaking too much. 

I love watching the timelapses back, as I think it's magical to see my work come back to life. However, I'm not happy with the finished result at all, the paper I used is too grainy, and you can see this in the stokes of my coloured pencils:

So, it's back to the drawing board (pun absolutely intended). I've started playing around with a cheap watercolour set I bought a while ago, and I think for the finish I'm after this is closer to what I want (smooth colour, not grainy colour).

And this week's Pinterest of the week is totally relatable to my art woes, and my hope that watercolour may be the medium I use going forward: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/ATHZu9RGmfIFMG2fkvis1Uj0Z09U-DtL2X-uq8JCCIIgCtGvwzZeX1E/ maybe I should get some of these tools into my art arsenal!

First Game of Thrones timelapse has landed!

I've had a week off from the crazy drawing, I've been pretty busy at work, so it's been nice to have a break during the week. I have started colouring Cersei Lannister in though, although I'm concerned it doesn't look like her:

I also came across these common problems posters for graphic designers, they're quite amusing: http://www.creativebloq.com/posters/posters-sum-designer-problems-111517875

Aside from that there's not really much to report on, so I'll leave you with my Pinterest of th Week, the colours are so vibrant on the first piece! https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/314548355205709830/

Game of Thrones Season 1

Well, I just about have everyone I wanted to draw finished, and I've composed them onto a banner:

Not looking too shabby! I've just got one small detail to sort, I want to double check my composition, and then I'm going to get round to colouring them in.

Aside from that, I've not done a great deal again all week. I had my brother round last night, and we played Call of Duty all night, then had the family round for a Sunday roast. Watched the Formula 1, and now I'm just chilling out. I'm so tired, and I don't know why.

Nothing planned for the rest of the week either, just counting down until holiday now, I really need a break, I'm so tightly wound at the moment that every little thing is affecting me, when really I should relax. I'll leave you with my Pinterest of the Week, I hope when I get round to trying water colours that they look this good: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/314548355205683068/

Game of Thrones character's line drawings nearly finished!

I'm really getting my head down and trying to finish up these lines drawings now, there should be no reason why I don't finish them within the next week:

Viserys Targaryen with Daenerys Targaryen

John Snow

Myrcella Baratheon

Robb Stark

Tommen Baratheon

I still need to finish some hands though, as I've made no progress on that since last week/ So, the only characters I need to do now are Tywin Lannister (started), Jaime Lannister and Tyrion Lannister. I thought I'd leave the interesting ones until last; those of you who have watched the series will know what I mean.

Again, I've had a pretty quiet week, went to a friend's house last night and spent most of the night playing Cards Against Humanity. Oh, I won on the Grand National too, a £2,50 each-way bet yielded £161.25! Whoop!

I've been listening to loads of podcasts recently too, as I've mentioned before I listen to the Creative Pep Talk by Andy J Miller, you can find his website here: www.andy-j-miller.com, I've also listened to a few Pencil vs Pixel podcasts, and Andy J Miller has also recommended The Graphic Sound, although I've yet to listen to it. I've nearly caught up on the back catalogue of the Creative Pep Talk.

Someone else I also like watching is the Youtube channel RossDraws. Ross is fresh out of school in America and his skill is really good, though I like watching him as he's so dynamic and has so much energy! You should definitely check him out, I don't know all of the characters he draws, but he draws some pretty famous characters too. I love Color Dodge time too, I hadn't really made use of this tool in Photoshop before watching his video, and now I'm in a love with it... except I've made more of a move now to traditional art than digital art! I wish there was a color dodge pen I could use on paper.

One last thing I've become interested in is Serif Affinity, which is like a very affordable version of Photoshop. I've signed up to the beta test for Windows when it's released, as currently it's a mac-only program.

Anyway, that's enough rambling for one week, I think I did pretty good considering my week was boring! Here's my Pinterest of the Week: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/314548355205683086/ I absolutely love bunnies, but what interested me more was the hatching of the pencil the artist has used. Aside from a few whiskery hairs the pencil stroke is all in one direction. And it's so cute!