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.

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!

Joffrey Baratheon finished, Sansa Stark started

Well, I mostly have Joffrey finished, I just need to sort out the length on his arms and add some hands:

And I have started Sansa, but I've only got the body shape down so far, which isn't interesting enough to post on here.

It's a long weekend here in the UK this weekend due to it being Easter, but I've been on holiday since Thursday (car had its MOT... and failed. It's OK, I got it fixed though). I was supposed to spend a big chunk of this weekend drawing, and instead I spent Thursday drawing for about an hour, then went out Thursday night in Nottingham (and drove!!). Friday I went for an 11 mile bike ride, interspersed with a couple of pubs and a trip to the local wildlife sanctuary:

What duck?

Peekaboo!

Saturday I went to the pub for the day (surprise surprise) and today I went to watch the new Batman vs Superman film. My verdict? It was OK. Better than what people are giving it credit, but it wasn't amazing. It didn't help I spent the first 2/3 of the film confused! I think I should've watched the last Superman film beforehand. Tomorrow is due to be bad weather, so I'll stop in, and *should* get some more drawing done. I'm about halfway there now with the line drawings, and I've sped up considerably. My longest character, Daenerys, took me 3 hours for the line drawing (she was the first character I drew), Joffrey took 1.25 hours. The quickest was Catelyn Stark at 1 hour.

I've spotted a good Kickstarter campaign that I'd love to back, but I'm skint at the moment, and to be honest I can do the same thing by scanning my art at work. You can find what I'm talking about here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/642311833/rocketbook-wave-cloud-connected-microwavable-noteb?ref=users

Anyway, that's enough of my waffling for one week. No plans mid-week next week, but on Saturday I'm going to see Muse, and I'm so friggin' excited!

So before I go, here's my Pinterest of the Week: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/314548355205477344/ I love the detail on this, how they've done the water droplets first before the rest, and it gives me hope that I'll be able to produce something this good with coloured pencils one day

Daenerys line art done, next up: Robert Baratheon

Well, the Game of Thrones characters are moving along, I've spent a bit more time on them last week and today (including managing to fit in this weekend: visiting a friend, deep cleaning my kitchen and wasting hours on Call of Duty Black Ops 3). I finished the line drawing of Daenerys (although it looks nothing like her, I'm hoping when I colour her in it will resemble her a bit more), and I've got the body sorted for Robert Baratheon: 

Daenerys Targaryen

Robert Baratheon

The idea is not to have the lines when I colour it in. I don't want this to look to cartoony, although if this looks crap coloured in with pencils then I may resort to cell-shading digitally XD

I'm still being a hermit this at the moment (saving for a house), so I haven't got much to report on. I'm gonna be seeing a few people this week I've not caught up with for a while. Hopefully I'll be able to get some more drawing in. It would be awesome if I can finish Robert Baratheon and get another character started.

Someone who I work with highly recommended going to a life drawing class. We have one that happens every Wednesday in my home town, I'm out this Wednesday but hoping to get to it next week. At the moment I use a Pose app on my phone to draw poses from (my wooden mannequin is shite), but I've been told that nothing beats drawing from real life. I can kind of relate to that; drawing still lifes at home is much better than drawing it from a 2D picture. 

Anyway, that's enough for this week. I was hoping to draw more of Robert Baratheon (maybe half an hour more), but after playing CoD it's made me pretty tired, so I think I'll have a bath as it's a cold day today, and then read in bed.

Last but not least is my Pinterest of the day: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/314548355204907481/ If I could get my GoT characters to look half as good as this I'd be happy

April can't come quick enough!

Well, I started 2 ideas this week (I'm great at starting ideas, finishing them seems like a marathon though!), I've started a quick concept for a tigershark:

Sorry for the dark image

And I've started on the Game of Thrones characters I mentioned last week:

Daenerys WIP

Once I sat down and worked out who I wanted to draw it was actually quite difficult which families I wanted to represent, and at what stage each house is at too. I've decided to go for series one, and just the main characters. The characters I want to draw are:
Baratheon: Robert, Cersei, Joffrey, Tommen, Myrcella, Renly, Stannis.
Lannister: Tywin, Jaime, Tyrion
Stark: Eddard, Catelyn, Robb, Sansa, Arya, Bran, Rickon, John
Targaryen: Daenerys, Viserys

Think I have bitten off more than I can chew?

I've done it this way so even people married into other houses are represented (hence why Cersei is in the Baratheon house, not the Lannister house), and I also didn't want to draw things that have happened in the series in case I reveal spoilers for people who haven't seen/read it yet. Game of Thrones is one of my favourite all-time shows (I've seen all of the TV shows, but only read book 1), and I can't wait for it to return in April/ I'm hoping to have this finished by the time it returns.
The plan is to do character outlines on my computer, then transfer that to paper and finish it off with my new colouring pencils I've yet to try out. That way, if the colouring pencils don't work I can still do something with it digitally. Also, the added bonus is working digitally I have an Undo button, and I can skew things how I want. The final idea is to have all houses together on one long canvas.

I'm also slowing realising that I seem to draw people/animals/still lifes better than what I want to do, which is draw from the imagination and draw concept art, specifically landscapes for computer games.

Anyway, I think that's enough for this week, I think I'm just gonna keep hammering the line drawings of the GoT characters for now, and see how it goes. My Pinterest for the week is actually another blog! I've not read much on here yet but I've bookmarked it for a later date, hope you get something out of it: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/314548355204806209/