I’ve been doing some more work on RUS412K illustrations.

U4_8 scene description: Polina and Oleg are next to the window in one of their rooms. The windowsill is covered with various plants (4-5 plants total). Polina is holding a ruler, as if to measure them, and Oleg is holding a plant guide book (Определитель растений)

For this illustration, I opted to reuse a background that Chloe made for an older illustration.

I removed some stuff and then sketched in Polina, Oleg, and some plants.

Oleg’s supposed to be holding a book, but the cover’s impossible to read because of how small it is!

I zoomed in a bit and altered the cover to better match the reference image provided, but it’s still too small.

So I zoomed it in one more time (a lot!) and make the book bigger. Isn’t it cute how you can only see the top of Oleg’s head? I’m going to redraw this background and the objects since I had to zoom in too much, making the lines fuzzy. I will also be changing Polina’s expression to one that is more neutral.

 

I also started sketching out U2_8: Polina and Oleg are at a museum of ethnography, looking at a room with different costumes respresenting various forms of traditional/national dress, like Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Native American, French, German, Arabic, Russian, etc…

 

 

I have been working on drafting some logos for NWAV

I wrote down details on paper and did some rough sketches and jotted down some ideas!

 

I then started sketching digitally. These are very rough. nwav are all naturally curvy letters, so if written a certain way, they can resemble “waves.” I also decided to draw some color inspiration from Austin and Spectrograms.

 

Played with the idea of something more 3D and really enjoyed it. Thought it was fun and Austin-y!

 

 

 

I added some colors and thought it was looking pretty fun! One with and without squiggles.

Another roughly sketched concept.

Some more concepts! In context?

 

 

 

Spectrogram colors as inspiration!

This past week was spent primarily on the RUS412K banner! I’ve made a little more progress since last time and experimented with some things.

Here’s my progress/process so far!

First I started by painting these two flowers. I played around with the Kyle Webster oil paint brushes. My goal at first was to try and get it to look as smooth and as blended as possible in order to match the style in the reference images I was provided.

Then, once I was happy with the style and had a better idea of the direction I needed to go in, I started roughly applying color on different layers for more flowers using the same oil brush I had been using. I also added some leaves that will be repainted later.

After roughly putting down colors, I start to polish and refine. I try to use a variety of colors to add more interest but also to keep the colors from getting to dull. I had issues with the gold/yellow flower as it was very easy for the colors to get muddy and turn brown. To combat this, I added more reds! Also, the oil brushes are very “wet” as they are simulating real oils, which can be a problem at times simply because of the way I’m approaching this painting. Since I’m doing things digitally, I have more flexibility regarding colors and tools. To make things easier, when I need more bright, saturated areas of color, I go back in with a hard round brush at 100% opacity. I then switch back to the oil brush and blend things out carefully. It’s a lot of trial and error, but it’s working well for me.

Next, as a test, I tried to make it feel more like a “dish” rather than just a flat painting. The highlights around the perimeter help, but there needs to be shadows to add depth and a sense of something “3D!” On top of everything, I put a layer on multiply, and using a soft round brush and a soft eraser at 20% opacity, I created shadows. Now it’s looking better! However it is affecting some of the colors, so there’s some more tweaking and experimenting to do later after all the flowers are done. For now, it’s working pretty well!

For the banners, there needs to be 7 different variations. There are 7 specific colors that have been chosen, so each unit has its own unique color, which means that I need to duplicate these banners and have some flowers change colors each time. I think white flowers will be the easiest to manipulate. At first, I tried to change the color of a flower with a layer on top set to “Color,” but as you can see here, this turns everything into that color. It loses a lot of interest and color! I will need to do a lot of paint-over work.

Since I decided to switch to changing the color of the white flowers, I put a layer on top set to “Overlay,” and it’s working really well! You can see a wider range of colors, and it’s more visually interesting.

That’s it for the banner!

I also worked on a profile view for the Garbage Man character, as assigned by Tate.