From Red to Purple

I hope all of you guys had a wonderful Easter with your folks and loved ones around you!

I decided to give work a wee break for the Easter days and just spend some quality time with family and friends – and even though it’s still sad times because everyone misses my gran dearly we really did have a blast!

Besides, I kept working on the red dress piece that I posted a few days ago and it just wouldn’t get any better! I have rarely been that frustrated working on a piece – but hey – those pieces help you learn the most. After hours and hours of trying to get the red tones to match I quit the idea of using red at all (pah – that’s what you get for not working well, red!) and thus I changed the colours, played around for a while until I finally liked what I see.

Now that I am looking at both versions I think the purple/ blue-ish colours really do the trick. I actually always wanted to do something in those colours but never got around to do it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think it is quite funny how much the final version of an illustration can differ from the original concept. Since it was just a practise for myself there’s absolutely no harm done but in the past I also had clients who came up with ideas that wouldn’t work for anything in the world and I had many difficulties explaining why. What do you guys think? As always, please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments down below.

Next weeks is going to be busy since I’ll be working on two concepts for different projects and I still have a few commissions to finish. Stay tuned!

Colouring fashion stuff

I recently learned a different way to colour digitally and how to alter some Photoshop brushes so that they work much better for me. So I’ve been trying to use this new knowledge and it’s really going great so far. I’m working on a few pieces that are partly finished already but I want to post them as a whole series.

I’ve also picked up a few older line arts just for practise. I usually don’t like posting some of the work in progress colouring stuff but it won’t hurt to do it now, will it?

I’m not really happy with the way the skin looks and right now the colours don’t work that well together so there will be a couple of major changes for the final piece. I hope that I will get around to finish it sometime tomorrow but this one has taken me twice as much time as usual already.

I hope you’re having a great Easter holiday!

Tentacles – sketch

The last couple of days were quite busy actually (given that I am back to work for only 2 weeks). I was working on the layout of a calendar all day even though I thought it would take me maybe just the half of it – but I’m done now which is grant.

Yesterday I tried to get the printer working for a solid hour because I wanted to get a print of the line art of the vulture girl sketch. Since I’m not really sure how to keep going on this one I figured it might be best to do a print, ink the print, see how it comes out and if it’s shit try something else. But since the printer wasn’t working I’ll have to try my luck again tomorrow.

Speaking of luck – something that definitely abandoned me. After finishing work I wanted to get as fast as possible back home to join band practise (one of my hobbies that I do practise on occasion). But instead of music I got a bus that was running late, locked doors leading to our band room and a phone that just died on me as I wanted to call my friends so that they’d open the door from the inside. As much as I dislike smartphones as much did I get fond of it – it’s so handy, like checking your mails while you’re on the go and all that art related stuff you can constantly take with you (instagram, pinterest, etc). Also I already noticed it’s absence when I wanted to take a picture of  today’s sketches to upload it here. Weeeell, no luck today.

So here’s the last picture that I shared on my instagram account. I’m thinking about getting started with watercolours. I always loved the look of it but find myself having a hard time actually working with it. But if I don’t practise, I won’t improve ..

Also something different this time – no hair! Instead have looooads of tentacles ;)

I’ll make a scan of the coloured piece tomorrow and let you guys see how my little experiments turned out.

Stay fresh!

 

Already March …

I can’t believe that I didn’t post anything this year – it seems like 2016 just began.

I had a couple of reasons for not posting anything for such a long time (even though it seriously didn’t feel like such a long time). So if you were one of the people who were waiting for me to get back to them, please let me explain why.

One of the things that kept me away from work would be that shortly after Christmas my hands got worse again. Luckily, I finally found a skilled physio therapist who is working with me on getting my hands back to normal.

The other big reason is that my grandmother whom I love dearly got really sick. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer last summer but she did all those treatments, chemo, radiation, etc. She was already feeling better and we really had a great Christmas and we even went out for my 21st Birthday in January. I tried to spend as much time as possible with my family and over the last months we actually got even closer. In early February my gran passed out and hurt her back really bad and we took her to hospital, things got worse after that and to make it short she became a case for nursing care and we decided to take care of her ourselves. It possibly was one of the most intense and emotional times I experienced. Three days after we got her home she passed away.

It’s been a tough week since then. But my work keeps me going, which is why you’ll probably see me posting more regularly showing works in progress and a couple of projects I’m currently working on.

I started doing original artworks in bigger sizes than A4. Right now I don’t have a scanner at hand which is why I just took a picture with my camera and I tried editing it so that you can see the lines properly. For some reason I always kind of liked vultures, even though they aren’t the prettiest of birds. But in some way they are. So … loads of hair and feathers!

Things actually are quite busy these days because I just returned to work and I have a stash of undone work lying on both of my desks – at home and at the atelier but I hope that I can get some of the lineart done by tomorrow.

Stay safe.

 

 

New Pencils

I finally was able to get hold of one of those extremely cool pencil I’ve other artists use. Actually it’s not that special, simply a blue pencil. But I got one of those mechanical pencils that have a blue lead. About two years ago I started experimenting a lot with differently manufactured pencils and I figured that this kind works the best for me.

So I got one and also adjusted my workflow – which means:

Instead of doing my sketches with a regular pencil and then having trouble erasing it after I went over it with my inks I just switched to doing a blue sketch, putting inks on it and deleting the blues digitally (thanks to good old Photoshop). I never dared doing that before because I thought working with the different colour channels seemed so hard but a friend gave me detailed instructions – it really wasn’t that hard.

I have been asked which pencils I usually use so I took a photograph of my essentials.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see it’s nothing special. For the sketch I switch between the blue pencil and regular pencils (3H & HB) and for my lineart I either use Copic Multi Liners or Faber-Castell PITT inks.

I picked up the idea of drawing pretty ladies in beautiful dresses. Since my uni is hosting a “1900 in Paris”-Party I came up with the idea of going back in time, exploring the fashion back then. I started with the 1700 London look (with the blues because I think it’s pretty!).

Hakuna Matata!

Comic released!

Hello my friends!

After an incredible busy week in which I prepared my exhibition and the release of my comic book and the last couple of days in which I was at the exhibition I finally have some time to post something again.

To everyone who is waiting for a reply (be it a comment or an email) please give me another day – it was just very very much stuff going on and I’m trying to catch up on everything I missed to do as soon as possible.

The exhibition went really well and I got a lot of feedback from the people who got my comic. So far everyone really liked it and I guess I really do have to get started on #2 in the next couple of weeks! But first of all, I’ll translate it to English!

Uni really is quite a thing these days. It’s taking up huge parts of my time and right now I am really struggling to get all the work done. However it is a great exercise for the to juggle with all the work and focus on the most important parts. I do miss working on illustrations, concept arts and comics the entire day, though.

Speaking of illustrations! I know that I am very very late but I don’t want to wait another year. So here she is (for those of you who liked my Facebook page this one isn’t new):

 

New stuff!

Hello my friends!

This post doesn’t contain any pictures but it has a poll! Also I just want to cover a few other things instead of showing my artwork.

First of all (and shame on me that I didn’t do it any sooner) I want to thank Maria for nominating me for the blogger recognition award. I don’t really have the time to act according to the rules but I really want to give at least a quick shout-out to her. Please check out her blog and have a look at her drawings! Her sketches are really great in many different ways, some are funny and especially the Halloween ones are really scary (the heart really got me!). There’s a lot of creativity going on there so just go – check it out! (:

A quick update on my comic “Warden of Time”: The German version is currently being printed and should be delivered by Thursday (wooohoo). I got the proof (print) on Friday and I really liked it! The colours turned out to be a wee bit darker as they looked on my screen but that definitely adds to the spooky atmosphere. Right now I am not really sure if I should get a few copies printed in English because I don’t know how many people will be interested to purchase it.

There will be a web version for sure!

So what I’m going to do is add a poll to this post (if I can figure out how) and I would really appreciate it, of you’d take 2 seconds to just click something.

What else is new?

Oh right. I figured that it is time to try selling some illustrations and fine art prints via society6, which is a website for artists to sell stuff (obviously). I don’t know it it’s a good idea and if it works but I just want to give it a shot. It can’t hurt after all. I didn’t upload every illustration I did in the last couple of months and you might have seen more of my artwork. If there’s something you’re interested in and that isn’t displayed there just give me a short note. So here’s the link https://society6.com/roxanekressin.

Also if you are interested in commissioning me – I know am open for commissions again! Even though uni is taking up loads of my time now I still have a few hours every week to do some art. If you’re interested or have any questions just write me an email r.kressin@inkwayarts.com. I always try to answer as fast as possible but it might take a day or two for me to get back to you.

I hope you’re having a great weekend!

Cheers!

 

 

Halfway through the week …

Soooo, I actually made it through the first two days of uni (today was off) and I got around to work on another illustration!

It’s taking me yeeears longer because I have to draw with my left hand and my lines don’t come out as steady as I’d like them too. However I am pretty happy with how it turned out and I’d like your opinion on it. It might not look much different to the linearts I’ve posted but there are still a few smaller changes.

I was trying to stick to a regular pencil (HB) and only used a very thin line of ink for the silhouette. Working with the pencil allows me to add a few shadows and to create a bit more dimension. I just scanned it but didn’t edit in Photoshop yet. I want to colour it in the next couple of days and get it ready for Halloween. I’m even thinking about getting a few prints done.

UNI!?!?

For the last couple of days I have been trying to stay away from my computer and my pencils as much as possible so that my wrist can get a little break. Even though it hurts using my hand for more than 10 minutes it hurts much more not to be able to draw and doodle. Right now I have so many ideas stuck in my head and I fear that once I can pick up a pencil again all of them will be gone. Nevermind.

So, tomorrow is going to be a pretty cool day (or at least I hope so).

After finishing school I took a year “off” to work on my skills as an artists and to do some freelance work. During this time I was still working for/ with my current boss (I also will continue working there – just for you too know). But I was also preparing to get into uni.

For those of you who don’t know much about art/ design universities let me give you a few information on that topic.

I had to apply with two different portfolios (each 20-30 artworks), one was given a theme the other one I could design to my liking. There are unis who just demand one portfolio.

Then I had to survive an interview, which actually wasn’t that bad but the girl who had the interview a couple of minutes came out crying and sobbing.

All in all it took me 700 + hours to work on my portfolio. Luckily I got in because I don’t know if I had done another one for the next year.

So tomorrow is my first year at uni!

Around last October I was preparing for another Uni/ Academy which offered a Bachelor in “Illustration” which I thought would be the perfect match for me. So I went there to attend some … sneak-peek classes. I was pretty disappointed because a huge amount of the things they taught had already crossed my path in one or another way.

I though a lot about alternatives and settled for communications design. I really like the idea of learning how images work and how they influence the person looking at it. How does advertisement affect me, why does it have that effect, how can I create such effects for different things.

I’m aiming to be a professional comic book artist one day but it can’t be bad to understand how that kind of thing works, can it?

I’ll let you know what life has in store for me.

Cheers.