TEsketches

Ninja Slice of Life

Here is an assignment from Spring. I was granted this amusing prompt: Ninjas in the classical Winnie the Pooh pen and ink style. This was modified to include "daily life". From there, I followed a pretty standardized development process.

After sketching various specific Japanese locations, I did a quick painting of the "city" which would include them. The castle would anchor all of them as a background element.. in theory.  I chose the daytime setting.  Ninjas sneaking around under cover of night would be too predictable - no, my ninjas will be doing their laundry and taking their morning jogs under light of day!

Next was character development. Two characters: either a protagonist/antagonist pair, or hero/sidekick. I determined to create a ninja family, with an awkward Dad (guilty of all the tropes; bad jokes, sweat pants, fishing, newspapers, etc) and a responsible daughter type.

Thumbnailing compositions!  Once summer classes end, I will likely complete all of these except #2.

#3 was taken to finish first:

I'm bothered by many things, mostly the empty space (castle didn't make it in time), but it has some charming qualities I hope.

Quickstudies (Nude Figure)

Jungian Still Life

Rework of an old still life, in watercolor rather than oil.  The color and teabox have improved for sure, while the value transitions suffered on the teapot.

tegaki sketchbook

[Formatting edit. I have been uncertain for some time whether doing this puts it at the top of the reader feed again - I rather hope it does not because I am awfully finicky with tagging and formatting. ): ]


I've been experimenting with emulating some styles digitally. The tool is a hard edge brush with 10 levels of opacity.






Attempting to emulate blocky oil painting here.

Flat gouache or acrylic.

Pen with some washes.

This was built up from brushes at 10-20% opacity.

Another inky style.

I think I enjoy finding and merging dark masses, and accentuating them with lines.  I will work like this for a while.