Johnny Depp

I drew this picture of Johnny Depp several months ago - and I dunno why I wasn't bothered putting it here on my blog. I guess it's just another perfect example of my weird way of being lazy - even though I'm glued to the computer screen constantly anyways. Could've taken the time to post this, but no... Connie couldn't be bothered.

BUT. I'm doing it now!
It took me about 7,5 hours to finish the whole thing, and what I hated doing the most in this picture - was that damn hat. I do not like doing straight lines like that. I guess I just need more practice.

I started out with the sketch, as usual. (why would I ever start with anything else?) I guess it took me about half an hour or so - I don't remember, as I didn't write it down for some reason.
Already here, I started thinking twice about doing this drawing because of the hat...

Then I just filled in some of the base shadowing..thingies. I just find it easier to draw when I start out like this. At the same time I see progress a lot faster, and that motivates me to keep drawing.

1 hour 20 minutes in. As usual I start working in the details on the eyes. Those are the hardest part to do, I find. I always go back and work on them some more later on. After all, it's in the eyes you really recognize someone.

I hour 45 min in. Even though I'm not all the way done with my first eye yet, I started on the second one.

2 hours 15 min in. Adding some more shade and starting to work on the facial hair.

3 hours in. Getting in some texture in the skin and so on. more of the facial hair is put in.

3,5 hours in
Even more of the texture has been added to the skin - and I must say... I had quite a lot of fun with this one. I never liked drawing lines and all that stuff in the skin before, but this time, I liked it. It was a challenge, but I did a lot better this time than last time, so I guess that's why I found it so much more fun :)

4 hours. More details to the shading here and there..and on the right eye.

4,5 hours in. Started working on the hair on the left side, and on that awful hat. (As in awful to draw). I think I took a week or two long break after this one cause the hat demotivated me so much.. Lol.

Got around to working a bit on the hair on the right side, and his shirt. The shrit was kinda fun to do actually. Unlike the hat... 5 hours in.

A close up to see some of the details in the skin, and the eyebrow hairs.

5,5 hours in. Finally got around to working more on the hat, and starting on his hand. I. Do. Not. Like. Drawing. Hands. (And hats.)

 5 hours 45 min in.



Adding more of his facial hair. I really enjoyed doing that actually. It's kinda fun. Also started adding more shading to his neck.

6,5 hours in.
More shading and details to his skin. More texture in his vest. Finishing the texture and shadings on his neck and finally finished his hand.

7,5 hours in, and DONE.
Finished the outline of the hat. Added a bit more detail to the ring. Fixed his right eye a bit. Extended his eyebrows a little as they were to too short. Finished his vest, added some weird light..particles in the background and also over the hat to cover my awful attempt to draw it. And of course, added my signature.






Phew.
Well, I think maybe... this is one of my best drawings. Most realistic one at least.. I've added more details and texture to the skin on this drawing than to any other I've ever done, so yeah, I'm pretty happy with it. (except for that hat).

I haven't drawn anything since this drawing, and I did this one back in August. so... I feel kinda bad.
But I've been too busy doing other things, so.. After Christmas, I will definitely start drawing again! :)

Hope you liked this one. And please leave a comment :)
-Connie

Robert Knepper

Haven't posted anything in a while, but that's because I haven't worked on a drawing since Emma Stone - except for the Robert Knepper one.
I said I was gonna do one for him to sign at the London Film and Comic Con on July 9th. And I managed to finish a drawing of him by then, AND I gave him a copy of it...
This is the one which he signed:

"To Connie - Beautiful! Thank you! Robert Knepper"

How awesome is that? :D
After I shook his hand, I told him that one of the prints I had with me was for him, and that it was a drawing I had made for him, and that the other one I wanted signed. He picked it up, looked at it, and asked if all of it was drawn, pointing at the hair and all of it. I said yeah, and that it was done in photoshop, all from scratch - not a photomanipulation or anything. Interesting, he said. Then asked me about something that had to do with Diana in the Royal wedding, that someone had made it look like she was there, by photomanipulation or something, so it was like it was a ghost there, like "you're not suppose to be there". "This is what this feels" he said and gestured to the drawing. I laughed and  said "so basically, you're freaked out by it?" and he said "no no, it's very interesting." Must be a word he fancies :P

As he was writing, he asked if it was a hobby or a career, and I said it's just a hobby for now. He again said it was very interesting. And after finishing signing it, he said I should make it a career. :D I shook his hand again, thanking him, saying it was SO nice to meet him. He said thanks back and nice to meet you too, and I left, leaving him to the long line of waiting fans.

A moment, I hope I'll never forget.

What a sweet, fantastic man he is! He is the -complete- opposite of the roles he plays in Prison Break and Heroes, and... all those other bad-guy roles he's doing - which makes me respect and admire him SO much more , cause that just proves how wonderful an actor he really is.

I hope that someday I can meet him again, and then maybe I'll have an even better drawing ready for him. Hahaha!

Anyways. Surreal. So awesome. And hopefully unforgettable. Got a photograph with him as well:

:D

Ok, so, now over to the drawing.

Took me about 6 hours to finish the whole thing. Did it in black and white as you can see - not risking anything since it was gonna be signed by the man himself. Hehe.

Sketch up. Took about..30-45 min I think

Just filling in some of the shade and marking the eyes a bit. 1 hour + in.

 Marking the nose, putting in some of the texture in the beard. More shade around the eyes.
About 2 hours in.



















More texture. More work on the eyes.
About 2,5 hours in.

More shading and texture.
About 3 hours in.


















Started working on the hair and the ear.
About 3,5 hours in.

More shading and more detail, especially on the ear and the face.
About 4 hours in.

Finished the shirt and added some of the background to see how it goes with the rest.
About 5 hours in.

  

Done. Blurred out the background a bit, added more shade to the face. Though it still looks a lot lighter than the original photo, but it doesn't need to be THAT dark :P
All in all, like I said - about 6 hours, and I'm pretty satisfied with the result. I am NOT satisfied with the wrinkles by his left eye though, I am struggling -so- much with that.. but, oh well. Practice makes (almost) perfect, so, I'll just keep practicing. :P

I am so much more satisfied with the printed copy with his autograph and everything on though. Looks -so- much better with that on it. And I hope that he did bring his copy with him and that maybe he took another look at it after the convention as well. Hehehe. He seemed to appreciate it, and that's what I'm gonna keep thinking - that he liked it.
:)
This will definitely become a hobby though - drawing celebrities and try and get them to sign the drawings.
What an awesome collection that would make! Hehe.

Anyways. Hope ya'll liked it, and feel free to comment :)

-Connie

Emma Stone

Have you seen Easy A? If you haven't - you should. That girl cracks me up, so funny. Without her, the movie would be nothing. Hehe. She's in Zombieland as well, and I'm guessing most of you've seen that one. Of course, she's awesome in the other movies she's in as well :)
Anywho. I had to draw her, since I'm suuuch a big fan. Hehe.

Yepp, back to Black&White again. What I'm most comfortable with. I won't give up on colors though, I just wanted to do another b&w one.
So... Photoshop again of course. Don't think I'll ever go back to Gimp when it comes to drawings.. I'm in love with photoshop, and its awesome brushes.
Took me about 6 hours, and I think... about 4 of those I spent on the hair alone... I'm not sure, but the hair was.. yeah, most of the work on this one. It was... a pain, BUT I had fun with it. Fun pain. Haha!
No, really, it was really hard to do - doing long hair is so much harder than short. Doing those long strokes without making them look like ¤%&/(€$£@ is way difficult.
The rest wasn't that hard compared to the hair, but of course, that's not perfect either. But I'm getting better :)
So now for the progress pictures. ;)

Sketch. Not sure how long it took me.. 20-30 min maybe.
Haha, my sketches are getting better as well. You can sort of tell it's her in this one. You couldn't really tell who it was on my earlier sketches... :P

Starting with the eye after filling in a little of the grey here and there.
45 min in.

Other eye, a bit of the nose and the lips, and a bit more shade put in.
1,5 hours in.

And so I decided to start on what I knew would take me the longest.
Just got in part of the base... stuff.. haha. Where most of the shadings were in the hair, and how it moved.
2 hours in.

Making the brush smaller, I started putting in more of the  the fine strands of hair.
2,5 hours in.

More shading. And then I took a break from it for a few days.
2 h 45 min in.

Starting to look right. Gotten in most of the highlighting, shades and the finer strands of hair. Also blurring it on the right side a little.
Added a bit of the background on the left side to see the contrast between that and the hair there.
4 hours in.

More or less done. just a few more highlights and shadings. And fixing the background and yeah, a few final touches. And of course my signature. hehe.
About 5,5 hours in here. What's mentioned about I guess took 20-30 min. I wasn't paying attention much on this one..




And the result you've already seen, on the top of this page.
It was fun to work on, and I enjoyed working on a black and white one. What a pain it would be to do a color one. Haha.
I hope I'll be motivated to work on a Robert Knepper drawing next, cause I only have about 3 or 4 weeks to finish it so he can sign it.. hehe. *fingers crossed it'll turn out good enough*
Anyways. Hope you liked this one.
Please comment :)
-CW-

Captain Jack Sparrow

Finally. After 8 or 9 hours, I finished it. I loved and hated working on this one, and how, I'm just glad I'm done! Haha.

Click on the picture for bigger view.
So, it's not my best work so far (that would be Dean and Sam Winchester), and I know, that that is because of the COLORS. I'm  no good with it, but I AM getting better at it. It is by far my best colored drawing so far, so I should be more satisfied with it than I am right now. I worked hard on it, BUT I could've worked harder... there are a lot of details I could've done better, and texture here and there and.. especially the hair on the left side. But I AM satisfied with the dreads on the right side. hehe.

Anyways - I'm gonna show ya'll the so-far..progress..pictures for this one. I've got LOADS :P
Started out with a sketch of course.

Actually took me 45 minutes to do the sketch alone... the drawing was huge, and I tried to make it as accurate as I could, using a grid.

Then I just added like, the base coat of the colors, so I would know better where to go from. Or something.. lol. 1 hour in here.

Then adding the details on the eyes. I always start with the eyes first. Always have, and probably always will. I often go back and work more on them as I work on the rest. It's best to get some distance from some of the parts of the drawing so that I don't draw myself "blind" on it. :P

Then I started working on the facial hair, which I thought I would -hate-, but actually, it was a lot of fun! Surprised me :)

about 2,5 hours in here





Then.. after finishing most of the facial hair part, getting all naive -thinking the rest of the hair would be super fun after that ( I was WRONG) - I started working on the hair on the left side.
I thought that since the braids in the beard was fun to draw, then the braids in the other hair would be even more fun.
Nope.
It was hell.
Too many colors. Anyways. 3,5 hours in.

Still working on the left side. This was when I started not liking it so much, and I was pretty sure I would hate doing the dreads on the right side.
(4 hours in)

Trying to add some more "basic" colors and shapes to the rest of the hair. And more detail on the.... decorations on his bandana thingy and in his hair.
5 hours in.

Who would've thought??
The dreads were SO much fun to do!!
I didn't think I'd enjoy it as much as I did, and I certainly didn't think they'd turn out as good as they did, that's for sure. Might be the best part of the whole drawing. HAHA.
All I did was use a high opacity and only 1px on the brush and just doodled around like a kid would on a large piece of paper, only I did it more.. eh.. controlled and real.. small.. :P 5,5 hours.

.Added more shading and stuff to he hair to make it look better on the one about this one (Something screwed up my blog entry, dunno what, can't write next to the picture above this one)

Then I added some detail to the bandana, which was... not as bad as I thought it would be, but still pretty hard.
And of course far from perfect lol.
7 hours in

 Then, final one.
I see now that there are some parts of it that I forgot to... fix. Haha, But I DON'T CARE right now, cause right now.. I can't wait to start another black and white drawing. Haha :P
This is probably as good as I can get it right now. If I had chosen to work on it even more, I'd probably just make it look worse. :P Cause that's typical me :P

Phew!

So, I hope you all liked this one. I'm happy with myself, and even more happy that I get to start a new drawing now :P

Please leave a comment, and feel free to suggest who I should draw later on :)

Cheer out (Hahaha! Only a few will get that one..:P)

-CW-

Where does patience come from...??

So, I was thinking that maybe I shouldn't post another... post, till I finished the drawing I'm currently working on - but.. as it's taking so damn LONG to finish it (!!) - I guess I'll just post some of my old drawings (again) on here, so that I don't end up giving up on this blog-thingie before it's even started.
So far I've been working on this drawings for... 6,5  hours or something. Maybe more. Not sure. And... there's too much left. I reckon it'll take me another 3 hours (at least) to finish it. Reason: It's just TOO DAMN HARD TO DRAW! I don't know what I was THINKING! And of course, I'm doing it in color. I'm brilliant.

Yeah, so.. I'm trying to stay patient. There are SO many other portraits I wanna do!! I've got this looong list on my post-it-note-thingy on my desktop,most of them are celebrities of course, and some of them, are requests from friends, and, I just wanna get started on them! Not sit around working on hair and the details on a bandanathingy for hours and hours... But oh well, if I just stay patient, I know it'll turn out to be my best colored drawing so far, so.. Yeah. Hanging in there. Dunno how some people do it... colors... *cursing*

Alrighty, now... what drawings should I post... How aboooout, some of my other black and white drawings. Hah, black and white <3 :P *singing michael jackson's song*

I'll start out with a drawing I did of my fiancè, Luke, all bloody after a wrestling match... years ago. It was pretty fun to work with, my first proper drawing with photoshop, and I -really- enjoyed playing around with some of the texture brushes.

Hehe. So, I got his face all wrong. It's too... round. Makes him look like a little kid. This, of course, was before I started using grids. But other than the shape of his face being wrong, i was pretty satisfied with it. And he used it as his facebook profile picture for quite some time, and that made me more satisfied with it :P
Took me about 3-4 hours.

Alright sooooo.... My second proper photoshop drawing was Orlando Bloom (Will Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean)

 

Which I was very satisfied with after I finished it. Hehe. Again - No grid. Wonder how it'd look like if I used that.... Took about 3-4 hours as well (What??? :P)
Then, Keira Knightly (Elisabeth Swann from the same movie)

Turned out alright I think. Took about 4 hours (again - WHAT? I thought I didn't have the patience to work on a drawing for that long before...)
Ok so, yeah, Pirates of the Caribbean. I was on a roll, I though, and I was planning on doing Johnny Depp - CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow as well, but never ended up doing it...
But then - dun dun duuuuuun - I saw the 4th movie last thursday - (spoiler alert. spoiler alert! Nah, not that anyone's reading this blog anyways. hah :P) and I started working on a drawing of him, finally. But of course, this is the drawing I still haven't finished... cause of his damn hair.... and believe it or not - the dreads - was NOT the hard part! That was actually easy and a lot of fun to draw. But it's the braids and the wavy part of his hair, and his bandana thingy that's what's taking me so long. Plus - I dunno what to do with the drawing, so dreading that part.. Lol.. dread..ing... (Lame, I know)

Ok, so, ending this blog now.
I'll post Captain Jack Sparrow as soon as I finish him.

Please comment, cause... I dunno if I'm writing a personal diary here or if people are actually reading (or just looking at it is fine even), and if I should keep going on with this blog stuff. :P

-CW-