A special Birthday Present

So, about two months ago, I started this project that I thought would be finished... shortly after I started it.
Oh how wrong I was.
This is the hardest drawing I've ever done, most detailed drawing I've ever done, and the most meaningful drawing I've ever done.
It's a birthday present for my Dad. :)

His birthday was a little less than 2 months ago, but hopefully it was worth the wait :)
This took me about 22 hours all together, stretched over those 2 months, and I must say... I'm quite satisfied with it.
About a year ago or so, when I was asking people "what should I draw next?", my dad replied with "Me and you on my bike!" and I answered with "yeeeeahhh... that's not gonna happen any time soon. Too much detail on that bike!!"
There is too much detail on that bike. Seriously! I thought i was gonna give up a few times, but.. I focused on how nice it would feel to finish it. And it feels great!

This picture was taken in April last year, when he and I went to visit my sister in Verdal, on his Harley Davidson. This is the orginal photo:

As you can see, the background is slightly different in this one.. :P
I thought it'd be cool if it looked like we were at the Gran Canyon, so I tried to... redo the background a little bit. I didn't know it'd be so difficult, so unfortunately, what I'm the least satisfied with in the whole drawing - is the background. I can not draw mountains and... gran canyon stuff. Plus I couldn't find a good reference picture for that, so I looked at loads of pictures and just.. put something together.

So, now to the work in progress - and I'll talk more about the drawing as I go:

Sketch. Took me about 1 hour and 15 min, just drawing that. I tried to put in a lot of details to make the drawing itself easier.
Already here, I was thinking
"What am putting myself into...??"

1 hour 45 min in.
Started to the left. The front wheel.
Realized I couldn't draw this picture without using the Pen tool, which allows me to make straight lines as well as ... bendy lines. I don't know how to explain it.

 After working on the front wheel for a little bit, I decided I wanted to wait with working on the bike itself. I wanted to work on something familiar. People.
But drawing clothes isn't my strong suit, so.. I soon found out that wasn't gonna be that much easier.
About 2 hours in.

About 1 hour and 45 min in.
Just added some more... shadings to the jackets. Tried to make the sunlight glowing off my dad's jacket, stand out more. I don't do leather jackets.. too difficult.

A little more than 3 hours in.
Started working on the pants. Adding some of the sunlight that hits them. Also working on the shoes.

About 4 hours in. Working on the dad's helmet. Wasn't smart enough to use the pen tool that would help me make the clean lines here. It was fun playing with the light reflections though.












 About 4 hours 15 min in.
Started working on the helmet I was wearing.

 About 5,5 hours in.
I didn't save the sketch with this one, for some reason. Oh well.
Started working on the back of the bike. Use the pen tool a little for the cleaner lines, but it's nowhere near the way it ended up in the end. The bag is leather, but I didn't want to put in TOO much detail - simply because.. that'd be too much work. I'm not gonna DRAW the texture of leather...

About 6,5 hours in.
Done a lot in that hour. Finished most of the back, Added more to the top of my jacket. And started on the front. Also started working on the reflections in the headlights. Since I was changing the scenery to the gran canyon, which is mainly.. orange in color - then I had to change the reflection a little, too.







About 7 hours in. Worked on more of the details in the bike.
Used the pen tool to get the straight lines, which would be impossible for me to do without that tool.
By adding a lot of the dark colors in there, I also felt like I'd gotten so much further with the picture. Tried to hold my motivation up.







About 7,5 hours in.
Just added more details. Worked more on the reflections and the colors of what I don't know the name of. :P
I should've studied more facts about bikes to know what this and that really is.
Oh well :P







About 8,5 hours in.
Started working my way down to the front wheel again, which was far from finished when i left it earlier in the drawing. Also drew in some of the wires etc.
Detail work.









About 9,5 hours in, and I started losing my motivation for the drawing, since everything I was doing was minor detail work, which was barely even visible.
So I decided to start on the background. The Gran canyon.
I soon realized that would be the more difficult part.
But the ground that we were stood on, I did not draw.
I did the coloring, of course, but since I could NOT be bothered with drawing GRAVEL - I simply copied the ground from the original picture, then used an option making it see through enough under the orange color, to make it blend into the drawing itself. The shading is also from the original, and I thought it fit perfectly into the drawing, since there's a sunset going on in the drawing as well, making the shadows drop where I wanted them to. I'm quite happy with the way the orange colors blended in with the copied-over gravel that way, and I do not regret doing it. There's a limit to my patience, and gravel and thousands of tiny rocks is that limit.

About 11 hours in, and struggling with the gran canyon itself, I almost gave up on having that background. I couldn't handle it. I lost all motivation for the background, and so I decided to leave it for a while.

About 12,5 hours in, giving up on the canyon, I went back to working on the bike.
I put in a lot more detail in the front wheel, and added the gravel..y.. background between the steel...string thingies (I really don't know anything about bikes, at least not in english)
I also worked in more details to the bottom part of the bike.






About 13,5 hours in. Just more detail work around the engine etc, and the... foot stand.. thing. (lol)
Decided to start working without the sketch.

14,5 hours in.
More details and reflection to the headlights.
Added the logos. More detail to the front wheel.

About 15,5 hours in.
Making the lights on the pants look better,
better details to the area around the engine,
finishing off the back,
and making part of the front wheel look better

 About 16,5 hours in.
Adding detail to the steer, and more detail to the back right behind my back.

About 18,5 hours in. Finally decided to start on our faces, and I am SO happy with the way my dads face turned out!
I love the way the light reflects on the left (left for us) part of his face, and how I can TOTALLY see that it's him. It was a lot of fun doing that part. I thought it would be one of the hardest parts, but since the face is so small, the quality isn't that great in the original, so.. it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I also started on my own face, which was really weird, because I've never done a proper self portrait before. And this one isn't even proper - you can't see my whole face, and the quality isn't that great so... But yeah, fun to draw something that I'm used to drawing.
I also worked on the front.. shield..glass... Since you can see through it in the original, i had to make this one see-through as well. I also fixed up my dad's helmet a little bit.

About 19 hours in.
Added more detail to my face and the helmet I was wearing.

About 20 hours in. Jeeeez.. this drawing took ages.. Actually hit the big 2-0.
Worked a little bit more on the background. Actually, with this I called it "finished." Was nothing more I could do. Like I said earlier - I couldn't find a good reference photo, so I basically just stared at a lot of different pictures of it, and put something together. The shading was the hardest part, because of the colors. I couldn't just go with black because that would look too unnatural - not that the finished piece looks natural, but.. then again, this isn't about the background, it's about the bike and me and my dad.
However, I really do like how the mountains aaaall the way in the back are so faded they have a totally different colors. I've always been fascinated by that when I look at landscapes, how the far-away-mountains have this faded grey color. So I liked that in this drawing. And that's the only thing I liked about the background. Haha. Even the sky, I'm not that happy with, but.. I wanted it to look watercolory, and I didn't want the sky too look that good anyways, cause I want the attention on the bike and my dad and I.

About 21 hours in.
A few finishing touches on our jackets.
And fixed my face because I didn't like the colors in it.
As you can see in the original, my face already looks out of place in the picture, because my dad has all that light shining off his face, and my face is hidden in the shadow of his helmet. I have only cold colors in my face, and no sunlight reflecting off it, and so i decided to add a few lighter parts in it, with warmer colors, to make it look a little better. At least it looks better than before.

Finished piece.
22 hours.
22 HOURS!! I've never spent so many hours on a drawing before. 22 hours over 2 months... The most detailed, frustrating and difficult drawing I've done.
Within the last hour, I added the Harley Davidson logo on my dad's arm and of course my signature at the bottom right corner. Adding the logo was a little challenge because of the curled up sleeve on his jacket, but it was more fun than expected. Maybe because it was the final thing to do. :P

Here's a few close up pictures of it all:

And that's that.
My biggest drawing project so far, is over, and I'm very happy about doing it.
As I'm writing this, my dad has still not seen the drawing, and he doesn't even know that I've done it for him, so I look forward to showing it to him in just about an hour from now :)

Happy late birthday - sorry about the delay. Hope you like it :)
Glad i deg! :)

-Connie

Drawing of the day #2 - March 14th - 2012

My second drawing is 30 min late to make it in to the 14th, but it's still the 14th somewhere in this world :P
 Anyways. I had a crappy day, (long story short - some customers are just rude, ungrateful assholes) -  and so I felt like drawing a picture of someone screaming and going a bit wild, so I came up with this one.

For a reference I just took a picture of myself making sort of the same pose, so I could get some of the features right, but I made the subject some guy as I thought it'd look better and more dramatic than a woman standing there clawing at a "wall" till her fingers bled.

Made it in photoshop this time, as I wanted the colors in there. Used a brush that I usually use for hair in my other photoshop pieces.
It's not a particularly good drawing, but at least it's better and with more of an effort than my little Bat drawing :P Spent about 30-40 min max on it. A bit too much for how it turned out, but oh well :P
Better quality too :P

Anywho. It's late and I can't be bothered writing much, as there's not really much to write anyways.
Plus, I wanna go to sleep :P

Inception.

-Connie

Drawing of the day #1 - March 13, 2012

SO!
Since I take so freakin' long to draw a proper drawing in photoshop (as I have too many other hobbies and lazy stuff to do besides drawing), I don't get to update my blog that often.
So I'm gonna start Drawing of The Day. Meaning.. I will draw one drawing, everyday... for, who knows, maybe a year. See how long I can keep it up. With the way I give up on stuff like *snapping fingers* that - I don't really think this will last that long, but worst case scenario - it'll turn into Drawing of The Week. :P (ok, worst case scenario - I stop drawing all together, but I don't see that happening).

So, yeah. Everyday, I will do a drawing and post it on facebook, twitter and *tadaaah* my blog. I've seen people start "Picture of The Day" on Facebook, and thought I'd do my own little twist on it. Get my creativity bubbling. Or something.
However, most of the days - it'll just be a quick drawing, sometimes 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15... whatever - kind of sketchy thing, which really doesn't look like much at all - BUT at least it will be a drawing. Made by me. Everyday.
And sometimes... it'll be one of those better Photoshop drawings that I've spent hours and hours making. SO yeah, we'll see how this works out. :)

Drawing the day for March 13th (yes, it's the 14th today, but I forgot about posting last nights drawing here on the blog) - is this little piece of sh**:

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to write sh**. I meant to write shit. And I'm allowed to write that, cause it's really not such a bad word, cause it's a natural "thing", that really just looks and smells bad. Dunno why people make such a big fuzz over that little word. It's a satisfying word to say. It's got the SH and it's got the IT, and said with a bit of force and...exaggeration.. well - it'll calm you down afterwards. It's like having a verbal workout. You'll feel a bit shitty before and when you say it - but after, you feel better. Depending on who was around when you said it, because not everyone shares my opinion. Like customers where you work - don't you dare say shit around them... could get ya fired. :O



Anyways. I'm just talking shit here (oh yes, I'll keep writing it, because it satisfies me. At least it's not as bad as the f-word - ey?) - What I mean to say is.... This drawing is a bit shit. Because, it only took me 10 minutes. It's my first drawing in this new little challenge of mine - which sort of embarrasses me. AND.... I actually took a picture of the paper I drew it on with my phone, instead of scanning it. Yes, I'm lazy.
I thought.. that this drawing... wasn't worth a scanning. So there you have it.

Basically - I wanted to draw a bat, because I think they're cute - and a lot of people don't think they are. So... I drew a cute bat, to... put bats of of the bad little corner they've been put in.
Nobody puts Bat in the corner.

... Didn't really work, did it?

Enough with this ....
I'm gonna go ahead and draw a better drawing right now. :P

Thank you, if you were awesome and bored enough to read all of this. :)

-Connie

Mick Foley

27th of February 2012, Luke and I were going to Mick Foley's stand up show in Cardiff, which I thought was pretty awesome. Never been at a stand up show before, and the first one being Mick Foley's - well, that's even more awesome. And when Luke told me there'd be a meet and greet afterwards, well... I HAD to draw a portrait of him and try to get it signed - to add to my collection of signed celebrity photos :)
 And here it is, the signed one:

"To Connie. (and I believe it says): Wow this is great! *signature*"
:)
Reference photo for this drawing is taken from a still from his DVD "Hard knocks & Cheap pops" (try saying that 5 times fast).
SO, my work in progress - which is the main reason why I have this blog. To show my work in progress of ... well, all my art stuff.

The sketch. Took me about 20 min. I'm always pretty thorough with my sketches, making sure that everything is where it's suppose to be. Eyes, mouth, eyebrows - in this case; the lines of the mask, etc. It makes it easier to do the drawing itself.
I can't make myself draw without using a grid to help myself get everything in the right place. It makes it so much easier.

About 1 hour in. I started out with the mask in this drawing - I thought it'd be easier to get started that way. Pretty fun to do, actually. What makes a portrait hard to do is to get all the lines and textures in the face right - in this case I didn't have to worry about that, which was great! Hehe :)

Now.. I didn't save the sketch in this one, which I regret. But oh well..
Started out on the face, and I'm a bit confused seing that I've written down "2hours 45 min in" on this one, and I can't imagine it took me 1h45m to just draw some of the face and the eyes... Then again, I believe I've done a few adjustments on the mask as well. I'm pretty sure I'd been working on the whole piece for about 2,5 hours or so.

About 3,5 hours in. I've worked a bit more on the face, including the facial hair and mouth. By this point I was real happy that this was just a still photo from a dvd - meaning the quality of the reference picture wasn't that good - so there was only so much I could do with the detail in my drawing. The beard would be a pain to work with if the picture was in higher quality...
And then...there was the hair..

The hair...I'm glad I saved for last, cause I almost gave up at this point, after working about an hour on it and not even being half way through.. Been working on the whole piece for about 4,5 hours at this point, and though I could see the finish line..I felt like I was crawling there. The hair took ages, BUT... I'm happy with the way it turned out.
Using mostly a very thin..the thinnest brush I could find, for the more messy effect standing out in the light and the background, and then thicker brushes to get the shading effects.
At the end of it all, since the hair was
quite blurred in the original reference photo, I made sure I had one whole layer for the hair itself -and then used a blur effect to make the hair blurry enough so I couldn't see all the little.. uneven errors I'd done.

Finishing off the whole picture with correcting the left (his right) eye, and finishing the neck-part... I ended up being a lot more satisfied with the drawing than what I thought I'd be. And of course, I'm a lot more satisfied with it now that it's been signed.
All in all it took me about 5,5 hours to finish. I think. One of my quicker drawings, I guess :)
Done with Photoshop CS5 (as always. Of course).

Another drawing coming up soon. :)

- Connie