Zodiac #04. Taurus

Here is the completed illustration for Taurus:

Because of the hiatus, I'm not sure who will come up next. It might be Aries, who I skipped, Gemini who came next after Taurus, or Scorpio who is November's sign. Either way, stay tuned!

Taurus Progress

This is not quite Aries, and we are not quite in May, but here is Taurus! The progress of it at least.

Here we have the initial sketch/lineart, basic color blocking, and then I fixed some proportion issues and moved into detailing.
Final piece coming up soon!

Zodiac #03. Pisces

And like I said yesterday, here is Pisces:

"Silver/grey" is a tough color scheme to work with, without making it look black and white, but I'm rather fond of how it came out.

That's it for March, up next, Aries!

Pisces Progress

Okay, so I'm not going to lie, I did fall a bit behind this month with Pisces, but it is now finished!
The post for that will come tomorrow, in the meantime here are some WIP shots.

Here they are, from the inital sketch to almost finalized. Check back tomorrow for the final version!

Zodiac #02. Aquarius

And so another month, and with it another illustration.

As with Capricorn, I'm very thrilled at the end result, particularly the vortex, since there was a lot of trial and error with it.
Up next, Pisces!

Aquarius Progress

It's almost the end of the month, and I'm happy to say it's down to the last details for Aquarius now. In the meantime, I thought I'd show more progress before the "big reveal" tomorrow:

It's the lineart with flat shading, basic values in colors, and then I start jumping into details.
Stay tuned for the final tomorrow!

Happy Accidents

The current process I have for the zodiac series is:

sketch > lineart > color block > grayscale values > color > refine and detail.

While working on the grayscale value for Aquarius, I thought it looked a little bit like a sculpture, and then this happened:

This is not the finished piece, but I thought it was fun. 

More updates on actual progress soon to come!

February!

It's February, and while most people are thinking about Valentine's Day, I'm thinking about Aquarius.

I thought it was about time for another update, so here are the initial sketch, and a basic color blockout.

More to come soon!

Zodiac #01. Capricorn

As  promised, here is the finished illustration for Capricorn.

I'm not even sure what to say about it. I'm really happy with how it came out, I learned some stuff working on it, and now I'm very excited for next month's!

Yay!

Zodiac introduction

As one of my new years resolutions, I decided I would make a "calendar". In essence, by the time 2014 is over, I want to have made 12 refined illustrations, once a month, each depicting the zodiac predominant for that month.

January is almost over, and I'm pretty happy to say that Capricorn, the first sign, is completed. This is a sketch and doodle blog though, so I thought I'd post some WIPs first.

Here are the initial sketch, Pencils, and some color progress.

Stay tuned for the final version tomorrow!

Happy New Year!

And for my first post of 2014 (already?! can you believe it?), I have more stuff for Abel!

After asking for input, and seeing people's reaction to the previews concept, I narrowed it down to two very similar ones:

And then I started working on some color schemes. Unfortunately, I'm on a trip, and left the sketchbook withall his color notes home, so for now I'm just doing some tests.

I think he's coming along quite nicely, and I'm very excited for it.

A bit of a disclaimer: The textures in the fabrics will change, I kind of just slapped on something from google for the test drive, but once I'm finalizing I'll hand paint mine in.

As usual, thanks for looking!