The Art of Tim

Britanny and I decided to carve a pumpkin for Halloween. We opted to do something World of Warcraft related. I wanted Undead, she wanted a Night Elf. You can guess which way we went.

First Britanny set up all the materials, and started gutting the pumpkin. I hate that part, so I worked on the stencil while she did that.

Here is a shot of me in my office, sketching the stencil on my Cintiq.

I printed the stencil out on a piece of paper to the size I wanted, and then we taped it to the pumpkin. Next we used a sharp tool to trace the outlines on the paper. By poking little holes all along the lines on the paper, we had a perforated guidelines of our design on the pumpkin.

Carving was a bit of a pain in the ass. Totally my fault for getting too intricate with some of the shapes. We had to be really careful, because some of the areas were very thin.

This is the finished carving.

Here it is lit up with the lights off.

This is Britanny and I goofing off with the camera.

Happy Halloween everyone.

Elf is finished. Next I start on the other character.

Worked a bit more on the inks today.

I got Britanny and I some tickets to the Nintendo Fusion Tour next month. Seems like it might be a good time. I started listening to Fall Out Boy after they had a song on the Burnout soundtrack, and then my sister interned at their record label over the summer. I’ve been anxious to catch them in concert.

Started the inks yesterday. It’s going to be a slow process, doing a bit each day.

I’ve been itching to work on something a little more substantial than character sketches, so I’ve decided to do a scene. A desktop wallpaper is the end goal.

Obviously I don’t have the time to do it all at once, so this will be my project over the next couple of weeks, hopefully finding time to work on it here and there. It will be done entirely in the computer, from start to finish, with my Cintiq.

I started with what we in the “biz” call a “thumbnail sketch”. Basically it’s just a very rough scribble to get an idea for placement and layout.

Then I went over the thumbnail again and fleshed out a little bit more detail. I’ll leave it at this for today, and approach it tomorrow with fresh eyes to see if there is anything I need to change before working on a third and final sketch version before I start inks.

Just goofin’ off when I should be working.

Edit: Heh, Brian Clevinger has reminded me that Superman doesn’t wear gloves. In my defense, the sketch started as just a doodle, and only turned into Supes about halfway through.

Started this one last night, wrapped it up this morning. Unfortunately I only really did any sort of blending on the face. With my schedule lately, I don’t have time to really invest in these things, so they have to be left as very rough sketches. It makes me a sad panda.

It’s been raining all week, which I liked at first, but am getting a little sick of today, the fourth day of gloom. It’s also getting colder.

Lost is on tonight. <3

Blizzard really butchered the 1.8 patch. They broke more things than they fixed. Bleh.

No sketch today because it’s Saturday, and I’ve been making an effort to take Saturday’s off lately.

However it occurs to me that I never showed you my new Jeep, and a lot of people were asking about it. I showed you my old one, and then my old one after the crash. Afterwards I bought a newer Grand Cherokee. It’s got a Rubicon lift, custom hood and front and rear push bars (just installed this week).

As for my MX-3, it should be finished up relatively soon. The car is assembled, it’s just all detail work now.

Some more sketches done on the Cintiq.

So those of you that read my front page know I got a new toy yesterday, a Wacom Cintiq 21UX. It’s a gorgeous piece of equipment, and it makes me want to sit here and create artwork all day long. I whipped up a sketch this morning, start to finish, on the Cintiq. It really lets me do more with my sketches, such as color. Everything is so fluid and natural. I did this sketch and color in about ten minutes.

Today is Britanny’s 21st birthday. I gave her one of her presents last night, a nice stethoscope with her name engraved in it (since she’s studying nursing). She’ll get the rest of her presents later today after she’s done with her classes.

I’ve got way too much work to do lately. But it will be worth it when these projects start becoming public.