PierreLR

This didn't go quite to plan. I was thinking of something fun to do for Sunday and remembered the mixed lego figures, for example Wolverine's body and Homer's head to create Homerine. So I though create multiple figures in one document then you can pick any head and any body. But with me being so slow I only just about finished one figure and even that could do with some more work. But I thought I'd post it and will try and add others (and properly finish this one). 
It's also quite a good type of subject to try if you want to do realistic without tons of work as it's pretty simple and there are no texture.
 

This is the finished version. I could have done more but it's pretty close, it's hard to tell between this and the reference in most places. The main difference is I didn't do the really strong reflections as I didn't like them. I added a little bit of film grain to the jpg and included a quite large version.  I've also included the AD file so you can see how I organised it and in some places didn't. 
Rocket Racer AD.afdesign

I've not had time to play recently but sort of do now so decided I fancied doing a couple, possibly three, of tin toy illustrations. Something a bit different than I've tried before. I was going to post an in progress version and the completed one. I'm doing them A1 size, roughly 10k pixels wide.
The first is a Rocket Racer tin toy with plastic pilot. I started with this one as there's a lot less to it than the second one and I'm a bit out of practice now. The pilot is done but the rest is just roughly flatted in. So now need do all the tweaks to the shapes, as none of the paint edges are clean in the real thing, and add all the bits of texture, highlights and shading.

Just some more messing around.

Just messing around. If you look it up people say to use the Clarendon Black font for the Love style. But it isn't really that close to what he used so I altered it a fair amount, it's not exactly the same but closer.

I wasn't going to do another but I have as they seem popular, my weekend project. I picked a really horrible quality image, like someone took a 100x100 and enlarged it. But, for the most part, it turned out just about OK (that's all the time I had and would look better cropped, if I'd thought I'd probably got rid of the hands, something for next weekend). I've include the afdesign file so you can view it, expand it (there's more to the image), improve it, have a laugh or anything else. It's for personal use otherwise I'll take my normal 99.99% cut. You'll see quite a few messy snapping points but they don't show up on the export. You will need to duplicate the batman layer and add a .1px blur to get rid of the micro gaps before you do export.
That is his signature, I just live traced it in AI then added a gradient and some transparency.
The image I've attached just has some Color Efex Pro film grain added.
But if you want to do some low poly and also have AI then use that with live paint instead. You don't then need to create triangles very often just close shapes off so less errors, less cleaning up and generally quicker.
Batman.afdesign

I originally did this in Illustrator but it was missing something and needed more work so spent the last few days redoing it in AD although I did use the main underlying shapes, seemed pointless doing those again. It's a good improvement on the original. Being so long and thin it loses a lot of detail at low res even on the close up though.
 
 
 
 

Thanks. You could do that now as SVG fonts are starting to be supported, so you can can have colour, gradients etc. Would be quite fun but would need some planning to give them a consistent look. 
 
A quick go at colouring it.
 

Or most things starting with V! Bit of a doodle, I was going to have it as a solid pattern but liked the look of sort of capping the top and bottom and leaving some background.

I wasn't in the mood to do any proper work this evening so was messing around and tried emulating quilling in AD with the letter A. As it was trying to copy hand curled paper it also meant I didn't have to get the curves or spirals perfect.

Erm... I found a decent quality reference photo but it wasn't quite head on, which is weird as it was a studio shot, and I didn't like that so I drew it straightened up. That made things easier as I could often draw bits for one side and then flip and modify them rather than doing them from scratch. But trying to move the reflections was a bit of a pain.
As for actually drawing things it's basically breaking it down in to lots of parts, then it's no harder than any other drawing.  In a way using blurs makes things easier.
Batman and Robin were low'ish poly ones I'd done. With it being behind the screen it hides most of the polygons so it wasn't worth redoing them properly.
The background's pretty simple, it's based on a low res photo, couldn't find any decent quality ones. But the rocks turned out OK, I used gradients on those then a couple of my vector textures.

I haven't had time to do much but have basically finished the car itself, yeah I know I'm slow.  Ignore the background. I've carried on with the real background but still not sure about it and might change to something else.
 

 

This is my other v2 drawing I've been working on. I did a side view a time back but quite liked the front view too, looks more aggressive. To start with I was just going to do the car as a studio shot but I thought try adding Batman and Robin.  Then when I'd done that I thought I may as well add a background too. The background's pretty simple partly because there aren't too many decent quality pics. I also toned it down a bit as the batmobile blended in a bit too much otherwise. I'll go back over it in a few weeks, perhaps change some of the reflections and possibly darken the back end of the car but I'll see then.

This is going to be another Mk1 Golf GTI but from the front this time and a standard series 2 in Mars Red, unless I change my mind. The car is going to be what I think of as straight vector so no blurs just gradients and blend modes, but it’s still going to be fairly realistic. Also as with the first Golf the background might use blurs but perhaps not, we'll see.
This time I thought I’d post a few progress shots together with some notes. I’m not sure how long it's going to take.
Anyway stage 1 was blocking in areas either flat or with gradients (some of which are only temp. ones). The body gradient is a best guess/averaging, you can’t always see an obvious gradient but you can see if it’s generally lighter or darker. As last time the body colour uses a single global swatch, so all the highlights and shadows are done with blend modes (somewhere between white and black, not reds, obviously). So if I want to change the body colour it's easy peasy. 

I found a better resolution local photo, still only 1300x1700 that I enlarged but then cropped at the end. But it's good enough that I could try the recolour adjustments on.
It's of bathing machines in Margate 1915, I though it was quite a modern looking photo. I wonder if they all wore jackets and no trousers on the beach or is he a perv.
 
 

I've been thinking about doing some vector drawings of my local area so was looking at old photos. I fancied trying to colourise a couple to see if you can do it more simply and quickly than tutorials tend to show.
These are done more like a colouring book, you probably managed not to go over lines when you were about 5 and this isn't a lot different and if you do then that's what undo's for. So rather than selecting and masking each area I just used a soft brush and two layers, one with blend mode of soft light, which I did most of it in, and the other with a blend mode of colour. Then you pick your colour and paint and sometimes go over the area with a different shade and low opacity. The soft brush means you don't have to worry about edges quite so much. Finding a decent skin tone is the trickiest as you notice straight away if it's wrong but the more you do the more of a library of colour you have. Of course you can use more layers or use selections and fill but a lot old photos are bad enough quality that it takes longer to select the area than just painting it.
So if you fancied doing so colourisation but the tutorials made it look like some sort of magic and like too much  faffing about then try it this way.

Thanks. You can't just pick what looks like the right skin colour for the person and use that, it depends on the blend mode you're using and how grey the face is. But they look like they might be a good starter or not, I'm not sure.
For example from those swatches the round bit is normal then the faces are colour blend on the left and soft light on the right. The lady on the left has light grey skin, the middle a bit darker and the right one the darkest. In colour mode they're way to brown/orange and in soft light too grey and all too dark.

That's no doodle.
THIS, is a doodle...

Looks I've been drawing using my trackpad too much and it's starting to give me thumb and bit of finger problems, not something I've ever had using a mouse. So I've been practicing with my other hand using my Intuos, with the MBP's trackpad disabled, to give that hand a rest. This was some messing around I was doing. It's hard sticking to the wrong hand perhaps I need to sit on it or lock it in a drawer or something. Anyway I did a doodling kit and thought 250 objects would be plenty (I originally hoped about 70 would be) but trying it out on A5 it looks like I need more, possibly a lot more, and some small things to help fill gaps.. You just Alt-drag them over to the work artboard then rotate etc as required. The second is just some conical gradients on the few layers I used. Oh the lines are 0.2mm, so as thought they're they're done with a fineliner.

 


 

After some more fiddling.  Only having the horizontal gradient editor in the fx makes it a bit of a pain when you're trying to do conical gradients also not being able to use swatches anywhere in there.
 
Messing With Gradients 3.afdesign

OK second try
 
This was my first crack at guided astro - Flame Nebula and Horsehead Nebula in Orion.
 
Mount:        SW EQ6R
Telescope:  SW ED 80 APO Esprit
Camera:     Canon D760
Image:        5x60 sec
Software:   Affinity Photo
 
So all the editing that I did was to increase the exposure setting and the Brightness and contrast settings - very minimal.
 
 

Messing around again... Not that anyone will be interested but I'm still posting it. I was wondering if you can draw something with just one object and its gradient fills. So these are just squares with a gradient fill then a fx colour overlay and a fx gradient overlay.  The gradient overlays were conical with a blend mode of glow, the colour overlay was grey with blend mode of reflect. Then the main gradient was linear, normal, and that made the shape as depending on the colour it also varies the width.  I tried the storm trooper a couple of times, still failed.
 
So the the answer is you sort of can and if you spent more time perfecting the best way of doing it then they might look quite good.
 

I got rid of the hands at lunchtime, think it looks better.
 

It´s an illustration made with Affinity Design and Photo, Greetings!
 
 

“This is my Eiffel Tower. This is my Rachmaninoff's Third. My Pietà. It's completely elegant, it's bafflingly beautiful…” I think the last one I’ll do and post but it’s a goodie (well the subject is).
 
The Ferrari Dino Berlinetta Speciale prototype was unveiled at the Paris motor show in 1965.  In my opinion the side view is its best angle, I can’t say that I think the front is particularly pretty. It recently sold for a ridiculous amount of money, over £3.2m/$4m.
 
As I wanted it to be photorealistic what looks like a fairly simple drawing was plenty of work. There’s a lot of fine detail, like the vector textures I made up for the tyres and wheels, that isn’t necessarily obvious, especially at this reduced size, but if it wasn’t there then it loses some of its realism.  I'll probably go back to it in a week or two and see what bits I don't like.
 
It’s also quite a large drawing, the full size output’s 88.5MP (11520x7680).