Folio Academy gets a touch up!

I am a huge Will Terry fan and have bought a number of his videos. So I am very happy to say that the site through which he sells his videos, Folio Academy has been redesigned and relaunched! I highly recommend dropping by and seeing which videos you think may fit your fancy.

The Folio Academy has videos from Will Terry, A.B.(Russ), RussellAmber, MediaBill, WhitakerBlufire Studios, Bob Barrett, Burning Oak Studios, Danni Jones, Greg Newbold, Jerry's Artarama, Justin Cook, Kirk Richards, Paul Mann, Perry Milou, Peter Wood, Provo Creative, and Simon Winegar.

I learned a great deal from Will's video's so I stand by those for new-intermediate artists. But even you masters of your craft can always learn something from somebody else's technique or methods.

I will probably be posting a review of one of his videos soon. Check his art below!

So drop in check the previews and see what you like!!

Use a link in the above article or the one in the right sidebar!

Quick doodle

Another quickie from this weekend!

Time to alter the dress!

Recent little illustration I did for my sister blog OnceUponASketch.com. But after looking at it further I decided to alter it a bit. The results are below. Is that better?

The changes are subtle, but they are there!! Can you see them?

And even more changes. These are just for this blog though. I widened the straps A reader told me that she should have three finger straps. Anything less than that wouldn't be allowed in school. Really?? Wow!! And I opened her eyes and her mouth a bit, just to give some variety let me know if you prefer it with them closed. I also altered her right hand some. (thanks Milica!!)

Another Beastie

Another beastie from an ongoing project!

His feet could be bigger and his toes more pronounced and forward rather to the sides like that! He looks bow legged. Did this while watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes. What do you think?

Thank you Photoshop!

Just finished another coloring book! I love doing coloring books! So much fun! In the process I learned how much I absolutely love Photoshop!! Thank you, thank you, thank you for Curves, Layers, Levels and Hue/Saturation! It's so easy to get tunnel vision and for your palette of colors to get way too narrow. This happened to me on the cover. Here's the image chosen by the art director to be the cover. This is just the linework that appears within the book.

I then proceeded to color it. And guess what I thought I was done. Here is that image.

After looking at it I realized that my contrast was crappy. My background was muddy. The foreground characters were getting lost. So I pulled out the Curves, Hue/Saturation and Levels to push and pull my colors. When I finally got something I liked it looked like this.

Now truth be told if I had more time I would have posted this to a few groups I frequent online and let my art peers tear into it. Pick the advice that I thought was the most on point and went back in and reworked those areas. But I am glad that I am getting better at seeing what's wrong with my own images. (Not the best, but better.)

Every image we do is a lesson to be learned about what we are bad at and need to get better and what we are good at...and still need to get better. I'll let you know when the book becomes available for purchase!! :)