The phoenix has risen

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...And the phoenix is completed. I was throwing around ideas for a colour scheme, and finally decided on going with blue/purple/gold because I thought it would make it look rather royal. Some phoenix pictures I've seen are green/red but they looked too much like parrots. I was thinking about doing red/orange/yellow all over, but decided that it would be too much of the same colour, and it would lose impact. It was a bit nerve racking putting pencil to paper, because I knew that once I'd started, I'd have to stick with those colours regardless of what it looked like. But in the end, I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

That's the last drawing from me for a little while (unless I'm really bad and procrastinate some more). I need to cut back on the drawing and get some real work done for school. Only got 5 weeks to wrap up all the assessment, report cards, student portfolios, etc. There's a lot of work to be done, and nothing will happen unless I lock up the coloured pencils!

Peace out!

Let there be fire!

And there was fire...

Rising from the Ashes

So the phoenix is shaded. I'll let the picture speak for itself tonight.

Phoenix

I started this phoenix tonight. I've been wanting to do one for a while, but it always seemed too much effort, so I've been putting it off.  I used a few different phoenix tattoos as references, and borrowed some ideas, but overall it's ended up being an original design of my own. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. 

The claws were the hardest part. I drew them like 50 times trying to get them to look right. I think I'm happy with the way they turned out. I think I'll need more practice drawing claws, because they were always where I got tricked up when drawing dragons too.

I've already done most of the shading for this phoenix, but I will post that one tomorrow when it's finished. I'm going to do it black and grey initially, and then might think about colouring it up afterward.

Oh by the way, if anyone who reads this blog ever sees a design they love enough to actually take to a tattoo shop to have done, go for it! I'd just ask you to let me know which design you're using, and also to tell the tattoo shop where you got the design from (Summertime Ink). Cheers!

Things are looking... rosey!

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So, this week I've copied a few rose tattoos, drawn a few of my own based on the other drawings and today I've drawn a few totally original roses my own. I used real photographs as a reference and designed these ones myself. All 3 are black and grey, although the shading hasn't come out really great in the photos.

This is the last of the roses for now (I promise). I think I've practiced roses enough for now... onto a new obsession tomorrow.

Check out some of my other drawings:

 

4 Drawings a day

 I was reading an article about tattooing that suggested that, when in training, you should do 4 drawings every day, and you should complete every drawing that you do.  So no more unfinished line drawings for me! That's my goal: 4 every day. Not sure if I will be able to sustain it while I'm working, but we'll see. Here's my 4 roses for today (I'm counting the bunch of 3 roses as 3 drawings, rather than one). I decided to try them without the black outlines for a change. They are 'original' designs, based on some of the more popular roses I did in the last post. I also tried the leaves in a different way.

Pick a Rose

I went through my Tattoo Revival magazine (Volume 22) last night and copied all the different styles of roses I could find in it. Some of the original designs did not have black outlines, but I decided to draw them with black outlines anyway because that's the style I'm practicing. Then I had a go at shading them in different ways. It's quite difficult to get a good balance between shading with good tonal contrast, and making the whole rose too dark.

Rose 1

 Rose 2

 Rose 3

 Rose 4

 Rose 5

 Rose 6

 Rose 7

 Roses 8 & 9

 Roses10 & 11

 Roses 12 & 13

Which one do you like the design of best? Which shading style?