Tag Archives: steampunk

Giraffe with Copic Markers, Steampunk on Safari

Steampunk Giraffe Original Art

This is Sid. Although I do consider him the latest in my steampunk beast portrait series – it wasn’t actually a “series” until I typed that just now- he is not currently displaying any of the Victorian fashion elements the other beasts have had. Partly because sticking a scarf right under a giraffe’s chin seems silly. And once again the creature insisted on being so close to the camera I had no room for even a little hat. Particularly with those pesky ossicones (giraffe’s horns, made of cartilage – thank you Wikipedia).  In fact, he does have a hat.  A sleek, black top hat style thing with brass studs and a microscope device of some sort. But it keeps blowing off. It’s at quite an altitude when he wears it, after all.

At 9″ x 12″ he is slightly bigger than the others, and also slightly too big for my scanner, which only does 8.5″ x 11″. Here are some progress photos, from sketch to completion.  I am a big fan of blog posts with progression shots (if you hadn’t noticed).

Steampunk Giraffe Sketch

Steampunk Giraffe Ink

Steampunk Giraffe Color 0

Steampunk Giraffe Color 1

Steampunk Giraffe Color 2

Steampunk Giraffe Original Art

Finished.  I think.

Thanks for looking!

 

Steampunk Rabbit Experiment with Whirligig

So I’m on this steampunk kick.  And I had planned on a horse next.  But then I saw this floppy-eared bunny in a pile of prints I ordered from deviantART.

Exhibit one:

too cool to care, by Duckmad

Which led to:

Steampunk Rabbit Initial Ink

Probably should have left the tilt of his head.  Oh!  I should mention the other piece of the puzzle – the whirligig, which happens to be the optional whimsy theme/prompt over at the Web of Whimsy, a neat monthly challenge I joined for the first time last month.  I wanted to give the prompt a shot because I didn’t use it for the last one.

This drawing was much more troublesome than the llama, sheep and kangaroo. I didn’t really like most of the progression of this one.  Not loving the color exactly. And eek, the swirlygig is crooked (I know, I should trace a circle.  But I don’t like to use anything mechanical, generally.  Which is silly.  It’s steampunk, right?) Oh, and the whirlygig should have stayed black and white. But I like some things:

Steampunk Rabbit Final (?)

And then I thought hey, I can fix the swirl and maybe help out the color with a background, after I scan it. So I did. I tried a few background colors, mostly dark, as this rabbit is far too dressed up for the morning. Also, he tends to sleep in quite late most days and rarely ventures out before evening.

Steampunk Rabbit with Digital Help

I think it’s a big improvement, though it could probably still use some work. Maybe a gradient background or some stars or something, it’s far too flat as is. But I must go to bed, alas! Let me know what you think!  Be brutal. I can take it.

 

Steampunk Kangaroo, Copic Markers, and the Tricky Nose Edit

Good morning/afternoon/evening/dead of night, chums!  Thank you kindly for stopping in for another installment of farmyard steampunk animals.  Well, not exactly farmyard, I suppose, in this case.  But that is simpler than “another installment of steampunk herbivores with big, comical noses” which seems to be the more specific genre I am currently mining.  Or inventing!  No, probably not inventing.  :o)

Steampunk Kangaroo Initial Ink

The gadgets are fun to do, as are the Victorian-inspired details (the hair and choker). No hat this time, though I am rather fond of the owl-shaped device on the ear. I tried to get her to tell me the purpose of that particular gadget but she was evasive.  Very secretive, these inventor types.

Steampunk Kangaroo Color 1

Steampunk Kangaroo Color 2

Copic markers , hooray! I have a feeling I abuse them somewhat more than they are meant to be abused.  I have watched a couple youtube how-to videos where talented, soft-spoken young folk delicately paint and dab with their Copics. My own technique could not be characterized as delicate, I must say, with the possible exception of detail work with a 0.05 nib. But of course that is the pen and not the marker.  :o)

After a lot more ink, mostly outlining with a 0.8 and an 0.3 for the smaller bits, I decided I was finished:

Steampunk Kangaroo Final (not Really)

If you imagine her without the hair, she kinda looks like a kangaroo. Or a donkey. Or llama. I googled kangaroos, unsatisfied.  And decided the nose needed to be dark, as she is modeled on a red kangaroo. Which means going over another color and not being sure exactly what would happen. As I type this now it occurs to me I could have experimented on a separate sheet. Bah, caution. Here is what happened:

Steampunk Kangaroo Final (Really!)

Had to do the ear also.  Kind of hard to tell in these scans but the nose is dark grey but kept a pinkish tinge. I’m not sure that it makes it look more like a kangaroo, really. But I like it. So what do you think – should I have stuck to the pink nose?

In case you wondered, her name is Daphne and yes, she invented all her own gadgets. I think she had to outsource those flower-shaped gears, though. (Nice touch, right?) Thank you for visiting!

Steampunk Sheep (Might Be a Goat) – Work In Progress

Steampunk Sheep (Or a Goat?) -Not Quite Finished

Straight from the pen that brought you that other steampunk farmyard animal-in-progress type post, comes steampunk sheep! Or he might be a goat.  If he’s a sheep do I need to add horns?  Could he be, like, a dandy who trimmed his horns way back so as not to adversely affect the tilt of his hat? The trouble is, I think, that I wanted to do a steampunk sheep and used a girl sheep photo as a guide. See for yourself:

Is this a Girl Sheep?

Which is fine, I would totally do a female steampunk sheep.  Except I just did a female steampunk llama, so I wanted to do a male steampunk sheep. Anyway, do female sheep tend to look like male goats?  Perhaps this doesn’t matter.  He is certainly at least one of, a sheep and a goat.  Here is what he looked like in the beginning:

Steampunk Sheep (Goat?) Sketch

And then

Steampunk Sheep (Goat?) Initial Ink

And then this monstrosity

Steampunk Sheep Color 1 (Horror)

I mentioned in the steampunk llama post that sometimes the first layer of color looks so bad I consider abandoning the drawing.  Well, I seriously considered abandoning this fellow at this point.  I mean, yikes.  First, the color combination is looking horrible, and second, I turned the brooch-type thingie into a cane, which is an idea I like but one which would have been nice to decide before inking the ear.  But anyway. I didn’t abandon him, but I didn’t have high hopes for him.  And really, is that fair?

I am pleased to report he is looking much better now (in my opinion) (thank you Copic markers!) and if it weren’t for that scanned picture above, I would find it hard to believe the color was as bad as it definitely was.  Not quite done:

Steampunk Sheep Not Quite Done

I have to decide whether to fill most of the cane in, in black, because it’s too busy and not doing the overall drawing any favors in its current state. Might do a background.  (I said that last time but decided against it.) I can picture an old style plane in the background but I don’t know how to draw a plane.  Actually, an airship would be cool.  Not this time, probably.  Might have to branch out into scenery with airships eventually, though.  Now there’s a thought.

Do you have an opinion on this or any remotely related topic?  Do share!

Further Adventures of Steampunk Llama, Copic Color

Welcome back!  Steampunk Llama, aka Futurellama, aka Charlotte, is complete. Probably.

The first color never looks good and I sometimes question whether the piece is worth finishing at this point.  (Well, maybe less now than I used to.)

Steampunk Llama, Color 1

Ah, much better. Thank you, Copic markers.

Steampunk Llama Color 2

I was mostly able to correct the problems created in the initial inking. The horribly lopsided circles are much better now and the weird baby crib thing in the top right (see previous post) is now a tube and a porpoise-looking bit of machinery.

Steampunk Llama Color 3

And then I couldn’t decide on the hair color. I was planning on red.  But would it be red and brown or red and purple or red and orange? I almost did red and orange (and brown, probably), but I didn’t really want to go red on blue.  Or blue and orange, really, despite their being complementary and all that. Anyway, I thought I had a nice assortment of blues to do the hair and using the same color as the skin but different hues can have a nice effect. I do really need more practice with hair though, whether this kind or another kind.

Blue Llama Steampunk Color 4

Haven’t 100% decided about whether to fill the background, but it might be nice to get prints with different digital backgrounds.  May go back with a 0.05 nib for some finer detail, but may not. Almost avoided the shading swirls I’ve been using, for fear of additional clutter on an already busy field. But I used larger ones closer to the background color and achieved the effect I like with a bit more subtlety. Or so I foolishly think.  ;o)

As a side note, I still browse deviantART regularly and the overwhelming number of really accomplished artists can be a bit disheartening. (Is there room for any more? Will I ever achieve the skill level of these people? Do I need more formal training? That sort of thing. ) Just going to keep slogging on, though.

Blue Steampunk Llama Color 5

This is Charlotte, a distinguished, long-time independent agent for the Urban Camelid* Protection League, and as such she was not at liberty to reveal the uses for her various apparatuses. I believe the free-hanging tube is both a speech device and and a unit that can be attached remotely to certain mechanical gadgetry. But this is purely speculation on my part.

Charlotte was very friendly and professional, but despite my crafty line of questioning she did not reveal any UCPL secrets. This is why she is one of their most respected field agents, I imagine.

Drop a line and let me know how you ended up here!  :o)

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*Camelids include camels, llamas, alpacas, vicuñas, and guanacos.

Work in Progress Type Post – Steampunk Llama

If you’ve been visiting at all, or noticed my little Etsy art catalog to the right, you have some inkling that I have been drawing a lot of recognizable and less recognizable beast portraits in, well, non-traditional colors. Llamas and other large-snouted types are my current favorite, and the other day I decided instead of a simple portrait, I would steampunk* one up.

A hallmark of steampunk style is the pervasive use of small electronic gadgetry (the purpose of which is not often clear). It is generally shiny and intricate with lots of cogs, gears, moving parts and decorative bits. So I had to decide. Try to invent some actual devices, which seemed slightly overkill for this one portrait, or just kinda wing it.  I went with wing it.

I also had to decide whether to employ mechanical drawing means (tracing circles, for example, which I generally avoid), in order for the mechanical bits to be as precise as possible.  I didn’t go that way, as you will see in the sketch (and worse! in the initial inking).  It’s just not my style.  I’d like to think I’m not lazy about details, but I suppose one could argue that point.  I guess my general preference is to err on the side of an organic result rather than an overly precise (mechanical?) one.

Steampunk Llama Detailed Sketch

I decided to simplify the drawing for the first ink outline.  This outline, done with a smallish size nib, is mainly a guide for the color, and can change quite a bit by the time I do the final ink.  Sometimes I’ll do some correction with a larger nib, or fill in solid black detail areas (like the eye).

It was originally going to be a male beast, but I happen to be on an Etsy Team which is currently doing a doodle challenge based loosely around the theme “Hair”.  So I did hair.  And it happened to be a really nice Victorian-style detail to go with the hat and choker.  I haven’t done a whole lot of hair, preferring beasty animal types, but hair can be a really cool element in a design so I hope it works out!

Steampunk Llama, First Ink

As you can see, the result of simplifying in this case is a somewhat borg**-like collection of shapes and tubes, and the strangest baby crib looking thing at the right ear. It was intended to be a kind of enhanced listening device, but now I’m going to have to see what I can do with it.  :o)  Also, several quite imperfect circles are in evidence, which I will try to fix up later.

To sum up, yes, I took two severely trendy topics – llamas and steampunk – and did a mashup.  Is this the most original idea in the history of the world?  No.  But that doesn’t mean it can’t be super cool.  :o)

Updates coming soon.  Thanks for dropping in!

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*”Steampunk is a subgenre of speculative fiction, usually set in an anachronistic Victorian or quasi-Victorian alternate history setting. It could be described by the slogan “What the past would look like if the future had happened sooner.” (Thank you, Urban Dictionary.)

**Borg – “An immensely powerful civilization of enhanced humanoids from the Delta Quadrant of the galaxy. The Borg implant themselves with cybernetic devices, giving them great technological and combat capabilities. ” From various Star Trek television franchises. (Thank you again, Urban Dictionary.)