Been working really hard at this illustration today, I’m trying to push different composition ideas, and themes I usually struggle with such as buildings and hard materials (brick,glass, iron rods)

The brick texture on the back-wall of the building is painted rather than relying on texture images, edited and placed. Which is something id usually rely on so pleased with how that came out..

I’m gunna change the last bits I dont think are working, then I’ll lay down colour over the top using overlay/color layer mode.

This was a trick I’ve seen used by many professional digital illustrators and concept artists and its one I think ill carry on using for a while, as it helps me visualize whats actually working.

You can see this technique being used in Bobby Chiu’s creature design video. If you work digitally and are interested in learning a few tips or maybe a way to improve your work flow, i’d check out the first part of the video;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BDLd-SzGgU

Also i’ve been practicing anatomy using a mixture of videos and andrew loomiss’ books, which you can actually download and read (as pdf’s) for free. If you struggle with anatomy as I sometimes do it is well worth checking out;

http://alexhays.com/loomis/

Other than that I’m currently coming up with new ideas for the re-designing of my website, my current one you can see here  http://www.drawntothenorth.com/ 

Keep checking back as ill be posting more updates on work, hopefully have some website designs well underway and ill keep finding useful/free resources for you all to use.

Cheers