Merilliza`ART

Front Book Cover for @elisekova‘s Crystal Crowned (Air Awakens Book 5) omg... I can’t believe we reached this point. Aaahh. <3 

Vhalla is fierceeeeee. 

Master study of Sargent #3. 

Book Cover for Water’s Wrath! Plus some juicy close ups! 

Author: Elise Kova (@elisekova) 

First personal art of year! Woo! Let’s make the best of out 2016! :D

Hello! It depends on what it is for. Please email me at [email protected] if you’re looking for commercial commissions so I can give you a proper rate. 

My private commissions are currently “semi-closed”. I can only choose carefully what I do, for now. 

Various speed portraits done for the holiday commissions! :D Happy Holidays to my Tumblr friends! <3

Speed portrait commission of Fremmy. :)

Recent character commission. :) 

Today's post will be pretty short. You guessed it, I could not study properly this week. Due to health problems.. blah blah, you don't wanna hear it. It's quite a bummer. Still, I did make a couple of sketchbook drawing practice. I'm still in the process of relearning traditionals. It's taking a while.. And I'm struggling using mechanical pencils, I should really switch back to regular old wood pencils. I recently bought charcoal, a medium I have never tried, so I'm looking forward to it.

Here's the summary for this week, in visual form!

I'm working on a piece which features some water creatures. Can't say what it's for yet, but it's a pretty big deal to me. So I wanted to study some amphibian, preferably that of frog skin textures. The colorful one took me a while.. too much. Wanna hear my mistake? I was trying to use the mixer brush a LOT. It dulled the colors, dulled the rendering, it looked boring. I tried to use it just to experiment a little and see if my process could go faster, clearly it doesn't work for me. I do like the minimal usage of it, especially when trying to create smudged effects, which is most attractive to soft edges. But having to use it everywhere and relying on it to do the blending for you.. doesn't work. At least for me. I end up losing the colors then I try to reapply it, then blend it again, then lose it again. No wonder it took forever. I went back to the good old method of the manual 'labor' of splashing the colors in and taking the time to make gentle strokes and blend it myself. Voila! Looked nice and bright. Think I'll just stick with this method.

Hiiiiiiiiii Tumblr!

The holidays are coming! Everything is so hectic! Budgets are super tight. I need some cash to survive this month and the coming ones. AAAAaaa. I feel like I'm gonna go crazy. 

Anyways. I'm offering a special promo right now! If anybody is interested, please send me a message. Or email me. Paypal only! Samples and info on the photo : D

Thank you!!

Last Thursday I wrote a draft that was supposed to go up today but ended up scrapping it for this one instead, a study focused post. I have a tendency to cringe towards my own writing and end up deleting everything before it sees the light of the internet, akin to 99% of my tweets. It was about a long struggle feeling like such an inadequate artist and a disheartened spirit that everybody is familiar with. Perhaps I’ll save that longer rambling for another post.

Anyways... Lately I feel like I’ve hit rock bottom… It’s that year when everything seems to be going well in the beginning but started to get really crappy by the end. And it just hit me with no warning.

So yes, studies. It’s like a good bottle of beer to make the problems go away. Except I know and believe it actually works. (p.s. no I don’t drink, not even on occasions, nor do I condone excessive consumption. I know. I've been told I need to live a little.)

So here are some stuff I did this week. (Dump post ahead!)

Below are some photo studies. I saw pictures that attracted me, they were very pretty for some reason, I wanted to know why.

Some things I keep in mind and little tricks I use with studying color and light: a. Figure out the prominent colors first and immediately just put it down on the surface. b. Take note of the main forms, its shape and structure and how that affects the shadow casts. c. I'm not worried too much about tiny details, just the general silhouettes of the objects. d. Ask myself why the colors are the way they are. While studying I try to guess the colors, most of the time I found that I am almost always wrong. From there I try to figure out what the actual color is, why I thought it was another color, and how do I learn to predict the correct colors if I'm going to start an image from scratch. e. Color relations, and thinking in general temperature. How does it affect the palette and how come the palette seems limited yet able to create an interesting mix. 

Some human studies, in digital and traditional pencils.  Full bodies; Head angles; Something I really need to study extensively since I really suck at it. (I used pixelovely for most of the refs, great site!)

Trad inks and pencil. Mini study of Flagg's ink work. And Paul Bonner's characters. I love his shape choices and how he makes very interesting characters.

Ending it with a master study of Mian Situ. I love the pastel light colors vs. the strong subjects that creates amazing contrast. I really struggled with this one. He had a complex palette and it took a while before I figured out the prominent colors. Though the main subjects were mainly warm, as well as the front of the landscape, he managed to balance it towards on a cooler temp by using light purples and a lot of it leaning towards more to grays.

I’m focusing on the essentials of human characters for now, more especially color and light, and some environment aspects. But soon, I want to tackle other subjects like materials and creatures. Very soon. One step at a time. It’s going to take a while… humans and its form are very complicated!

Anyways, that's it for now. I realize this is so few for a week. Guilty as charged. I need to study more. I only got to start in the middle of the week, but next week it's definitely going to be a full sched. No excuses!

Bye for now! See you next Sunday.