Monstrous Pizza

Here's my illustration for this week's challenge by @jimbobdrawingshow. The prompt was "Monstrous Pizza"! I had a lot of fun creating this lovely cheesy sleazy creepy little guy and during the process I believe he even helped me with my today's lunch choice. 😉

Face Your Art CHALLENGE

I decided to join this new trend after all, the #faceyourart challenge. I didn't plan to participate at first because I'm still not satisfied with how I draw faces, but... I chose my latest works and some older that I didn't use in other challenges and although they're mostly my avatar designs and people with masks, I decided to post them anyway.

My Spidersona

Finally it's time for my Spidersona! Spider-Man has always been one of my most favourite superheroes and this challenge is a great way to imagine myself in his shoes. I don't have a catchy superhero name, but I tried to present some things and features that define me... to some extent, at least.

One of my most favourite pieces of clothing has for years been my olive green/orange hoodie, so I used these colours for my "spidersuit". I also wear a lot of black and dark grey. I hate cramming things into my pockets, so I usually wear some kind of a bag. In this illustration it opened by accident and some things that I like or usually carry fell out: my glasses, mobile phone, a bottle of cola, a chocolate bar, pills and vitamins, a pack of tissues, a pen etc. And there's also a matching baseball hat, I believe I have quite a collection and I rarely leave my flat without one of them.

I'm pretty tall and heavy, so the spider silk can barely support my weight (you can see it snapping in the middle) and I live in Osijek, which is the 4th largest city in Croatia, but according to European or American standards still a pretty small town with a few blocks of 12-storey buildings, so I mostly have to use numerous power lines to move around.

Sooo... It's your friendly neighborhood... Spider-Esseker? No? Well, I tried. 😁

P.S. Essek = Osijek 😉

#eyememe

Let's give this #eyememe a try! It's an interesting experiment to see where you possibly make mistakes while drawing eyes and how you could improve your skills. However, as you can see, I have several different types of characters (more anime-like, cartoonish, for my comic strips etc.), so I don't have a unique style and I often draw eyes differently. You can find all drawings in my gallery and they're mostly recent (the oldest should be about six months old). Can you guess some of them?

Holding glasses (#drawthisinyourstyle)

This drawing should be part of #drawthisinyourstyle challenge, but somehow I doubt anyone will pick it and redraw it. I just don't have a large following base on my social media and there are many influential artists whose entries in this challenge will be more noticeable and challenging.

Anyway, if someone is interested, here's the uncropped version:

Mermay 2018

I didn't participate in the #MerMay challenge, but I decided to draw at least one mermaid just to see how it would turn out. Actually, I've always wanted to do it, so the choice of what kind or type of mermaid exactly to draw wasn't too hard, because a few months ago I came across some photos of a statue of Ariel and I fell in love with the design. It was The Little Mermaid Statue from J. Scott Campbell’s Fairytale Fantasies Collection. Google it, I think it looks amazing!

So, the reference for the pose is obvious, although I decided to change some things. As usual, I drew it on a piece of paper, scanned it and finished in Inkscape. I added some shadows and highlights the only way I know - not caring too much about the source of light, but trying to draw what I believe would look effective and interesting and trying to have fun in the process. And the background is simple, of course.

As for MerMay itself, I'm usually interested in different art challenges, but drawing 31 mermaids would just be too much for me. So far I've managed to finish two #Inktober challenges and I'm actually considering joining #JuneToon, although it has already started, so I guess we'll see. I'd also like to congratulate all participants who finished the #mermay challenge, with a special shout-out to @xelgot whose characters and style inspire me to try something like this one day. And to draw more, because you know how lazy I am, even when I have some good ideas (unfortunately, I often give up and never finish some projects if I procrastinate for too long).

My own Infinity War challenge

Two weeks before the premiere of Avengers: Infinity War, I started my own little challenge, a kind of a test for me and my abilities. I called it "6 Pieces For 6 Gems" and I planned to create six pieces of artwork, any kind that I usually do - digital or traditional artwork, comic strips, DIY projects etc., but always a different technique - one piece for each Infinity Gem! They don't have to be connected to the colour or the meaning of the gems, there just need to be six finished drawings/projects by the end of the second week. Here are all six pieces of artwork.

 Here are some tools of my trade I included in this challenge:

And this is the list of all six projects:

* DIY pencil holder - inspired by the Infinity Gauntlet

* Traditional/watercolour - Thanos

* DIY badge - Avengers logo

* DIY polymer clay item - Infinity Gauntlet

* Comic strip @odd.one.comic

* Digital - Captain America/Nomad

#Piece1ForGem1

My first item for my own Infinity War challenge is an Infinity Gauntlet inspired pencil holder and I hoped it would be the easiest project, but nooo. 🤔 When you look at the final product, it might seem the lamest project ever, but please keep in mind that I spent one afternoon in thrift shops and dollar stores and an evening playing the hit and miss game. 🙄 If you think it's too simple or - I don't know - ugly, be glad you haven't seen the first, crappier version. 😁

In the end I made a version with gold foil, coloured paper, flat glass marbles and magnets. So, there it is - a golden can with six Infinity Stones (or Gems) you can arrange any way you like (I'm not sure which order they'll use in the MCU). Feel free to swipe left to see the whole progress. And another thing - if you think about it, it's actually a 2in1 project! The Gems can also be used as fridge magnets. Wooo! So, what do you think - did the first item blow your mind? 😉

#Piece2ForGem2

My second entry for this challenge is a watercolour pencil drawing of Thanos. Honestly, I didn't know how it would turn out, although I gave my all to follow and apply some advice from tutorials I found on YouTube.

So, it's not very good, but also not that bad... I hope. I'll definitely need some more practice. 🤔 As you can see, I filmed the whole process, so when it's up on my YouTube channel, you can check it out and maybe give me some advice about what I should or shouldn't have done.

#Piece3ForGem3

My next DIY project for this challenge are six badges with Avengers logo. The background colours represent six Infinity Stones, while the logo itself is white. I used wooden tokens, safety pins, a hot glue gun, decoupage glue, coloured paper and foam rubber.

I was particularly happy I got to finish these before the premiere, because I planned to wear them, share them with my friends and maybe even give them away at the local movie premiere, like I did with those Star Wars badges last year.

#Piece4ForGem4

My fourth project for my own Infinity War challenge is an episode of my Odd One comic, which I've been posting on my IG account @odd.one.comic. It was the last project before I went to the local premiere, so my last two items were finished after the movie.

#Piece5ForGem5

The fifth piece of artwork is a DIY project, a polymer clay item, and as promised, it's a 7cm miniature of the Infinity Gauntlet (or at least my version of it). I wasn't able to find the right colour of clay (I was looking for the gold one), so I mixed some colours that I had from my previous projects. I haven't sculpted anything new for a long time, so some pieces were very dry or hard and this was the perfect opportunity to test the Sculpey liquid knock-off I bought some time ago. It's supposed to soften the clay and it worked out perfectly. 👌

As usual in similar projects, the base of the Gauntlet was aluminium foil, a pretty useful technique if you don't want to waste too much polymer clay. When it was finished, I coated it with gloss varnish and used self-adhesive plastic decorative crystals for Infinity Stones to make the whole thing look more "realistic".

#Piece6ForGem6

The sixth piece of artwork is a digital drawing of Captain America in his new costume from Infinity War, and as usual, it was done in Inkscape. So, it took me more than two weeks after all, but I'm glad I got to finish the challenge and complete all planned projects. 👍

As for the film itself, you probably know by now that I saw it before finishing this challenge. I'm not going to spoil anything - unlike an unbelievably big number of various social network users 😡 - but if you're a fellow Marvelite, you shouldn't be disappointed at all. It was amazing, The Infinity War sent me on an emotional ride and I'll need a few days to wrap my head around everything I experienced. I also hope I'll see it again soon. ❤

Colouring contest (Mamba)

While looking for the way to practice this new watercolour pencils style I've been trying to develop, I stumbled upon a contest by @koteri.ink. I've been following his work for some time and I was glad to see this challenge to colour the lineart of his character Mamba. I assumed many others would use digital art to colour it, so I pursued that recent watercolour pencils obsession that I mentioned.

I printed the very light grey version of the lineart on the watercolour paper, coloured it and went over the original lines with black fineliners (with 0,1 tip). I also used the Pentel brush pen for the outline, as I saw it in some YouTube tutorials. I really like this combination and I'm still new to this style of drawing, but I hope I'm on the right track.

Once again, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I just hope I'll get to colour some of my works soon.