Back with new stuff and new hair :D
In october I attended the bookfair in Frankfurt and the "Spiel" fair in Essen, always exciting times!
Met many lovely people, got in touch with potencial clients and made some sketches for several folks:

Had a great time!!! :)

Back home I worked on commissions and did some studies inbetween:

 Love to do them, especially the colorful ones :D


Well, then there's the new hair.... From loooong and kinda boring to this:

 Love it! :D

Doobedoo! :D
Since I just suffered from a bad tenosynovitis (german: Sehnenscheidenentzündung), I wasn't able to draw and paint as much as I wanted to, but now I'm back at my tablet, doing commissions and working on some portfolio pieces.
One of these personal pieces has the working title "Hunterboy" and I posted a thumbnail of it some time ago. Here's what it's been going through so far:

I started with a value sketch (1.) and went on with a line-drawing (2.), where I decided on most of the details.
Next were some color sketches and after deciding on the color-scheme I went on to do some painting (3.). It's still very rough, but I started rendering some moss in the lower right corner, so you get a glimpse on how it's going to look when it's finished :) I love moss. :D

I'm also working on some character design commissions at the moment, which I'm quite excited about, but I can't show you anything yet :)
Here's one way of how I get ideas for new illustrations, I just paint some crazy, abstract thumbnails and try to see things in them :D Some turn out to have hidden treasures... ;)

I put a small black frame around the ones I like best :)

Cheers for now,
Anna ♥

Long time no see!
I'm still there, drawing, painting, working on a new homepage...
While working on my portfolio pieces I'm also doing studies of all sorts of stuff:

                                                                                    Clouds, landscapes, skulls....

                                                                                             Mountains, rocks....

I like drawing traditionally with my pencils just as much as I like painting digitally :)
Well, not much to tell right now... Stay tuned, next week there'll be more :D

After a few weeks of absence... Here we go again! :)
Hope everyone is fine and enjoying their first days of summer! 
Well, not real summer yet, but considering the temperature...
Over the last weeks I worked a lot, went to the gym (yeah), attended a pirate birthday (YEAH) and enjoyed the free comic book day (YEAH!!!). I got a few really good comic books and there was one who really stuck out. Written, drawn and painted by two very talented german guys this thing really blew my head off. First issue will be published by Cross-Cult in June (my copy was just a teaser, published for the free comic book day) and if you love well written stories, post-apocalyptic settings and absolutely amazing artwork, pre-order Gung ho 1: Schwarze Schafe, I highly recommend it :)

I finally finished my study of Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead. Well, it started as a study... Now it's become something like a very detailed fan-art :D 
Below the finished piece is my progress shot again, which I posted last year:

I also filled my sketchbook with more portraits:

The one in the middle is a bit older than the others and the upper right one as well as the two in the bottom are with references from movie stills (Mad Max :D).
Since I'm much into post-apocalyptic stuff at the moment I rewatched all three Mad Max movies and Waterworld ;)
As usual, in the end some studies I did while attending ArtCamp:

Noah Bradley just started ArtCamp 2 and if you have some spare time (along with some spare money) and are desperately seeking for improvement in your art, then go sign up :)

I need to excercise.

When working I'm sitting on my butt, staring at the screen and only moving my hands a little.
Not only do my back and neck say: "Hello??? You stupid or what?" but my belly grew from cute to not so cute anymore ;)
Today I went to a gym class for back therapy, because I need to do something about the pain in my back. I really enjoyed it and was ridiculously exhausted afterwards :D
I'll definitely keep on going.
Back home I browsed through my favourite blogs and found a great article about how illustrators should take care of their body. I really enjoyed reading it and can't recommend it enough, here ya go: 
Marc Scheff on fitness

Enough, now it's time for artsy stuff again :)
A short while ago I did a private commission for a friend of mine. He wanted to have a cartoon-like portrait of his friend as a birthday gift. It was nice and easy, not much planning and very little time involved. I really like to do things like that from time to time :)

Look at my messy desk :D
I used watercolor paper, pencils for the drawing, watercolor for the background and then ink for the lines.
When I work traditionally I like to use my custom-made lightbox, it's super easy to use and sooo convenient! You can adjust the angle and put a lamp underneath it for tracing a sketch on to better paper for the final drawing. It also works very nice with a clip lamp, as you can see :)
The lightbox was built by a friend of mine, if you like to purchase one, just let me know.

Let's stick with portraits for today. I love portraits ♥
During ArtCamp I had the chance to paint a few faces, even if it was only photo studies:

The references are taken from the wonderful and talented Mark Laubenheimer.
Here's one with the reference on the left side and some process shots:

As you can see, I almost always start with a line drawing and then block in the basic colors. After that I start rendering and work out the details and textures.
I like this photo a lot, because the lighting is really nice and shows how different skin-tones can look. Even if the lightsource isn't on the photo, we know that the girl must be sitting in front of a window and that the weather outside is great, because the highlights on her skin are of a light blue, which comes from the blue sky outside :)

Stay tuned ♥

Yokoso!
Hope you're doing as fine as me :) I always feel so alive when the sun is back, it's almost like rising from the grave, like I was a zombie for the whole winter :D
Speaking of zombies.... Did I show you my last halloween costume yet?

I love to do the make-up and this time I bought white contact lenses, too. I also worked with latex milk for the first time and this stuff is just amazing. You can easily create all sorts of wounds with it.
Faces are like canvas, if you have all the material, you can do amazing things on them ;)

 Since halloween is long over, I'm working on canvas again and I got all sorts of projects going on.
Here is a thumbnail of an illustration I'm going to do for my portfolio:

 It will tell the story of a boy encountering something unexpected in the woods... :)

Another thing I'm working on is a diablo 3 fan-art, that I wanted to submit to a contest, but I only learned about it a few days before the deadline and couldn't finish a decent entry. I'm doing it anyway, cause I like the story and my idea of the character. Here's the sketch:

"Daily ritualistic cleansings help monks purify their spirits and overcome the corruption that gnaws at the hearts of all men. In the pursuit of martial perfection, they also hone their legendary balance and clarity, skills that allow them to master both unarmed combat and a diverse array of weapons."

I like the monk!

Last but not least, another page of stuff I did at ArtCamp, in week 2 (Sketching from imagination):

Like the title of the week says, it's all from imagination, no references were used. A pretty tough one for me, but I learned loads!!!

Stay tuned,
Anna

Howdy folks :D
I guess it's spring now, cause the sun has been shining for days and it's getting warmer and warmer around here, yay!
Like I mentioned before, I'd like to show you some of the stuff we did at ArtCamp.
What was that again? "12 weeks of intensive art study with Noah Bradley" :) He's doing it again, so if you want to join, go ahead!
Every week has a different topic, a 2h video and a shitload of homework... :D
I already wrote about week 1 in an older post, so I'm keeping it short now:
Learning from the old masters by reproducing their work (traditionally or digitally) with attention on values, composition and colors. Short enough? :D
From left to right: Originals, my value/composition studies and then my color studies:

As you probably can see, I tend to go overboard with these studies... My color studies always look like a copy of the original and I need to do them faster ;)
I love the old masters and J.S. Sargent (the alleyway, 5th from the top) and Turner (stormy sea, 2nd from the bottom) are two of my favourites.

Here are some other value and composition studies and I allowed myself to absolutely go overboard with these, let's not talk about that :D Originals are on the left ;)

Also a part of week one, full master studies:

My studies are all digital, I had the original on the left and the canvas on the right and just started painting.
I really liked doing them, although it was very time consuming (I did more than these).
I highly recommend any of you who want to get better at painting to do master studies, or even to join the ArtCamp, I got so much out of it!

Next time will be more ArtCamp stuff :)