Like many of us nerds (I think - I hope), I’ve found myself in a pandemic virtual D&D Campaign. It’s phenomenal, we’re coming up 2 years playing together, and I’m so grateful for these amazing friends.
I’m working on character portraits for our current campaign, and was reminded that I never posted the ones I did for our last campaign! (Ended in a spectacular & traumatic TPK…) Hopefully I have a new batch to post, soon. :)
With the beautiful fall weather here, I’ve been doing my best to spend as much time outside as possible, soaking it all in. I’ve been exploring my little local chunk of the Potomac, and I love how its personality changes from day to day, view to view.
So, this is a gouache study of a photo I took on one of my walks. Still a lot of learning to do with gouache but I like where things are going.
Over the past few weeks I’ve had the great pleasure of working with GrOH! Playrooms, a local business that designs play spaces. They’ve been working on designing a dinosaur-themed space for an occupational therapist, and I got to make some art for it!
They asked me to these two ink drawings of prehistoric-y plants to help bring balance to some of the more colorful elements in the space.
I also got to try my hand at designing my first mural! Something I’ve always wanted to try out. They needed some big but friendly dinosaurs for one of the walls. Here’s how it turned out:
(A+ paint job by Anne!)
It’s pretty surreal to see my art at that size in person!
A really fun gig all around, and so amazing to see how GrOH! put the whole space together. Most of the work I do stays digital, so it’s really cool to have something with some physicality.
Just for fun, I took the two ink drawings and imagined how they might look as 2 color riso prints. Some day..!
I used to draw characters almost exclusively, especially in high school. Somehow in the past few years that changed, and I’ve really fallen for backgrounds/environments/plant life. But, I was reorganizing some files, and I stumbled across the orc lady on the left (from some time in 2016) and fell in love with her all over again. So, I decided to brush off my people-drawing-skills and make a few more characters to go with her. I’m hoping to do a few more, but who knows!
I got really into gardening this year, which has been super fun. I’ve had houseplants for a few years now, but this was my first year really growing anything outside.
Some of my favorite plants this summer were my cardinal climber vines. My friend Sarah gave me the seeds, saved from her own plants. I started them indoors in the winter and just watched them grow and grow. Eventually I transplanted them outside and they slowly overtook the entire back railing of our deck!
The leaves are such an interesting shape, and the flowers are small and delicate but such an incredible bright red. They were hummingbird bait all summer long!
Anyway, here’s a little watercolor painting I did inspired by the plant.
I’m a little shocked that I’ve actually finished this! A tribute to all the walks I take in the forest with my little gremlin, Ragamuffin.
I originally started this drawing over a year ago, just to be something fun I could dive into and noodle around in. I kept putting it aside for client work or other things, but I’ve finally actually come back to it and completed it.
The trick, for me, to completing drawings that are complicated and time consuming, is that if the subject matter is right, I really find the work relaxing. Drawing this was relaxing, inking it was downright therapeutic, and coloring has been a fun puzzle. I decided to color it riso-style, even though I may never actually print it, and it was a good workout for my color mixing skills.
Below you can see the original pencil drawing, and the inks (done with a dip pen, but definitely cleaned up digitally afterwards!)
I've been working on a few smaller colored pencil pieces so I can experiment a bit. I've found that when I get to the end stages of a larger piece I start to get very precious with it (very afraid of "ruining" it) which is not a fun place to be, creatively! So working smaller has given me a chance to try out some different color combinations and other ideas.
I'm definitely interested in drawing more of these little guys, and I have some ideas for bigger pieces inspired by them, too. Mission accomplished!
I've been meaning to make another neon-colored illustration to be a companion for this other one. I didn't have any ideas that felt the right amount of related-but-different, for a while. Then, a friend of mine sent me a photo of a veiled mushroom, and I knew it would be perfect and a bit maddening!
I did a few thumbnails and then an initial drawing at scale in pencil. Then, I used my glass-top kitchen table and a lamp as a light table to do the illustration on a fresh piece of paper. Fun, a little crazy-making, and occasionally a real puzzler.
I've been meaning to write a little post explaining how I create my faux-risograph illustrations in Photoshop. My buddy Anika asked me about it the other day and I figured it was time to finally do it! So, here we go- a little tutorial on how to fake some delicious printing textures. I am not an expert and I don't have all the answers! But this is a method that works for me, so here it is.
You'll need to start with a color-separated image, with a grayscale layer for each color you want to print. There are a lot of ways to do this, from processing an existing image to literally drawing on different physical layers of paper. It's too meaty to explain in this post, but you can (as always) find good resources online.
For my mushroom illustration, here are my three layers:
So, a Riso printer doesn't do grayscale. It will automatically convert grey areas to halftones when you print it. So to fake that, I'm going to use Photoshop to make a halftone myself. I start by opening one of my layers. It happens to be in RGB mode, I need to get it to Bitmap in order to make my halftone, but it won't do that unless I make the color space Grayscale first.
To do this, I hit Image > Mode > Grayscale. It might prompt me to discard color information, that's fine. Then I hit Image > Mode > Bitmap.
I'm now greeted by these options: I haven't messed with this too much, but I do have some options to change how it does the conversion. I just match my resolution and pick halftone. (Sometimes I do a lower dpi for web images to better show off the texture.)
This next one is where the meat of this is:
So let's step back a bit: an important thing to note with halftones is screen angle. Essentially, in order to get the best color-mixing results and avoid a possible moiré pattern, you need to set your halftone dots to specific angles. Photoshop is giving you an option to do that. I use this handy-dandy chart from wikipedia- even when I'm not doing CMYK, I can adapt it to what I'm looking at. I've played around with using each of these 4 ratios, but not in depth enough to give you much of an opinion. (Not an expert!) I'm going to use the top right this time.
I'm looking at my blue layer here, and that's my darkest color. So, I'm going to use the screen angle for black: 15°. I'm changing my frequency down to 150 here to show the texture off better for web. You also have options for what shape the "dots" will be - experiment! See what you like! I'll leave it on "round" this time.
Here's the result at 100%:
Now for my red layer! I'm going to do the same things: Image > Mode > GrayscaleImage > Mode > Bitmap
This time, I'm setting my screen angle to 75°, because red is my midtone.
And one more time, for the yellow layer. Image > Mode > Grayscale Image > Mode > Bitmap
Screen angle: 90°
Now I have 3 truly black and white weird pixelly layers! Time for the magic.
I create a new RGB document and paste in each of these 3 layers so they're stacked on top of each other. They all have white backgrounds that we need to take out so we have isolated black layers to re-color. I grab the magic wand and set tolerance to 0, uncheck anti-alias, uncheck contiguous, and uncheck sample all layers. I select the white area and delete it, then repeat this for the remaining layers.
It ends up with a weird, dark grayscale version of the image, but that's ok!
Now we add the color back in! I lock transparent pixels (press / or the button on the layers panel) and use the paint bucket to recolor my layers, one by one.
Set the layers to multiply to mimic the translucent ink, and voila! Your image!
This isn't quite enough texture for me, so I do two more things to rough things up a little. Firstly, part of the charm of riso, to me, is the imperfect registration. So I'm just going to nudge & rotate my layers around a little bit.
And lastly, my secret weapon. I'm going to add a texture mask to each layer, to simulate some imperfections. (I'm not going too in depth here, if you're unfamiliar with layer masks here's a good place to start.)
I made a gritty screenprinted paper texture that I've been using for this purpose for years. You can find a good texture various places online (be ethical!) or make & scan something yourself. I open up my texture in its own file:
Select all > Copy to get it onto my clipboard.
Then I go back to my document and pick a layer. I'll start with blue. I hit the "add layer mask" button down at the bottom to create the mask. Then I need to click the visibility checkbox next to this new mask on my channels pallet, before I can paste into it. (I don't know why this is! But it is!) From here, I fiddle with the contrast, scale, and placement of my texture until it looks pretty good.
Repeat with the other 2 layers (try NOT to line up your textures - place them a bit differently each time) and you're done!
Here's a comparison at 100%, from the original version to my faked riso version:
And my final image:
It's not a huge difference, but I like how it brings warmth and life and imperfection to the image. It can really transform a piece!
Trying to get my comic hat back on a little bit.
Also trying to make some darn mac and cheese!
Here's a piece I've been chipping away at for the last few weeks. It started as just meditative little straight-to-ink sketchbook doodle. I really liked how it turned out, so I thought I'd try coloring it up as if it were a riso print. Because that means color separations, it's always a bit of a puzzle, but that keeps things new!
Here's what the original drawing looked like:
And for fun, here are a few extra colorways:
Hopefully before too long I'll have a chance to get it printed up for real!
Lately when I've been drawing, I've just been wanting to get lost in the details. I've been doing these complex ink drawings of shelves and shelves of plants.
This one started as a pencil drawing (increasingly rare for me - I'm impatient and likely to go straight-to-ink in personal work) and I wound up inking it with a fountain pen. I liked the drawing enough to want to color it, but the paper wasn't strong enough for watercolor. I decided to bust out my old copic markers (it's been years) and I'm so happy with how they worked out! It was a really fun challenge to mix up some interesting colors with a very limited palette- I only used peaches, pink, greens, and one sky blue.
A few WIP shots from Instagram:
We had the prettiest snow here a few weeks ago - big fat flakes drifting down, just enough to cover the grass in a soft white blanket. I took a long drive in the country to visit a friend and just feasted my eyes on the beautiful Breugel-esque rolling hills. It's been in my mind ever since, so here's a little drawing to get it out onto paper.
14x7, colored pencils
My sister moved from my hometown in Wisconsin to Colorado Springs this year. For Christmas, I wanted to make her something that would celebrate her new home & remind her of other home. So, I made two pieces- one (above) of Pike's Peak, the iconic mountain she can see from her new apartment, along with some other local Colorado sights and flora. I included The Garden of the Gods, some Rocky Mountain Columbine (gosh, what a beautiful flower) and some sage.
The other painting, below, is of a corner of my parent's backyard- something so specific to us that it makes my heart ache a little bit looking at it. (In a good way!) Our crooked little trees, the beautiful ponds, the golden yellow fields, my mother's favorite flower, and our steadfast great blue heron pal.
It was really lovely to return, in a way, to the landscape series I'd been creating before. I've enjoyed these types of pieces more and more as they've gotten more personal (and I can think of few places more personal to me than the backyard of the home I grew up in!)
Looking forward to falling in love with more places and drawing them, too.
I realized I should get some practice drawing interior spaces, so I dreamed up this little illo of some siblings embroiled in a fierce game of pretend. I do think I started to find fun in the background elements - I liked the storytelling I could accomplish by adding toys/clutter/etc.
It's based on a watercolor piece I did a few months back:
A post shared by liz nugent (@liznugentdraws) on
Hilariously I write in that caption that I sometimes overthink/overcomplicate things when I go digital, which I'm pretty sure is exactly what happened here anyway! At least I know myself!
I'm working on a project that involves a lot of desserts, so I decided to try and practice on a few before I really dig in! Here are a few little dessert doodles - a strawberry parfait, an ice cream sundae, and a host of mini pies!
I'm continuing my explorations of some of my Inktober pieces. One sequence I found particularly fun to draw were these little patterns of plants, drawn with a brush pen and felt tip pen. (Originals available for purchase, by the way!)
I scanned them in and took them apart into 80-something little individual icons. Photoshop did NOT enjoy that particular export-to-layers, but we survived! I then took them into Illustrator and I've been playing around with making different repeats. I've really only dabbled in this before, but it's always interesting to me.
I'm really enjoying seeing how much I can stretch & transform one set of little plants! I'm also finding myself looking around my house, visualizing patterns on every surface trying to think of what might look good where..
Now that Inktober is over and I have this collection of new work, I'm trying to go back and revisit pieces to see if I can turn any of them into interesting products or patterns.
First on my list was definitely the little cycle of cacti I doodled in red ink & ballpoint. They were simple and fun and I loved the texture created by the super thin ballpoint lines. I'm sure I'll be drawing more of the little guys in the future, too!
I scanned them in, cleaned them up, and played with the colors a bit. I actually like the red a lot, but I've been looking at red for 31 days and I'm ready for some new colors! So, I shifted them around to some shades of green and grey, which I think is a bit more calming. After that, I tossed them into Illustrator and made a quick pattern in a few variations:
I love how the pattern came together! Now I'm just trying to imagine what cute cactus-print things I could make! Wallpaper? Curtains? Pencil cases? (Can never have too many pencil cases!)
PS: The green version of each cactus is now available as a print or art card from inprnt as well! They make a really cute trio.
Whew! I made it through Inktober without missing a single day!
(I will admit, I tried to keep a few pieces ahead for a buffer..)
I've also made a little gallery of all the pieces.
For every day in October, I did a straight-to-ink painting in red & black. They're all 8"x8" and botanical/plant inspired. Beyond that... well, I tried every single thing I could think of! I used a lot of different materials - brush pens, dip pens, felt tip pens, ballpoint, markers, etc.
It was really fun trying to find ways to keep things fresh & interesting, and also going back and mining ideas to see what I could riff on. I certainly feel like I have a lot to keep building on over the next few months. That said.. I'll be glad I don't need to do it EVERY DAY anymore!
Nearly all of these pieces are available for sale on my shop. I hope to do a few prints & other things with them soon as well so stay tuned.
Had this idea rattling around in my head for a week or two - glad I managed to get it out. A friend of mine is moving away and she gave me her massive set of primsacolor pencils, including some crazy neon colors. I'm normally more into muted palettes - especially lately - but I couldn't resist. However, I have certainly learned a bit about how hard it is to digitize those crazy neon colors!
