Inking with Brush

 

I recently took advantage of a discount sale and signed up to Skillshare Premium. The first course I was eager to learn from is the Ink Drawing class taught by Yuko Shimizu. 

Yuko specialises in gorgeous hand drawn ink illustrations which are published in numerous high profile magazines, book covers, posters and all sorts of products. Yuko offers two courses on Skillshare - this one was focused on inking by Brush

For my project, I created my interpretation of the Japanese comic Lone Wolf and Cub.

Floral Composition in Ballpoint Pen

 

I decided that my previous attempt at ballpoint pen art was interesting enough that I could make this into a rashguard. The geisha v demon drawing would form the front and back panel but I needed something on the sleeves. I always like including flowers on many of my designs so it seemed natural to attempt a floral composite for this project. 

Here's how I put it together.

Affinity Photo 1.9 for Digital Drawing

This artwork of an assassin schoolgirl was drawn using Affinity Photo v1.9 and is the result of following a Domestika course by the artist Thomas Rohlf. 

I first purchased both Affinity Photo and Designer several years ago. but have never actually used them. Currently I use Adobe CS 5.5 which was released way back in 2013. So far the Adobe programs still work on my Windows 10 PC  but I'm aware they are no longer supported by Adobe. Already they crash without warning every so often. They could in theory cease to function entirely one day. Hence I felt it was time I should prepare myself and learn how to use the Affinity suite of products (since I do not wish to sign up to Adobe's subscription-only model). 

More about Affinity later but first, the Domestika course that I used to create my artwork:

Ballpoint Pen Art

 

The humble biro pen has for a long time been the tool for some quite astonishing artworks by artists such as Shohei Otomo and Juan Francisco Casas. These two and many othersa show just what can be achieved with a simple ballpoint pen. So I figure I would have a go myself...

Domestika Review - Composition and Color for Creative Illustration by Marcos Chin

 

This illustration of a Chinese Lion Dance was drawn using both Illustrator and hand painted from Chinese food ingredients (a wash of diluted soy sauce, concentrated Chinese tea and dabs of dipping sauce). Blending both digital and hand painted elements brings up some weird and interesting effects to the final piece. It was created as a result of following a course on Domestika by Marcos Chin.

Domestika Review: Havi Cruz - Ornamental Lettering

 

It's currently lockdown here in the UK due to the COVID pandemic so I'm using the extra spare time I currently have to work through as many online art tutorials as I can. It's a rare opportunity for me to spend time investing in my artistic development. Vintage lettering was always something I've wanted to try my hand at so when I saw that Domestika offered a course on this topic, I jumped at the chance.

Domestika Review: Abraham Garcia, Digital Shading Techniques

 

Abraham Garcia’s distinctive retro style is what attracted me to this course. I’ve dabbled with vintage design elements in some of my work but in those cases I was just shifting around ready-made vectors and shapes. This time, I wanted to create my own original design from scratch so I was keen to see what tips I could pick up from this course on Domestika.

Domestika Review: Vero Navarro, Procreate Creative Illustration Techniques

 

This course is both a 'learn to use' Procreate course and also a brief introduction to composition and colour theory concepts. Vero teaches these sections in a very quick and easy to understand way - they are even titled as a 'For Dummies' sections - which is perfect for me!

The artwork I created can be purchased on Redbubble here.

Domestika Review: Daniele Caruso, Vector Art - Reflecting Your Style with Illustrator

 

It has been a long time since I created artwork completely using Adobe Illustrator - these days I draw all my line art in Procreate and then port it to Illustrator for colouring and layout. But I've always enjoyed the vector style of artwork created by Hydro74 and Sweyda and Daniele Caruso's (@danielexcaruso) work fits into that same style of bold, line-heavy, aggressive style of vector illustration. 

I wanted to get back into doing this style so his Domestika course served as a good moment to be inspired again. Here's how I got on...

Domestika Review: Natália Dias, Female Character Portraits in Procreate

 

Domestika is an online learning website that mainly caters towards the art and design community. Their courses cover a lot of topics from learning to paint and draw basics to game design and 3D design, craftmaking, photography etc. I was curious to try out a few of their courses and hopefully pick up some tips along the way.