Marker Painting!

I've started to get back into coloring in traditional media and I really wanted to try "marker painting". I've been told several times that my more intricate pictures I've colored with markers over the years looked like watercolor, so I thought I'd experiment with rendering a picture with just makers.

I feel like eventually I should show a walk through process, but I guess there will be time for that later if I decide to continue working in this technique... Which I probably will... :)

I really like the look of it, but I'm still trying to get comfortable with it and take risks. It's a learning process I'm more than happy and willing to go through.



This is my character Leo-Rey, "The Last Golden Monkey" from the jungle planet, Oasis. Being the last golden monkey, he's adopted... By an Alligator. He also has a pet cobra. His earlier character design appears in my 2010 animation, "DTV".

I recently redesigned Leo-Rey and made a progress sheet for him.



The first one was done the year I graduated from high school, the second was done a year before I graduated from college, and the last was done a year after college. The one from 2010 wasn’t so much an update of my style, as it was me purposefully drawing the same character, in the same style from 2006.

Now, when I draw Leo-Rey in this more “cartoony” style, I want to showcase his more animated and hyper personality that I don’t feel I was getting across in the way I originally drew him. I’m going to mess around with his design until I’m more pleased with it, but I like the direction he’s going in.

Also, I recently created another marker painting for my mother's birthday.

Princess Aoi is a character I made for my mom's birthday last year that worked themselves into the continuity of a story with my other characters. Princess Aoi is a pixie and she is the Princess of Seifa-utaki forest.

Aoi's battle outfit is a combination of Japanese and Spartan style armor, as well as a couple of others. Even though Aoi lives in Japan, her armor is a bit of a hodgepodge...

I'm not entirely happy with this... There are a lot of mistakes... I feel that things got a little too muddled together and the highlights & shadows are sort of off, but as long as my mom's happy with it, I guess that's all that counts. :)

Funny thing though... I drew the leaf on Aoi's helmet the way I did because, truthfully, I wanted it to look all "swirly and pretty". However, I realized after I finished this picture that it's shaped like an "S". My mom's name is Sandra... ♥

Happy Accidents FTW.
  
I will say that with my first Princess Aoi picture that was created last year around the same time just a few posts down from this one, I really need to start picking up the pace with my updates. Well, I am making new film, so hopefully more news on that soon!