S&F Extra - January 2024 (Patreon)

It's time once more for S&F Extra! Here's a behind-the-scenes look at what I've been up to over the last month. (When I was not busy being sick, haha!)

Procreated
As y'all probably already know, over the past year I've been experimenting with making art and comics on my iPad using Procreate. But lately, I've been getting some questions about which things I'm making on there. The truth is, it's not always easy to tell, as I've been experimenting with styles that are both similar and different to my "normal" art. Let me show you what I mean!

First off: the dragons piece! For pieces like these, I'm going for a tight-but-organic pencilled look. I'm doing the finished lineart with the Peppermint pencil brush, building it up a little with overlapping lines to give it that "sketch" quality. Then I'm colouring everything it freehand with the "gloaming" brush, which gives the colours a soft textured look. And I let myself slip outside the lines a little to give it the organic vibe of one of my marker pieces! 

Click here for a full timelapse video of the making of the Dragon drawing!

I think pieces using this particular art style is easiest for my readers to identify as being done on the ipad, just because they look so different from my usual stuff! Because it's a little deliberately imprecise looking, it's a style that I can pull off while holding the ipad in my hand like a sketchbook, which was particularly appealing when I was sick and couldn't be at my desk.

Until recently, I've only really used this style for illustrations and Saucy Hippo pin-ups. But while I was sick, I started making some actual comics using this method, and I have had fun continuing to experiment with that! This Mickey Mouse comic is one example:

Click here for a full timelapse video of the making of this comic! 

I have to say, I've really been enjoying playing around with this look. It has a fun energy!

But... Procreate definitely doesn't require this sketchy look! For example, this Christmas Amulet comic was done in Procreate, too:

Click here for a full timelapse video of the making of this comic! 

While I still used that "gloaming" brush to colour the background and give it that painted look, I drew the character art with normal "inked" lines and flat colours.  This combo is also what I used for all of my 2023 Summer Beach Party comics!

I find doing inked-style lineart in Procreate satisfying, but a little fussy. I am still learning how to avoid getting a slight wobbling in my lines that I don't get when using real brush pens on paper. But with a little extra effort, I can get a style of inked line art that I think is hard to distinguish from my regular art.

So much so, in fact, that I actually switched back and forth in our current Saucy Hippo comic, "Personal Training". Some pages were inked on paper, some were inked in Photoshop on my wacom tablet,  and some were inked on the iPad in Procreate! 

Personally, I think it's pretty hard to tell the difference, especially because I still coloured all three in Photoshop for a consistent colouring style.

Meanwhile, this Barbie piece was drawing on paper with brushpens, but coloured in Procreate. So despite the painted style background, this lineart was not done on the iPad.

So in conclusion... it's not always easy to tell what the heck I'm making this stuff in. But that's probably good, as it's (hopefully) a sign I'm learning how to use all these different tools! And I definitely am enjoying having different options to play with.

Link to the Dogs
Meanwhile, in the firmly traditional corner of Sam art, here's a quartet of pet portrait commissions -- all doggos dressed as Link, all done with ink and copic markers!

You'll find bigger copies of all four drawings in the gallery above!

I always am sure to as if people want "normal" Link or "Breath of the Wild" Link. I suppose I could get really specific and start asking if they want particular iterations of green Link!

Happy New Years
Here's a look at the making of one more sketch-style Procreate piece... this one for New Years! I was still pretty sick when I drew this, haha! You'll see in the timelapse that I briefly entertained giving Fidgital a bagpipe rather than a trumpet, before deciding I did not have the energy to learn how to draw bagpipes. Ha!

Click here for a full timelapse video of the making of this comic! 

Copic dogpile
Here's one more pet portrait... this one drawn at the unusually large size of 11x14! I took this photo of the piece next to the pile of markers I used to draw it.

Teri Pin-Up
And last but not least, here's a little pin-up I drew for my childhood pal Alex Steacy's birthday, of his character Teri from his comic Space Shipping! She's a robot, and the comic is set in the future, so I thought I'd draw her contemplating an obsolete cable:

I'll probably share a nsfw alt of this piece on the Saucy Hippo later, since much like myself, Alex does a mix of sfw and nsfw comics with his characters. (Although I will warn anyone who chooses to check his work out... the nsfw stuff gets way spicier than the kind of stuff I do, haha!)

Well, I hope you enjoyed this abnormally wordy tour through my latest stuff! See you again soon, team.