Motorcycle Render Part 2.

Here is the second installment of the motorcycle rendering project (moving forward from Part 1). I've narrowed it down to a few designs that I like, but I wasn't able to pick one single body shape. Rather I decided to combine elements from a few different sketches and ideas. In order to get some rough sizing and proportions worked out, I've jumped ahead to build a really quick and dirty model in SolidWorks. I plan on using this as an underlay to continue to work up the design by hand on paper. Eventually, once I have finalized the design, I'll go back the computer modeling. It's important to work out all the details before moving back into the computer... after all its garbage in, garbage out!

Check out the spinning animation after the jump! 

Watercolour Blots

My right hand hasn't  been feeling so great these past days, most likely due to the overload of computer/mouse-related projects. I figured I should probably stay away from anything digital for this next entry. Looking around my room, I found a brand new Moleskine (yet another Christmas gift).

I wanted to do a watercolour to break into this new book, so I got my palette, glad to be almost ready to go and realized that I should probably wash it before commencing a new painting. But people often say that a colour palette, which has some leftover colour from previous work is actually better to work with than a sparkling clean one. I like this theory.

My used watercolour palette

I mixed some colours together and randomly spread them over one page of the Moleskine. I then closed it and pressed hard, getting this result.

Watercolour blots on the Moleskine

Now for the most fun part: seeing things within the randomness of colour. In this case, I saw a mysterious girl getting away in a carriage.

Mysterious Lady

Noses

Noses are hard to draw. Human anatomy is all together hard to draw, but facial features seem particularly tough because we see hundreds of faces everyday and so it's easy to spot when one looks wonky on a page. I decided to give noses a try and I quickly realized how complicated they can be! Below is a page of some of the better attempts.

Daler Rowney Liquid Acrylic

I have hinted to friends and family that if they don't know what to get me for Christmas, to get art supplies. So this year I got some cool Daler Rowney liquid acrylic in Genesis Green.

Daler Rowney liquid acrylic in Genesis Green. And a fancy blue pen.

It is closer to ink in consistency and since I haven't worked in ink for a long time, I thought it would be a good idea to bust out some colour paper and see what this sparkly green acrylic has to offer.

30 minutes later and with a bit of Photoshop tweaking, here is what I had. The ink did not look as green on paper as it did in the bottle, which was a bit disappointing, but overall, the metallic shining effect was very nice. I think next time I'll try black paper instead of purple.

The Hair

Motorcycle Render Part 1.

I recently visited the Annual Motorcycle Show and got inspired by many of the 2011 models. In fact, for the first time ever, I had the opportunity to see my favorite motorcycle. With my own eyes, I saw the The beautiful F4 built by MV Agusta . Anyway, I decided to start sketching out ideas for motorcycles. I'm not sure yet if it's going to have a gas engine, or be powered by electric motors.

Here is the beginning of the process, the first round of rapid ideation... a bunch of quick sketches to get the ideas flowing.

Scratching the Itch

About a month ago I had an urge to paint. It's an urge I rarely feel but I had some free time and decided to go with it. After a quick trip to the local art supply store I returned home with a handful of Winsor & Newton acrylics and got busy scratching the itch.

This painting now brightens my living room.

On an 18" x 36" canvas, this was the result. The only constraint I gave myself was that this painting was going to brighten the blank wall above my living room couch. With some great tunes in the background I spent a few hours and just had fun learning to paint again.

The second painting in my recent spree.

Within a few days I was back at the art supply store adding to my new collection of acrylics. This piece (18" x 24") started to resemble the sun pretty early on. I liked the direction and went with it.

New Markers

Got some awesome Tria and Faber Castell markers for Christmas, so I decided to give them a try and sketch for a bit.

Tria Three-nib markers in cool and warm greys.

Warm and cool grey markers are essential for design sketching as they are great for defining areas of light and shadow. Something I wanted to try for a while too is a blending marker, which makes transitions between colours smoother on paper. The Faber Castell markers on the other hand have one tip that is flexible, so line variation can be achieved easily.

Having not sketched in market for a while, it took some time to decide on the subject of the sketch. While thinking about what to draw, I tested out the markers on some Letraset paper. Pretty cool.

Some initial doodles with the new markers.

As I looked around the room, I saw my laptop, which was fully charged and did not need the power cord for a while. So I drew the power cord connector. First in pencil, then in marker. A simple object at first glance, it contained a lot of detail! Plus, the fact that it is a white object made the sketch a great excercise for capturing light and shadow right. An hour later, here is what I had.

Marker and pencil sketch of a Mac power connector.