Brock Samson. iPad step by step.

The second you begin to argue with people on the Internet you already lose.

I decided to move on from the idiocy I engaged in and make a step by step of making a drawing of the Venture Bros former bodyguard Brock Samson. Part of an occasional series of character portraits based off characters from the aforementioned Venture bros. After this I want to go into the obscure characters. There's a million piece some by far better people than I of the main players. This though, I'm pretty proud of.

So after the break I will break it all down.

Here's where it begins. I fired up Autodesk Sketchbook Pro for iPad and grabbed my Wacom stylus. I used to use a pogo sketch stylus but I found the tip to be lacking, capacitive foam is ok, but for sketching I like the rubber tip on the bamboo stylus. Your milage may vary. The wacom bamboo is worth it in the long run.

Anyways, I began penciling with the basic pencil tool. Using a medium gray tone from the side bar. For more complicated sketches I use a blue line to lay it out and then open a layer over it to do the standard pencils to tighten it up.

This part of the little project took roughly 10 minutes of scribbling. I have shaky hands and they cramp easily due to childhood injury and such. So I try to do the pencils for something like this all in one quick burst. I was ok with the result and I posted the sketch on twitter.

I wasn't planning on going much further than that. I did get positive feedback on it right away so I went back in a few Hours later and began inking it. This part took me a good 2 - 2 and a half hours. On and off. Give or take. Using one of the pen tools I reduced the point size to 1.0 with the opacity all the way up. Pretty elementary. Since I was in high school I developed an odd adaptable style, but a major quirk is crosshatching. I'm trying to break myself of the habit, well trying for years to not go crazy doing it. I'm not that great with coloring things. So I always used to render in black and white and use inking techniques to show light variances. When you have a hand that cramps and shakes after a short time, it gets to be a bit much. For this piece though, it felt appropriate to do my hatching.

Many breaks later, I got the inking done. The next few steps I'm adding colors on many layers. Sketchbook Pro limits the layers to 6 on a first gen iPad. Someday if I have the funding I'd like to upgrade for the higher resolution modes. It'd make for much better work. I'm getting ahead of myself now, sorry.

Before I do anything else I block out the background and hand draw the gradient. Cleaning up as I go around the inked drawing. So as to not interfere with the skin layer.

Starting with the skin tones. Layer mode set to multiply. I lay out the lighter color first and go down the line putting in shadows, not the most pro way but it gets the job done. Once that's done I then make another layer in normal mode to put in the highlights on the skin. Then I merge them together.

Next comes the hair colors. Same method. Different layers.

One thing I tried to do, which is a first time trying this on iPad, I created a separate layer and layer out some red tones. Set the layer mode to screen I believe. I should double check actually. It might be add mode. Anyways, I drew out a second low light source. It turned out ok. I think I need to study up more on how to pull off modern coloring techniques. Speed painting is one thing, but stuff like this is totally another to me.

Once that's done I then make a new layer and start on the details. The cigarette first and his eyes.

The last touch is the smoke, I found out by accident that Sketchbook Pro has a smudge tool. I seriously was unaware of this in my year using this app. So the smoke is a separate layer, drawn out lines in white and gray. Then I turned the opacity down to about 60 percent. And finally it's complete.

And now I present the final result. Done completely on a first gen iPad.

Thanks for stumbling onto my site. More to come.