Saturday, October 31, 2015

Halloween Bunny

I'm officially hating on Halloween but I still had to take my chance to do some drawing...

The Halloween Bunny

Making of...
10-4 //Niklas

Monday, October 12, 2015

Fadescape Doodle + Process

Draw-as-you-go type of doodle. Decided on color values and a theme and just ran with it. Came out nice. I couldn't resist placing a Wacom-stylus in there.
The Fadescape doodle. Click to enlarge.
[Update- 2015-10-14]
I recorded my screen while painting above picture. Now I've compiled the raw material into a YouTube clip. You can see that here below.






10-4 //Niklas

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Self Portrait

After using the same cartoony profile picture on social media now for ages I decided a new one was needed. I actually "cheated" here and used a photo for template when sketching down the ink. Then I went freestyle on color and shades. I think it has a cool end-of-last-millennium-adventure-game air to it.

Niklas Häggström - Self Portrait
Self portrait.
10-4 //Niklas

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Inktober #3 - Goblin

My entry for Inktober the third, a Goblin. Quick and dirty but sort of nice anyway.

Inktober #3 - Goblin


10-4 //Niklas

Inktober #2 - Devil

A bit late but here's number two for Inktober a.k.a. Drawlloween. Todays subject: "Devil". A bit late and a lot of a mess. Probably shouldn't share this because of the quality, but hey. It's something at least.

Inktober #2 - Devil

10-4 //Niklas

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Inktober #1 - Ghost

My contribution to the Inktober event, aka Drawlloween. #1 - A ghost. Not much to say here...

Inktober #1 - Ghost

10-4 //Niklas

Monday, September 28, 2015

Little Crazi and the Tooth Fairy + process

I've spent the last month trying to figure out Photoshop and Illustrator. I've got to say that drawing in Photoshop is a very pleasant experience, mostly. My biggest "come-the-f**k-on!" is the fact that you can not easily and in an natural manner change the size of the eraser when using a Wacom tablets eraser at the top of the stylus. When using a brush with the tip of my stylus I press an Express Key configured to CTRL+ALT plus a stylus button configured as a right click and then I drag the stylus right/left to decrease/increase the brush size. Doing this maneuver while the pen is flipped still resizes the standard brush, not the eraser, and it seems like there is no other way to do this. The only way I've managed to resize the eraser is to:

  1. Flip the stylus back to its tip
  2. Select the eraser tool
  3. Resize the eraser
  4. Select brush again
  5. Flip the stylus back to the eraser.

This. Is. A. Hassle.

More on the PS/Illustrator experience in a later post. Yesterday I finished my first drawing in Photoshop. I realized when I was done that this piece was probably more than a little bit inspired by the I Hate Fairyland comic by Skottie Young. Well, this is the result:

Little Crazy and the Tooth Fairy
Little Crazy and the Tooth Fairy (click to enlarge)

 The process

Below is a animation of the process of drawing this picture. In general, it goes as follows:

  1. Define a clear easily readable silhouette.
  2. Sketch rough on new layer.
  3. Iterate the sketch for more details and clean up as you go until happy.
  4. Ink up the line art on new layer.
  5. Select the new silhouette (magic wand outside ink, invert selection shrink selection by 2 px).
  6. Fill the character silhouette with black on new layer below ink.
  7. Lock transparency and apply base colors.
  8. On new multiply layer between ink and color: apply shade. Don't use black/gray, pick a color, this makes it more alive. I also used a layer mask here to make it easier for myself.
  9. Apply a darker and more saturated tone of same color to create heavier shades where needed. 
  10. Add highlights where needed on a new screen layer above the shades.
  11. Apply squashed fairy.
  12. Add balloon, text, background and other decorations as you see fit.
  13. Sign the thing.


Little Crazy and the Tooth Fairy, Process
Little Crazy and the Tooth Fairy, Process.

That's it for now.
10-4 //Niklas Häggström