Trucker Bob - Part II

Happy Palm Sunday!

In this strange little land called Finland we have this annual tradition among the little kiddies much like the Halloween 'trick or treat' tradition in the United States that the little ones get to go door to door in different costumes and sing a little song in order to fill up their baskets with Easter candy - a little warm up for the candy fest that follows next Sunday on Easter itself.. And speaking of Easter, I was kindly asked to make some kind of nice 'home made' card for my relatives in the US and thus, I've been quite busy in the spring chores this weekend. 

On a non-Easter related note, I've also been busy this week on my free time with some sketching which has been on my 'request list' by a friend for awhile now so I've gotten a start on it which you can see below. 

 Only after I began working on this did I find out that afros are more difficult to draw than they may seem. I have been struggling with it for some time but I do think I will make it at some point.. Starting on this portrait was also difficult and I don't have the slightest clue why. However, to draw this portrait I've been using my trusty graphite pencils and of course I started with a light pencil to make the outlines and then just worked towards darker contrasts as I went. I also use the 'paper' blender, a very handy tool when it came to

  the afro - it's difficult to get even dark tones without using an endless amount of time to achieve it. 

What I do really enjoy to use is the Kneaded Eraser, because you get such good results with it; it works for any kind of lightening you want to achieve and it's just a necessity to every sketcher's tool box. 

Now, to get to my current digital arts project; Trucker Bob. Last week's recap is shown below:

What I want to do next is to focus on the tractor's tire, mostly just to add depth and texture. I don't want to get on with the tractor's body just yet because its just a massive undertaking and I haven't had enough time to fully focus on it this weekend, unfortunately.

So, in order to focus on the tractor tire I've taken the liberty of zooming in now as with the character's face and along with the zoom I decrease the size of my Airbrush and well my friends, dig in. At this point it's good to increase the opacity of my brush, so that I can achieve that grainy look that tires tend to have instead of a smooth surface you can see on the image above. 

I still just cannot figure out why my screen shots are occasionally brownish like the one on the left.. A great mystery indeed, its a shame I'm not too big of an IT or computer nerd.




Sepia screen shots aside, above you can observe how I've added quite a bit of texture to the tires, perhaps even too much for my taste but that is all in the plan for now as you see later I will come back to it and go over it once more with a light brush which will smooth-en out the texture, leaving just a slight grain that I desire. Though, for now we will leave the tire alone for a short while and get back to the tractor body. I want to start bringing in the lines and making the whole body sharper since you can start to see how it looks significantly more blurry than other parts of the image that I've been working on - except maybe the background.

Due to some complications with my software, I haven't been able to continue much further today without the help of my computer guy. I'm really experiencing a lot of computer issues these days aren't I.. Anyway, I managed to get a head start on the tractor's body, mainly the headlight area above all. I've been trying to make the rust effect look real but since it's my first time.. Always a good excuse.

Here you can see how I've kinda just began on the details around the headlight, not too specific with the coloring but we are getting there - slowly but steadily.. I believe this will be the most difficult part of the work, since I don't have too much experience with cars nor rust making. I guess I will have to leave the rest for next week since I'm running out of time.

To recap today's work, here is where I am left off now with Tractor Bob.

Well, I guess it will just have to be the recap in a Sepia tone. I give up..  I do admit, there is not too much of a difference to be seen, but the detail phase is always the longest one and the difference will most definitely show at the end when it all ties in together. Next week - I may not be able to post on Easter Sunday but I will give it my best effort - tune in to the (hopefully) finished work of Tractor Bob.