Patina Todd's Senior Project: Environment Art Blog

For the first part of the week, I mainly focused on studying from my art books (Tokyo Storefronts and Tokyo at Night by Mateusz Urbanowicz) and my favorite process videos (particularly this one , a gorgeous illustration of a futuristic megacity done in photoshop.) From them, I was able to get a better sense of architecture, lighting, and how to capture more industrial textures with digital brushes.  In the later part of the week, I primarily working on coloring the pride months illustration for The Kava Cauldron. Coloring is typically less physically strenuous than drawing line art, so it was easier on my hands that way. It was also nice to get to try out some new lighting techniques on Clip Studio Paint since I usually don't have the time to do that for every panel of the comic. Figuring out how to put the flags' colors into their outfits was a very fun challenge, and so was figuring out how to keep the colors from clashing. Overall, I actually thought it turned out really cut...

This week I finished up my work on episode 8 of The Kava Cauldron and uploaded it, then continued working on my downtown Portland illustration. I was feeling really under the weather most of this week and my hand was hurting, so I was a lot less productive than I had intended to be. Still, it always feels nice to publish an episode, so that was a nice way to start the week.  I had a lot of trouble with this particular section of the Portland illustration. While it may have been partially due to me not feeling well, I actually don't think that was the real problem. One thing I learned through this project, especially this week, is that Procreate, the program I used for this particular piece, might not have been the best tool for such a detailed illustration.  Procreate is a great program, used by professional artists and beginners alike, but I think its limits become apparent when you need a lot of detail (pixels) and a lot of layers. Because my drawing has so many pixels, I ca...