Recently...

I haven't done a lot of much.
I've slowly been working on my scenery picture for Day 25 but it's taking ages because I'm doing it in a really awkward way.
I've also started transcribing this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAkmOjeIVig in Guitar Pro 5 because I like it and need to practise more guitar.
I've been working on an idea for our final major project and refining ideas for other things.

I'm going to finish the two pictures I missed out of the 30 days of drawing.
I'm going to start back working on Attack Fox 1 and get it finished so I can start work on Muchos Muertes...
I'm probably not going to work on the Emma Watson picture for a bit haha
There's a flyer/t-shirt design competition for a local club (Meze) apparently coming up so I might have a bash. The prize is £500 I think.

That's it.
Bye

Day 30 (A Congrats Banner For Finishing The Challenge)

Well I made it. As Pete said earlier the girl who wrote out the challenge must have been running out of ideas at this point:

Not much to say about it. Seems like ages ago I started this but only yesterday that I was at the half way point which is weird.

Now to finish the other two. They'll be up in the coming days hopefully.

BYE

Day 29 (A Place You Want to Go)

Just about caught up. Here's yesterday's:

You should get the idea. Didn't spend long on it, thought the idea would be more interesting than how well it's drawn. It's mainly done in various digital airbrushes with some other bits and pieces added.

Last one later :)

Bye

Day 28 (Draw Anything)

A pitiful attempt at an "animation" for yesterday:

Day 28 (Draw Anything) from Oliver Elliott on Vimeo.
More like a slightly moving image really...
Based on the superb interpretation of "draw anything" by Rory.
Again created using only PS and WMM.
Last day tomorrow thank fuck :)
bye

Day 27wellnotreally

Another cop out I'm afraid.
Day 27 is draw someone you love and I'm drawing my Grandpa.
It's an important picture and, as I work quite slowly, I don't want to rush it. So, like day 25, I'm going to post what I've done so far, do the rest and then finish this one.
To make it slightly more interesting I've taken images from throughout the process so far so you can see how I make the picture. Some of the other pictures are done in a similar way so this will probably apply to them as well (annotations below):

1) The scan of the original photo of my Grandpa in the Royal Australian Air Force taken in 1944.

2) In Photoshop I alter the saturation of the picture giving it a sepia tint and up the contrast to bring out the high and low lights.

3) In Painter I draw the main lines over the photo on a new layer with the pencil tool. Normally I would draw this by hand, probably using a grid, but to save time I effectively make a tracing of it. This is cheating :)

4) Back in PS I create a backdrop from two textures, velvet and leather, from the internet. I make the velvet texture layer, on top, slightly transparent so that some of the detailing from the leather comes through and then merge the layers. 

Then I adjust the colouring and lighting to fit the picture and make the background less distracting.

5) Moving back into Painter and using the drawing from 3 I block out the main shape of the portrait using two colours of digital chalk. The colours themselves are extracted from image 2 using the dropper tool. Again this saves time :)

6) Next I use black chalk to block out all the large black sections as well as some of the black detailing. I have done this since college, not sure why. At this point it looks a bit like a graffiti stencil.

Well that's all for now. There's too many distractions here at the house in Newport!

Tomorrow will be the 30th day and I've still got three pictures to do aside from this one and Day 25 :(

Hopefully yesterday's picture will be up later on tonight.

bye

Day 26 (Something You Don't Like)

More catching up for the weekend. This is saturday's and it's two things I don't like:

Umbrellas are one of my Room 101 things and I could tell you over quite a long time how annoying, shit and useless they are but I won't. and spiders obviously.
This picture is a mixture of digital mediums I can't be arsed to list. I like it. It took just the right amount of time.
Going to try and get more done tomorrow as I've put it off a bit today and went into town for quite a while.

In other news I played the Vanquish demo and it is awesome. Also Craig Devine (Speccy Twat Camera Hire) has asked me to do another logo for him so I'm going to do that and hopefully he'll use it this time.
BYE

Day 25 (Scenery)... kind of...

Ok as you might be aware I moved back to Newport on friday and haven't had much time to draw blah blah blah.
As I'm quite stubborn and anal, I have to finish this 30 days from when I started so there will be a picture for every day of the 30 even if it wasn't done on the actual day. If that makes sense.
Well I've prepared the pictures for the last 3 days and am about to start working on the final images, however the one for Day 25 is going to take a very long time by the look of it so I'm going to post the mock-up (the altered photograph) for now, work on the others and come back to this one when they're done.
Actually I'm going to post the original photo as well to show you some of the progression the pictures go through when I'm doing one:

It's the view from Pete's room at Newport. Mine's very similar but I can't see "The Hill" and I wanted to get it in this picture.
Anyway apologies for the lack of an actual picture but I promise it will be done soon.
More catching up to be posted later on hopefully.
bye

Day 24 (A Couple)

Very quick/rushed one as I've spent most of today doing yesterday's and seeing people before I go back to Newport.
It's Charlie Brooker and Konnie Huq who got married recently:

Was thinking about doing Steve and Sarah because it's Steve's birthday but I thought it might be weird and gay and I couldn't be arsed.
Probably won't be a picture tomorrow as I'm moving back but will hopefully catch up over the weekend.
bye

Day 23 (Something You Need)

Yesterday's (was painting at Dad's again and was knackered).
Fairly self explanatory:

Background of digital oils with Mr. Motivator in something called tints or tinting or something...

Very pleased with it. Hopefully today's up laterz.

Bye