Colour Study

I need to do more studies! So I delved into my art folder and to find a painting to copy from and decided this one was good for studying skin tone colours. Im afraid I dont know who the original artist :( More to come

Ghostly Passion

Done for the next Sketchoholic competition hosted by Daniela Strijleva. The topic was 'Ghost' and I tried to do something with a different feel to my usual work. The temptation was there to create a gruesome monster but I thought Id try depicting something more atmospheric and softer.
Oh... check out the Epose 8 artist profiles, you might find a familiar face there :P

Its A Me Ben Ho

It was International Self Portrait Day and tons of artists around the world drew and painted their creative lil faces! Ive been playing football so maybe thats why I look tired... or maybe its because Im thinking "it doesnt look like me!" :P

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Hope you all didnt get too drunk! This is me with my costume.... nah I actually just had some crappy face paint on :P

Landscape Study

Study from photo reference. No colour picking, trying to judge the colours myself. I also wanted to observe clouds more.

Banishment of Beauty

This has been passed around the net on other artist blogs and just in case you missed it Im dropping it here too. Very intriguing documentary and it made me take a step back and look at my own work. Worth a watch :)

Bull Mask

Something that came from an experiment. Been doing some quick texture abstracts as warm ups and I saw a face in one of the paintings and decided to run with it and flesh it out. It was fun to try a new approach, its the kind of thinking that created the old Fish Deity painting that got me into Expose 8. I was thinking of doing another piece styled like that since it got me some success in being published. Its not my bread and butter style of work but its nice to explore new territories and it has an exciting feel to it when you are discovering the painting as you go along.

Colourful XD

Spur of the moment watercolour! Suddenly felt like painting with watercolours and to do something a bit whimsical. Colours are enhanced and texture paper added digitally.

More Skethbook Pages

Havent updated in a while with proper artwork so I thought Id scan some pages in to show you what Ive been doing. I used to be precious about my sketchbooks trying to make each page a pleasing drawing all the time but Im realizing that a sketchbook for me is about making mistakes, learning and experimenting. Its not about making a pretty picture, thats for when I deliberately want to do that. Crammed in these pages are studies from anatomy books, studies of other artists and some of my unreferenced drawings to practice how much I memorized from the studies. There are more pages but these are the ones that looks less like a mess.
All drawn with a leaky ballpoint pen :P I like the marks made by a damaged pen. Some of my anatomy studies are concentrated on one aspect like the hand or the shoulder and peck muscles. Just like in animation, I find it easier to think about one thing at a time.

Expose 8

Hey guys! Look what got delivered to the office today! Waaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!! Its Ballistic Publishing's Expose 8!!!!! Heres a photo of the cover and the page Im on. A bit bizarre to be next to Andrew Jones there, I remember reading magazines about him, wouldnt have thought Id be opposite his work in a book! He was also someone I looked at whilst creating this artwork so I guess we've come full circle :P It brightened up my already bright day :D
Cheers again to the Ballistic Publishing team! Its an honor! *salute*

EDIT: Special thanks to all my friends and peers who have been a great support :D

Kung Fu Romance - Animation

Here it is! The grad film I made with Tunde Jaji and Keith Rowsell for our final year on the Animation Production course at the Arts Institute at Bournemouth (now the Arts College University at Bournemouth). Hope you enjoy the show!

Hooray for random updates!

Been looking at the Toy Story 3 art book and felt compelled to paint something in the style they did their colour scripts.

More anatomy studies here. The bottom ones are from my head trying to apply what Ive been studying. One of the things Ive learned is to work the figure in stages from gesture to structure and back to gesture again, then structure once more and its a repeat of this process jumping between the two all the time to get the best of both worlds. That is fluidity and movement of gestures and the solid foundation of structures.

Exile of Hell

A demon spat out of hell into the mortal world for his allegiance to a usurped demon lord and is now bound within the walls of a human body.

Tips n Tricks #9: Stamp Brush

Its been a while since I dropped some tips here so lets sort that out. Theres so much to learn in art and its fantastic that we have something like the internet that makes it easier for us to share ideas and help each other to learn. I am always keen to teach and help out where I could because many kind people helped me out and they told me how they were helped by others too so its almost like passing the mantle. Since we are all learning here and always on that road to become the best artist you can be, lets all take up that mantle now and I hope you all learn something and talk to your mates about it so that we can teach each other!
So this time round we have..... stamp brushes!!!!! This is a photoshop brush of a silhouette that you dont paint with but you use to just stamp one single mark on. So here I have a tree brush that I clicked once on the page to make the silhouette, I have it on its own layer and lock it's transparency so that I can paint freely inside it without breaking the shape. And thats as complicated as it gets! In step 3 I actually added a light haze behind the tree to punch out the contrast otherwise it would be lost in the background because of its dark on dark values. Give it a try! Stamp brushes are great for reoccurring objects like plants, buildings or any other objects you can find.

Exile wip

More progress. Taking my dear time I know :p
I thought the limited colour made it a little boring especially since I love colours (you'll rarely see me do a dull atmosphere) so I tried to think of ways to add variety there. I hanged parts of his clothing's colours as well as tinting the fog behind him and on his skin too. The values were tricky to workout, this is a dark valued character on a dark background but the haze and backlighting could punch him out and some light valued skin and shirt can help bring in the contrast around the focal areas.