The Curious Concepts Project: Finished! Hooray!

Well it's done, totally finished. The Curious Concepts Project, for those who haven't been following along, was a small Kickstarter project I had been working on. Originally planned out to last 6 months, life thought it would be funny to cause a whole mess of tiny yet annoying delays, so the project stretched out to a little longer than a year. Otherwise I think it went well.

Summing up what I was asking of backers: " See some cool illustrations, Help make them available online, & Take part in the creation of a whole new series". And I'd have to say this project was pretty successful in doing those things. For one thing, these now exist;

(Read more about my illustrations on DeviantArt)

Some of them are available on Etsy, along with many of my other illustrations/digital paintings. And thanks to the funds from this project - They're actually affordable and easy to ship now.

There's also a whole mess of Haiku Letter Drawings, which you can see on DeviantArt. Here are some of my favorites;

N.C. Sailor Boy - Haiku Letter Drawing by Kyle-Lefort on DeviantArt
Desert Sunset - Haiku Letter Drawing by Kyle-Lefort on DeviantArt
Thank You Flowers - Haiku Letter Drawing by Kyle-Lefort on DeviantArt
Bubbly Frog - Haiku Letter Drawing by Kyle-Lefort on DeviantArt

If you would like to see all the blog posts about this project, just follow the Curious Concepts Project tags.

In closing, I would like to thank everyone: For backing the project, for re-blogging/sharing the project so others knew about it, for following, for reading my posts, for commenting,... Thank you so much. I appreciate it, I really do. ^_^

So what's next? We we'll just have to wait and see.

The Curious Concepts Project: "Devon" & Done

So funny story...I was getting ready to wrap up the Curious Concepts project (double checking that I've done everything, getting ready to order prints, etc.) when I noticed something - I never posted the finished "Devon" illustration. At least, I couldn't find any blog post for it. Part of extending this project to a full year can be blamed on computer troubles, so I'm guessing that post just got lost in the shuffle. Oh well, it's done and I'm posting the WIP images now. ^_^

(If you would like to see the original W.I.P. post for this illustration, click here)

I was getting stuck on the background (the original photo was all black), and the forshortening of the fingers was tripping me up, so I started drawing in semi-random shapes and textures in the background (to make it more interesting), and then ended up just cropping out the arms all together.

More textures in the back, and I added in parts of the original photo. 

The face looks a little more realistic now.

The background was getting a bit too busy so I decided to make it blurred and monochromatic 

~ Green was not a good color choice.

Gray was a much better choice, and I found a neat square texture brush in Photoshop - Now that's what I call a nondescript background. ^_^

I also did some erasing and cleaned up some lines, but that's not as noticeable here.

And there we have it, "Devon"

The Curious Concepts Project: A Bunny WIP

Hello Everyone! How are you? How's life? Anyone waiting for an update on The Curious Concepts Project? Good News! That's what I'm posting about today. ^_^
I'm behind on these blog updates (sorry about that), so I'm hoping this post will catch things up.

Before I forget to mention it, the results are in from Facebook. This illustration is now titled "To the Edge and Back";

Thank you to everyone who voted on the name. ^_^

And now what I've been working on lately, by request of my very good friend Elizabeth -"A Bunny"

I asked what kind of bunny should I be drawing, 

but "A Bunny", is the only input I was getting

which meant I could do whatever I wanted (yay!). 

So I drew this classy looking fellow.

I decided to go with red and green since I rarely use those colors together outside of Christmas. Red became more of a pink and purple, but oh well, I have very few rules to follow on this one.

The next few of these are the paintbrush tool and playing with filters to make a really cool background effect.

And some burn tool, shading the bunny.

 I really liked the colors at this point, 

but the bunny looked a lot like plastic 

and you can see the seams of all the layers I'm using.

So I went a lot darker with the shading,

and then I picked out a few shades of pink to paint in as fur.

See?

Cleaned up the lines.

Messing with layer filters again.

Now it looks like it has a little fur, but it's not quite right yet.

Painted in another layer of fur to even out the colors/shading.

The background had gotten a little gray looking so I painted in more green.

Blurring and filter effects.

 More painting and shading. Here we are now. 
Not quite 100%, but it's pretty close to finished.

This new series is almost done now. All of the finished illustrations I posted earlier in the year have been color proofed/test printed. I have to brighten up one of them, and of course make sure the last couple illustrations are printing ok too. Then off to the printers they go.

The Curious Concepts Project: "Colors" - Let's Name It

Ok, I'm 99.999% sure "Colors" is finished and ready for a test print. One problem though: "Colors" was only meant to be a working title.

I talked to Vitt, the person who requested the colors I used for this piece, and she had several ideas.

So here's what we're going to do. You guys get to pick. This is open to anyone capable of commenting on my public Facebook page. ~It's not a contest or a giveaway, or anything like that. We're just picking a title. Ok? Ok. ^_^

Here is the last batch of WIP shots;

Some more shading.

Painting in a big wave,

More painting,

The burn tool,

  Erasing some extra bits, 

and playing with transparencies to make the wave look more like water. 

Done!

If you would like to place a vote for a title,
Please Click Here to head on over to Facebook.

I'll leave that open until the end of April.

Thanks everyone.

The Curious Concepts Project: WIP "Colors"

I've been working on "Colors" (still a working title), so it's time for an update;

 As a reminder, 

This is the sketch I'm painting over.

I traced over my lines in Photoshop to create selection paths. 

You can't see the paths themselves here, but I used them to add in the colors,  

Navy Blue, Purple, and "Silver", which you can see.

Not sure if I've explained this enough yet, but all those shapes/colors are on different layers, one of the perks of using a computer. When I work on digital paintings I can go over AND under what I've already painted in. I can also hide and reveal layers as needed.

Used a soft edge brush tool to add some stars.

A texture brush + the burn/dodge tools.

More burning and dodging. The stripes were given identical textures, 

so you couldn't see them very well until I started shading.

Because you can never have too many dots, 

I used a hard edge round brush and made this spotted pattern.

And it's hard to see here, but I painted a layer of texture onto the ship.

Used the paths again to remove the purple spots

 from anywhere they weren't supposed to be.

Took the round brush and switched the edges back to a soft setting. 

Then I selected the Dodge tool and went over each of the purple dots, 

so now they look round and dimensional instead of just flat purple.

Hard to explain this part. 

Basically I took the original purple lines and blurred them. The selection paths were used to keep  the lines' edges from blurring too. I added a new layer of blue underneath, again using the paths so nothing else in the image would be affected. The blue is showing through the purple a little now.

Painted in some shadows behind the ship and large striped shape at the top.

I also did some more shading.

It's not finished yet, but the next time you see this, it should be. :)
(and I will have figured out a real title-might ask Vitt what she thinks)

The Curious Concepts Project: WIP "Devon" and ..."Colors"

I was working on these two over the holidays, and now it's time to post my progress so far.

As you may remember, Devon's request was a picture of Neil.
So, of course, Neil's request: Devon.

Once again, I was told to grab a photo off of Facebook.
Not sure who took the original, so I'll start by posting it after I already started painting in Photoshop.

It's going to look goofy before it looks awesome. 

Always remember that when using Photoshop.

Flat Colors! 

Not sure about the orange background, but it works for now.

Starting to shade with the burn tool.

More shading, and painting in details.

It's getting there.

 

I also started an illustration using Vittoria's color choices:  

Navy Blue, Purple, and "Silver".

 Silver is in quotations because it's going to be more of a gray. Although printed on metallic photo paper, it might look silver-kinda hoping that works out because Vitt did request silver...

My plan for this one was to just start drawing and see what happened.

I ended up with a ship sailing into infinity.

neat.

As you can see, no actual coloring done on that one-yet. I think it's off to a good start though.

The Curious Concepts Project: "Neil" - Painted and Ready For Proofing

Yay! I finished another illustration. 

The last time you saw this one, I was debating what to do about the eye in the shadows.
I went with the eye patch;

Now he's a space pirate.

A little cropping, and some more shading.

Even more shading-Annnnddd...Done.

Neil.

Another illustration ready for a test print, and 3 more illustrations to go.