Jill Valentine

"My, My, Valentine"

Here's my newest finished piece titled "My, My, Valentine."  I'm pleased with how it turned out overall, though the facial work is not among my best.  Her body also has a couple of issues with it (namely the really tight midsection maybe slightly elongated legs).  One I really like is the background.  I don't think I've ever seen the Gallery Room drawn before.  It's highly possible somebody has drawn it before, I've just not seen it.   Obviously the room is not a 100% representation, but I think it functions well here.  This is my last completed piece for 2011.  I plan to revise a couple of my old pieces in 2012 (including a different Jill picture I drew in 2008).

Redux

After yet another extended absence from this blog, I've returned this time with a redux image. This image below, titled "Lauren Looks Back," was originally done in 2007. I rarely see much good reason for going back and editing an image I'd already decided to quit working on (because no artist ever truly finishes an image, they only decide to stop working on it), but I felt I had improved much over the 4 years since that it would be worthwhile. And thus far it is.

 Below is a side by side comparison of the original line art from 2007 and the tweaked version from 2011. Though it is structurally the same, significant improvements have been made to the face, hair, and hands. In addition to the line art, I'm also going to recolor everything. 

All artists grow over time as they learn new techniques and different methods for doing things. The way I approached my drawings years ago is understandably not the same way I approach them 4 years later. I'm currently mulling over what, if any, of my past drawings could also benefit from a 2012 face lift.

Back in Black...

Well, not quite.  After an extended absence from this blog, I've returned.  The original concept when I created this blog was to revisit my old art work and show how I got to my current level.  Rather than write that out over several posts, it's better summarized here in this video package I assembled.  From here moving forward, I will be posting about upcoming art, sources of inspiration, and the occasional non-art related topic.  For those who are reading this, thanks for stopping by and enjoy the video.  :)

Boobs!

As mentioned in my previous post, here are some of my sexier drawings.  Like many young teenaged boys, I wanted to see things in a sexier fashion.  Although unlike many teenaged boys, I was able to bring those things to life through my illustrations.  Here are some of my notable illustrations from '04-'05.

Anime Girl

First up is this sexy pinup piece titled "Anime Girl."  As the name implies I set out to do an anime-inspired piece, though the final picture was definitely more Western-style in nature.  Still, this is one of my favorite pieces of early artwork.

Claire Pinup

Next is an image of Resident Evil's Claire Redfield who is losing her pants and underwear.  I liked Claire's model in RE2, but it was significantly better in RE:CV (and of course it would be since PS2 and Dreamcast were both more powerful than PS).   I thought the body here was okay, but the face suffered from poor proportions.  A decent effort all in all.

Jill Valentine

Staying within the realm of RE characters, this next image is one of my first efforts at drawing Jill Valentine.  I'm not sure on the exact timeline for this image, but I do know it was drawn in 2004 along with the Claire image.  Her look here was based on her appearance in the fantastic Resident Evil remake first released for Gamecube in 2002.  As with Claire above, I thought I did good on Jill's body, but the face again suffered.  I later recolored this picture using a mouse, but made no other changes to it.

Monica

Next up was another original piece I did of my character Monica.  As was a common theme in many of my pictures at that time (and still today at times), Monica had her thong showing and was wearing pants just a bit short for her backside.  As opposed to her last image where she was shirtless, this is what I envisioned more or less as her regular fighting attire (though probably without the thong showing haha).

To end out this entry, here are some of my better boob-heavy pics from '04.  In all of these I felt the body work was largely passable, but I was still struggling to draw a sexy face.  There's a couple of things that can drag an otherwise good picture down and that's a poor face and shoddy hands/feet.  I used a lot of photo reference for many of my early works (such as "Swim Girl 1" and "Jungle Queen").  It would take me years to finally realize that though photo refs have a place as an aiding tool, using them as a crutch only hampers your growth as an artist.

Swim Girl 2

Stripper

Swim Girl 1

Jungle Queen

In later posts I will show more spicy images, but that's all for now.  My next post will show some of my works from circa 2005, the year I bought my first computer and also the year I bought my first Wacom Tablet, a Graphire CTE-440.  Having the tools to effectively color things digitally heralded the end of all my colored pencil works and the beginning of learning to color on the computer, a task I am still trying to learn even today.  Excelsior!

Bringing Characters To Life

Alra Flies (sketch)

Alra Flies

One of the earliest reasons I had for developing my art was to enhance my stories.  Having read a lot of comic books growing up, I liked the pairing of pictures of words.  Some of my early pictures were versions of my original characters.  One such character was Alra, a villainess from one of my stories.  Her design was something of a mix between Mortal Kombat and Dragonball Z.  I always liked the concept of being able to shoot energy beams from the hands, which is why she's doing that.

Alra's Power

  This was circa 2004.  I didn't yet own my own computer let alone a Wacom tablet, so all my art I did back then was drawn, hand colored, and then scanned in with no additional work done on it.  Especially in early pictures, I had problems with hands and overly bony female bodies.  It wouldn't be until years later that I'd finally get a good grasp on how best to draw both.  I didn't color on a fresh trace of my images then, so most of these colored images were the original sketches just colored over.

Arla (sketch)

Arla

I also at the time liked the idea of duality with heroes and villains, so the heroine version of Alra had been named Arla and was basically the same as far as looks go (hello, Mortal Kombat palette swap!)  As with Alra above, Arla also suffered from similar anatomy issues in regards to an overly bony body and poor hands.  I had wanted to buy some Prismacolor pencils and markers to do my coloring back then, but couldn't afford them.  I made do with traditional colored pencils until I purchased my first Wacom tablet in 2005. 

Below are a couple of more of my original character pieces (except for Cloud, who is of course of Final Fantasy VII fame).  Krimsun is actually part of where my namesake comes from.  Having been a lifelong fan of WWF/E, the wrestler Kane's half-mask served as the inspiration for Krimsun's mask.  The knee pads were inspired by the "blood" knee pads wrestler Scott Hall used to wear.  I believe I based this Krimsun picture off an image of Spider-Man.  He's one of the few early pictures I did that I still really like to this day.

Jack and Monica were my two primary lovebirds in the first action, mostly non-sci-fi story I wrote inspired by the countless action/thriller movies I'd seen.  Especially in this image does my problem with hands show.  I think hands are a pain in the butt for many growing artists. 

FFVII's Cloud Strife

Krimsun

Jack and Monica

 That's it for this post.  In my next one I'll show some more of my original character pieces as well as some of my "spicier" drawings (read: BOOBS!)  Excelsior!

An Introduction

Hello, all.  I'm starting this blog in an effort to delve more into the creative process behind my art.  For those of you who may be unfamiliar, I am Krimasen from DeviantART (I have other aliases, but that is my primary one).  I've been posting my art there primarily since 2007, but have been drawing a lot longer than that  My goal with this blog is not only to showcase my works, but to chronicle my growth as an artist.  

My biggest influence on my art to this point has been the late Michael Turner.  Regardless on if his art was technically true to human anatomy, there was no denying the power and allure his drawings had.  No two artists share the same hand, but I hope to one day make art as great as his.  In my next post I will show some of my earliest pieces and talk about them some.  Of course, the quality of said pieces is not great, but that's one of the purposes of this blog to show my evolution over the years.  That's all I have for now.  Feel free to subscribe to this blog or send me an e-mail.  There will be cool stuff coming soon. :)