Admiral Ackbar Watercolor

I cannot get enough of Star Wars! I love all of the designs and alien creatures. Ever since I was a kid I have been obsessed with all of the little details. ALOT of my childhood was spent reading the Star Wars Encyclopedia. I am pretty sure I read that thing from cover to cover (and now ALOT of that is no longer Star Wars cannon....what am I doing with my life?). With these new movies coming out and listening to Star Wars Minute podcast from start to finish, I am in a Star Wars fever pitch! (P.S. if you haven't listened to Star Wars Minute Podcast you should! http://www.starwarsminute.com/)

So with all of that excitement and encyclopedic knowledge, I decided to start a new set of art work, Star Wars watercolors. I'll admit I am a newbie when it comes to watercolors and it takes a bit for me to get motivated to bring them out and practice...but that's where Star Wars comes in!

So for this painting I went with the ever lovable Admiral Ackbar. I started first with a pencil sketch, then moved on to the water colors. I tried my best to create a glazed layer effect by laying multiple levels of paint dry on top of each other. While laying down the watercolors, I pinched little bits of salt into the wet paint to create the sort of cloudy color mixes in the space backdrop. Finally I used my white correction paint and an old tooth brush to make the star patterns in the background. So that's it for this painting, but keep an eye out soon for more!

Admiral Ackbar - It's a Digital Painting!

Last night I started to paint in the colors for my original line sketch, but I didn't really like the way that they were coming out. I was following a tutorial in Imagine FX magazine and I think I was doing it wrong. I'll Post the image at the bottom of the post. 

I decided to do a study in black and white of the characters face, in order to practice my painting skills. I wanted to not have to worry about color, but more on the actual form. I plan on doing a few more of these, just as practice. Here is what I created.

 

So here is the coloring job I did on the line drawing. I think the problem I had was that I was trying to paint it, when coloring it like a coloring book would have been a better approach. I did a grey under-painting and then painted over the top with a single color. Everything turned out kind of saturated and I decided to leave it.

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Admiral Ackbar - Digital Drawing

It's been awhile since my last drawing update, but here is my newest artwork that I can show you. Admiral Ackbar! The Mon Calamari leader of the Rebel fleet in Star Wars Return of the Jedi. He is famous for his odd appearance and "It's a trap" line. Ackbar and his fellow fish-head friends were some of my favorite Star Wars aliens as a kid.

For this drawing I went completely digital. I drew everything in the computer using my Wacom tablet and Photoshop. This is just a line drawing at the moment but I plan on creating a digital painting. I am not sure if I will be replicating this exact process in the future, due to the fact that it is a little hard to create clean lines in the computer, but we shall see. Also I have included a bonus pencil sketch, enjoy!