Worst two weeks ever

I don't want to go into how bad the last couple of weeks have been other than to tell you having no internet and major computer hassles plus being horribly sick sucks. I am alive, I am attempting to keep up but it's been difficult due to the aforementioned problems. I'll post abunch of in progresses.
This is my original vector piece from the Killer Kitty study. Unfortunately, I had to leave the campus before I could finish it, and when I open it on my computer (I have CS3, the labs have CS4), it flattens and I can't pull off any gradients. I'll probably just finish it out in Photoshop.

This is an [unfinished masterstudy of Kalamu ( http://kalamu.deviantart.com ) I love the textures she uses in some of her work. I played around with this one more for the textures.



My original from Kalamu's techniques. I'm using the same brushes that I did in the first one. As I finish i'll add layers of texture to it using the rougher brushes.
Another Kalamu study. She does icons of people's characters, very flat and stylized. Nothing finished, just mostly to get the idea of how she handles the colors on the line work, and the use of the Overlay option.


Original of Sokka as Wang Fire the 'Firebender'. I'm going to do a master study of Sebastian Pether's "The Eruption of Vesuvius" and Sokka here will end up in that style (hopefully). http://www.nelson-atkins.org/art/CollectionDatabase_ImageView.cfm?id=21199&theme=Euro

Since I've been in internet isolation for the past couple of weeks, i've had to think about what exactly I want from my digital work. I think the direction i'd like to push myself in is to make it look more like an oil painting. I'd like to do a study of Joseph Ducreaux/Fairfield Porter/or John Singer Sargeant at some point. But I definately need help figuring out how to get the brushes to look "painterly".

Custom Brush Tutorial [For Mike! :D]

Sorry the quality's not the best, but it should get the point across.
Mike and I were talking about how to make a brand spanking new brush rather than editing one from photoshop. This is a really quick tutorial on how I've found out how to do that.
It all really starts with your image. Make sure it's easy to translate at different sizes. Don't use low quality, because when it sizes up, it'll be grainy. Consider line weight too if it has that. Make sure that only what you want to be the brush is on the image. Otherwise you'll have odd extra bits added on.
Go to Edit>Define Brush Preset. It'll pop up a window that gives you a brush at the size your image was drawn/pasted into photoshop.
Then use the Brush Panel to make them scatter, weight sensitive, etc. Otherwise you'll have a line of blotches/mustachioed gentlemen.

You can use this same technique for textures and such.

Hope it helped! :D

Not having access to the labs makes Megan a sad girl :(

Unfortunately for me, Key Control shut off my FOB last Friday, so I didn't get to work at all over the weekend. To be honest, i've been struggling... alot with Vector, mostly do to my being 3+ years rusty with Illustrator and even then I really didn't know it. Being a Painter first, alot of it seems counter-intuitive. I've restarted my Masterstudy multiple (5+) times because I thought I was doing something wrong. Now i've finally got something figured out (and thank goodness I saved my books from Intro to Comm. Art and the tutorials have helped), so i'll show a progress shot and i'll post the finished later.
Fortunately, I got a start on my Original last week too, so i'll post finished shots later too.

1st Masterstudy

For my first masterstudy i'll be doing a section of Mathieu Beaulieu ( http://mathieu-beaulieu.blogspot.com/ )'s Killer Kitty. I plan on doing the line work in Illustrator using the Blob Brush for the more organic lines and the pen tool for the more mechanical lines. [ I'm about half-way through the line work as I write this and so far so good!]
=Edit= Here's my line work

Digital Studio Techniques

Hey everyone, I know it's been awhile, but i'll be uploading here again for my Digital Studio Techniques class with Professor Babcock! Wish me luck!

I'm going to do an image dump now. These are just a few of the digital pieces i'm looking at that i may use through the class. http://lordbiernac.deviantart.com/

(Bobby Chiu) http://imaginism.deviantart.com/
(Sam Nielson) http://www.artsammich.blogspot.com/
(Steffi Schütze) http://missmatzenbatzen.deviantart.com/ http://www.nusillu.com/http://kalamu-art.livejournal.com/
(Andrey Maximov) http://andead.com/
(Mathieu Beaulieu) http://mathieu-beaulieu.blogspot.com/http://hellcorpceo.deviantart.com/
(Therese Larsson) http://cargocollective.com/thereselarsson
(Jana Schirmer) http://janaschi.deviantart.com

(Greg Garza) http://christmassocks.deviantart.com/(Lois Van Baarle)
http://loish.net

Next Update: What I plan to do for the first study and such.

Drawing III

I unfortunately could not find the image for the Invisible Cities piece (The Neon Signs in different languages). When I do find the image, i'll add it to these.

It's really confusing having three blogs on one e-mail. Let's try this again...