Dino and Chicky in Reverse Hats

The idea for these began in October 2018 when I sketched cute animals in Halloween-themed hats, shown below. 

The starter sketch

I don't quite remember why a chicken and a dinosaur. Even then, I already knew that Chicky is a girl, thus the witch hat and wig, while Dino is a boy. I did not know what to do with them and simply marked the sketch to follow up someday.

In late 2021, I revisited Dino because I want a logo for dennyiskArt website. Below is my design process.

Dino design process

I wanted a quirky logo, thus the chicken hat and antique glasses on (1). Then I drew (2), a larger sketch of the head to find the head silhouette ("Sherlock Holmes hat") and refine the elements.

I liked (2), but it was too busy for a logo. I simplified the elements in (3) and tested the silhouette using a pumpkin hat. I preferred chicken hat, as shown in (4), and finalized the logo by adding a circle frame and a pencil holding hand.

I didn't use the image as website logo, but I thought it would be funny to pair it with a chicken in a dino hat. Accidentally, the circle frame was egg-shaped, a plus in my mind because both dino and chicken hatch from an egg.

Chicky design process

I sketched (1) around the same time a Dino's (1). I was not happy with it because the silhouette was not as strong as Dino's. Well, since Dino had rounded shapes, I thought I would use square shape for Chicky, as shown in (2) upper; and then soften it as shown in (2) lower.

After that, it was just a matter of adding details to get to (3). I drew (4) to match the circle frame and explored some variation in proportions. As the handwritten note says, I found (4) not cute. The final drawing, thankfully, was much cuter.

It was relatively easy to draw these because I love the idea. Painting was tough because I did not fully understand that look I wanted. I ended up taking a long time painting these.

"Dino" painting process

At the start I needed some time to find a cohesive color scheme. I needed to keep checking the saturation as well. I just revisited painting digitally, so I took around a month to finish the painting.

"Chicky" painting process

With "Chicky", I struggled with the shadows. Do I make them colder to contrast with the warm midtones? Are the shadows too cold? In the middle of the painting I decided to revise the shape of the shadows because I thought the nose part of the hat should cast more shadows on her face. Similar to "Dino", this took me a month to finish.

All in all, I am rather happy with these two paintings. They look cute and fun. What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments :)

Piccolo x Dr Strange

 

Final poster

I took the release of "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" as opportunity to color this image. I drew this as a part of Dragon Ball x MCU poster mini project.

In the process of coloring, I soon realized this piece was boring. After some thinking and panicking, I vaguely recalled the 70-30 rule of composition. I promptly search Youtube for videos to strengthen my understanding and found this video useful: Best kept composition secret - the 30-70 rule

In my case, I decided that 70% of the figure would be in shadows and the remaining 30% would be lit. The result is the following image.

After applying 30-70 rule

The image was still boring. On hindsight, the reason was because I did not plan the final composition. I began playing around with different methods to save this painting. One of such experiments resulted in this.

Dr-r-r-.. Strange-ange-nge-...

It was not bad, but it did not solve the problem with the lower portion of the image: either it was empty (by including only 1 set of legs) or extremely busy (by including all sets of legs). At that point it occurred to me to change the image orientation to landscape and the final poster above was the outcome.

Lesson learned: plan the final composition from the beginning.