A New Sweater!

A friend of mine was kind enough to knit me a sweater and a scarf! I'll be the warmest guy on campus...

"Homework Time"

I'm so glad I'm done with Math and Science classes...

Reed Gunther!

Here's a fun pin-up I did of Reed Gunther, the bear-ridin' cowboy!

Caricature Samples

This Summer as well as last Summer I've been doing caricatures at local fairs and events. It's a pretty small operation but a lot of fun! It's a one man job of setting up my tent, putting out my stand with samples on it, setting up my easel and waiting for the brave onlookers to step inside.

Sadly, I've only one more caricature gig (before I head back out to school) at a nearby car show next Saturday (afterwards, I'll be leaving straight to Detroit to pick up Kassandra from the airport!! =D)

I've learned a lot about caricaturing by doing live drawings. It's much different then sitting in your studio drawing. It's exciting, nerve wracking, fast, and constantly changing. I've met funny people, quiet people, goofy people, old people and young people, strange people, people of all shapes and sizes, and have poked fun of them all. You get people that want you to draw them doing the weirdest things, or draw different subjects, and you've got to be ready!

I had one lady who wanted me to draw her two white poodle (rat) dogs. It was raining at the time and the dog's expensively groomed white got pretty muddy from walking so darn close to the ground. That was funny enough, but after I drew them (without drawing the mud of course) the lady began to wipe off the dogs paws on my chair. And that was that.

Stories like that make it all worth it to me. It's a blast and a great way to make some cash, and get faster and better at drawing caricatures along with weird poses, props and all kinds of stuff.

Here's some samples I've hung up in the past demonstrating the type of look a customer should expect on their finished caricature.

"How to Lose all your Friends"

Being in college, it comes as pretty standard that I have a Facebook. There's a lot of hype about it but overall, I think it's a useful and fun tool. I use it a lot more during school when my friends have more to talk about than "Summer Work". It's a great way to stay in contact with friends about classes, homework, the occasional party, and... photos.

It's pretty normal for a college student to have been tagged in a couple hundred photos. Photos showing profiles, straight-on shots, full body shots. And of course the person is in tons of different outfits, in different settings, different moods and expressions, etc. It's like a personal photographic study of each person!

How perfect then for caricature studies? Here's a couple of my friends that I've been doing and putting them in a "album" on Facebook called, "How to Lose all your Friends". Of course, a lot of people who see these won't know if the likeness is there or not but I thought I'd share anyway!


The Beautiful Kassandra

Tommy

Scott

Molly



David


As I've mentioned before (finding out that many others do this as well) I keep a folder on my desktop of fun photos I might use for reference/studies.

Animation

It's been a while since I did any animating and after seeing Pascal's great shorts he seems to just whip out effortlessly, I was inspired to try to get back in the animating groove a bit.

Click here

Enjoy!

Yeti

This is my first submission as a participant of DrawerGeeks.com! It's a cool site with some great artists so I'm happy to be a part of it!

The Joker

Here's some process work from start to finish on a Joker piece I did. I absolutely loved the Dark Knight as did millions of others. It was so refreshing to see a big "blockbuster" that actually had great acting and writing. I hope we get more movies like that!

Heath Ledger's performance was too cool! I've continued to think about all the mannerisms and quirks he did to create the Joker. I think a buddy of mine is trying to put together a "Dark Knight" art show at school in the Fall. If it happens, I'll probably submit my lil' marker drawing here.




If you haven't seen The Dark Knight yet, what are you waiting for?! =D

NASCAR Coloring book

Most of my Summer has been spent on a big freelance job for a NASCAR coloring book. It was a big project and the book tops out at around 200 pages. I only worked on around 110 pages, 85 or so of which will actually be in the book. It was a neat project to work on and should be in stores (and on the QVC channel) not too far in the future. I got the okay to post some pages along with the cover and title page:




















Also, just wanted to say that the SDCC was a blast! What a wonderful opportunity to meet many of my favorite artists, hang with friends, see my lady, and enjoy San Diego! Thanks to everyone I met, hung with, and traded books with. You rock!

How to color lines in colored line art...huh?

I've gotten a few questions on how to color the blank ink lines in a drawing to create a softer more "painterly" look. So, here is my first attempt at a tutorial. By all means this probably isn't the best way to do this but I haven't really seen any other tutorials tackling this technique.

1. First scan in your inked drawing at 300 dpi RGB (or CYMK if it's for print)

• desaturate
• adjust levels so that you a dealing with a file made of only black or white pixels. I usually do this by moving the sliders towards the middle a bit, then clicking ok. After a few times, you'll be able to move the sliders all the way to the middle creating a BMP-like file without destroying your ink work

Your ink layer should look like this when zoomed in:




If your inked layer is the background, be sure to double-click on it to unlock it and change the layer mode to "Multiply". This will make it possible to paint "underneath" the inked lines like in the good ol' days of cutting ruby.



Here's a screen shot of the coloring-in progress:



Once all your coloring is done, it's time to color those black lines. This is the part of the process that you should take with a grain of salt. There might (and probably is) be a better way of doing this, but this works for now.

This might be a good time to "Save as..." because the next steps are a bit permanent.

Select all of your layers of color and merge them so you only have a layer of your inks and a layer of your color.



Now use the magic wand (with contiguous NOT selected) and click on a black area of your inks, while on the ink layer. It should look something like this:



Now go to your "colors" layer and hit delete.



Next, go back to your inks layer and choose your paintbrush. Select "lighten" mode from the drop-down box for your paintbrush. Your paintbrush will now only lighten a color to the color you have selected in your swatch.



Before you do this it might be a good idea to create a duplicate layer of your inks (ironically, in this case I haven't) in case you mess up. Say you "lighten some black lines to yellow. Well, you can't necessarily "lighten" them to let's say, a dark blue. The only way to do that is to mess with levels, hue/saturation, contrast, etc.



So there you go. Like I said, this is not the best way but it works. Please let me know what you guys think. Questions, suggestions, I'd love to hear!


Here's the finish:



And a few more created with this technique:

My buddy Jared

Here's a caricature I did of my buddy, Jared Hart. I've done a few drawings like this with colored lines and since a few people have asked me how to do it in Photoshop, I'll be trying my hand at doing a tutorial on the subject in the next day or two.

It's Here!

"Dailies: A Collection of Drawings by Chris Houghton" has arrived! At 7.5" square and 94 pages (mostly in color) it's not lookin' half bad!

Apart from a few extra drawings not posted and an introduction about the dailies, there is a forward by Pascal Campion. Pascal is a wonderful artist who inspired me to do daily illustrations. If you haven't seen his work yet, check it out here He is incredibly disciplined and it's apparent, he loves what he does.

I'll have a few copies with me out at the San Diego Comic Con. If you see me and would like one, feel free to stop me!

Or you can order one online:




Thanks guys!