Ballpoint Pen Plus Photoshop

[Silverwings]

This is a little project I did for a contest on the Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates forums found here:

http://forums.puzzlepirates.com/community/...ad?thread=64848

I did a ballpoint pen sketch of a character in my sketchbook, then scanned it into Photoshop, where I cleaned it up a little, and colored it. I originally colored it with pretty vivid colors, but as it was concepted as a portrait, I chose to make it more like a hand-colored daguerreotype.

To do so, I took the fully colored version, desaturated it to a greyscale, then made it a sepia toned version of the original. I then overlaid that sepia toned version over the original, and tinkered with the transparency on it to let some of the color seep through. This gave it a nice, faded color look that made me pretty happy.



I was happy with how the original sketch blended with the coloring that I did. It's not a Da Vinci, nor is it a Rembrandt, but it's a nice quick colored sketch that maintains an interesting atmosphere. One of these days, I'll do a full-bore oil painting or its like, but until I carve out the time to do so, this sort of quick project will have to do.

[Silverwings]

Here's the raw sketch, as you'd see it in my sketchbook. I did clean things up a bit (mostly erasing stray lines), changed the angle of his left leg, and I drew the book separately, scanned it in and spliced it into the scene. The book design came after I did the character, and I wanted the book in its entirety, so it made sense to go ahead and do it separately. (The scan of the book is below the character sketch.)

[Silverwings]

And here are three other sketches I did for the same contest. I was most happy with the first (I did it quickly when I heard of the contest), but I decided to go with the character above for the final. He turned out more personable when I did the sketch a few days before the deadline. That, and everyone and their dog did a painting of the "cool undead pirate guy!!!1!!1", so I decided to be different.

As above, all sketches were done with a black ballpoint pen in my sketchbook.

The undeadish Barnabas the Pale (magnified greatly; the original sketch was all of two inches square)


Barnabas goes recruiting


And Barnabas and Gretchen play American Gothic...