Sketches: Steele in the Dark

This picture was born from a suggestion from a fan at the SteeleWatchers Facebook group. The challenge was to come up with the punchline. Having screened several B&E themed scenes from a dozen episodes, I saw the most potential in the season 2 "High Flying Steele".

Up until recently, I have been using my pocket sketchbook. I was hoping to use a full-sized sketch pad for this project. It ended up badly. Perhaps I was not used to texture of the drawing surface. Perhaps I had the wrong grade pencil. Anyway, I ended up using some storyboard paper I had lying around, made 4 individual drawings and did up the composition in GIMP.

I adjusted the scale for each to fit the size of the image. All the sketches were scanned to 600 dpi (very big jpeg files). When scaled down, I wouldn't lose too much detail. I used a simple colour fill for the background. As it turned out, I didn't have room to add any more details.

The Comic Strip

My first ever comic strip.

 

So here is the comic strip. All the artwork was scanned in at 75 dpi. (Not very big and without the added dimension by a directed light source.)

I found the drawing program GIMP was lacking. I used it to create the border around each individual image and then added a text layer. Then lined up each panel. I used Paint to add in free hand lines. It allowed me more control.

As for the drawings. The medium close-ups were more difficult. If I didn't get the angle of the baseball caps just right, the whole drawing would have to be scrapped.

Filters have very little affect on the scanned images. The drawings were already simplified little posters.

Although it's a free form creation, I find it more of a challenge to getting it right. I can't wait to try it on Star Trek and The X-Files, which I have also drawn in the past.

Fan Art for Covers

Steeke Reeling (Posterized and Framed)

Steele Here, To Keep You Warm

I also sketched cover art to go with the fan fiction I've been writing for Remington Steele. While I am mind-mapping, I often make doodles to help me visualize the story. My pocket sketchbook is used for much more than portraits or just Star Trek characters. (See my rendition of Dr. Crusher.)

When it looks flat, as is most often the case when using my pencil stubs, I put it through light and filters to see the drawing in a different perspective.

Since I am quite new to composition, the small size of the sketchbook is making it easy to plan the picture. Scale is one of the things I am trying to work on.

More Sketches

 

This is a sketch of actress Stephanie Zimbalist as Laura Holt. It was done before the drawing previous post. It's taken from a scene in the second season episode Hounded Steele. The hat framed the face very effectively. There was a lot of bright sunlight. It's also one of the times I went straight to HB pencil.

Latest Sketches

 

I have been drawing lately to exercise my right ("lazy") eye. It helps to keep it focused on something. I've been watching Remington Steele on DVD. I have a bit of blind spot on my right side. So. It's always a challenge starting a new drawing. As I did a few of these already, I began to notice that Stephanie Zimbalist's left eye seemed bigger than her right. It wasn't just in my drawings. If I have to choose, I prefer exterior scenes, that last more than five frames.

Because I haven't scanned these, I found the light cast on it added depth that wasn't in the original drawing.

Recreating a Stamp - Color to Alpha in GIMP

I want to go through a process of how I got...

from here...

to there.

It all started when I read an article of how to create a watermark in GIMP. For that, I used the text editor and created variations of @xindilini. I hadn't even figured out how to save the resultant paintbrush at the time. Then I remembered my chop. It is a customized stamp with my Chinese name carved in stone. The one I had in mind was the one that would produce a negative image of the characters.

I took a picture of the imprint with a webcam and started playing with the image in GIMP. After loading the image file, I created a new layer of the specific area so I could rotate it arbitrarily. Autocrop Layer. Autocrop Image.

Tried a few options from the Colors > Auto and settled for Stretch HSV. This would stretch the image contrast to cover the maximum possible range.

Now we are ready to use Color to Alpha. You can select this from the Layer > Transparency menu or directly from the Colors menu. Both will do the same thing. Other than the red inky parts are transparent because the default colour is white. If you want to change it you can click on the rectangle as shown in the following image.

I put it through one more pass to get the red to pop out some more. That is the by using Maximum RGB from the Colors menu. This will reduce the image to pure red, green, and blue. For this purpose, make sure the option "Hold the maximal channels" is selected.

You can now save the layer for later use. I took it one step further by combining it with calligraphy of my name. Since I am a bit out of practice, I traced it out by hand. Converting the image mode from RGB to Greyscale, I could use it for a watermark on dark or light images alike.

I really liked playing around with Color to Alpha. Can't wait to try it with other stamps or cutouts.

Warden Woods Walk

I took some photographs when I went to Warden Woods Park. The experience was special because it was also my first in all the years I lived in the area. I noticed fall foliage the day before and could not really pass up an opportunity to see it up close. Nature is literally at my doorstep and I hope to take advantage of the free time I have to capture the scenery whenever I can.

The title image was created in Pixlr Express. Pixlr filters are quite handy for making a cover page. Mostly, I just really like the composition with the bridge and the surrounding trees. It was also a good one to edit.

SSSSushi

Pixlr was looking for a food theme. All I had came from a Japanese restaurant in Guangzhou, CHINA. At the time, it was the most interesting spread to write home about. I now know that those little globules are gelatin not really roe. (Thank you Iron Chef America and Bitcin' Kitchen.)This 2007 trip had given me more delicious memories than any of my other vacations. After some consideration, I will not be submitting this for show either. It was good practice though.

Tilt Shifting Road

Inspired by a Pixlr blog post to try photo editing, I used the Tilt Shift filter for this shot. I started with the original and then began to crop the foreground. By allowing more of the street in front to show helped some of the background elements to stand out. This image is too small for print.