Check out Friendly Panda Creations!

I now write at Friendly Panda Creations!

You can check out the site and see the awesome stuff.

Hiatus, Updates and a Huge Apology

Hey there readers,

I apologize for not posting any content here recently! I've been working on setting up a new site to move my posts to, and also making a few changes to be more professional. I've also ended up in a roadblock where I find it hard to write any convincing content - but I'm making my way through that, and hopefully I could still help a bunch of aspiring individuals who wish to explore the world of art and design like I am doing right now. I hope we could still walk this journey together.

I'll post updates here and let you know about what's going on. Sorry to have left you all hanging.

Thanks!

-Tactician Jenro

Tutorials: Vector Portraits

It's been a long while since I made my last vector portrait. These are some recent tutorials I'd love to work on soon. All these artists just come up with awesome stuff, and they help out others by making these really cool tutorials. Here are some of them:

1.  Photoshop Tutorial: New Tricks for Vector Portraits

Artist Daniel Caballero shares the process in making this awesome vector portrait. 

He also talks about how to use the Pen tool, and also explains how to add and change details and elements to give the piece a hand drawn look.

2. Illustrator Tutorial: How To Create A Self-Portrait in Geometric Style

Here's a tutorial on making a vector portrait with just geometric shapes in Illustrator.

3. Photoshop: Texture Effects with Vector Graphics

Pure awesomeness. Definitely check this out. An artistic depiction a Twitter user made by Charles Williams. Will learn a lot from this when I try it out.

So...that's it. These are stuff you should definitely try out. 

Thanks for reading!

Drawing Pandas and Proportion Problems

I'm admittedly not the best guy out there when it comes to drawing. There's more to it that I'm still unfamiliar of. One of this is drawing with the right proportions.

There's a technique I've read about somewhere  You can tell that a drawing is effective when you flip the image horizontally and the character still looks okay.

Let's take an example.

This here's 'The Key', something I made a few months ago. I really like how it turned out. I made this by drawing the character on a sketch pad first but I really had no idea about the proportions. You can tell that his other eye seems a lot bigger, and his hair looks awfully odd. But the mistakes aren't that noticeable. 

Now let's try flipping the image in horizontal.

The character looks a bit odd and the mistakes are noticeable now. I'm honestly guilty of most of this, even for previous drawings. Hopefully I could do something to work this out and think about the proportions a bit more.

I'm taking this intro practice and seeing if using grids will help, instead of just randomly sketching body parts with estimates.

So I drew this little panda right here. His name is Julian.

Using precise shapes and following a grid, I colored him in but didn't exactly follow the drawing I made, instead just used it as a guide.

For the face, I created a circle and extended it a bit to make a face shape. Then made the mouth and nose, making sure those are at the exact center. The left eye and right eye are the same, just flipped horizontally (except for the white highlights).

The rest of the face is pretty much consisting of different shapes for the shadows, a lot of circles adjusted. I only did the LEFT part, and then flipped that towards the other side.

I also changed the mouth since I didn't like the first one I made.

Pretty much same goes for the lower half. This is going to take a while.

So...yeah! Just showing you this process and hoping I could do this, not just for basic poses but for a lot more. 

Here's the final photo of Julian.

So, that's it! Please subscribe to my blog if you like. Have a nice day!

"Thinking of You" by Matthew Parker

Art by Tactician Jenro

I'm always looking out for music I find interesting and just recently discovered Matthew Parker, a new Christian artist who's just about the same age as I am. 

One of my favorite songs he wrote is "Thinking of You" an Owl City-sound alike song. I decided to make this fanart out of it, based on the lyrics in the song. You can listen to it here. 

Definitely check out his music up on iTunes or listen on SoundCloud. He's a talented musician giving honor and glory to God through his skills. 

If you're into dance music, chillstep/dubstep, electronic/trance music, then you'll definitely like most of Matthew's songs.