SBNation.com User Blog: Ilovethissport

Another Liz Portrait

Ilovethissport — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 04:45:04 -0000

Me again. I hope you don't mind me posting this so close to when I posted the last one, it's just that I am an impatient person and like to put work up as soon as I can and since I am about to start working on a bunch of non MMA things I figured a second thread would not clog up the arteries of the fanpost section too much. Anyway, I will try to be more patient in the future.

This one is the complete opposite of the last one, uber bright by comparison and with her smiling. I took what you guys said into account and changed the colour scheme to better represent her character, and I think NickRing4pGOAT said that he likes the half finished style of the half drawn hair so I gave that a try also. I prefer it to the other one I think, it's a lot more positive looking in general.

Let me know what you think. I get most of my feedback from The Mr and you guys (DA has a system where if you want to receive critiques you have to be part of a ranking system which is an idea that I am not a fan of) so all comments are appreciated.

via fc08.deviantart.net

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Work In Progress Shots:

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Laying out the structure. In the end result the eyes are slightly off position, so I'll have to be more careful with that in the future.

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All orange and shiz. Before I started the drawing I thought very carefully about the colours I would use. I decided on orange, red, purple and black because it would be a mostly warm colour pallette.

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Getting some proper depth here by adding red to the shadowy parts.

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The black gets added in. That is like, my favourite part. To me, the eyes are the most important part of the face so when the eyes start to look like the person I am trying to draw I get super excited.

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That's it. Credit to the photographer, who I do not know the name of but the photo is on Liz Carmouche's profile on the UFC website.

Cheers for looking! Have a nice day.

Oh, and DA page here: LINKY

via fc08.deviantart.net

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Work In Progress Shots:

via fc05.deviantart.net

Laying out the structure. In the end result the eyes are slightly off position, so I'll have to be more careful with that in the future.

via fc08.deviantart.net

All orange and shiz. Before I started the drawing I thought very carefully about the colours I would use. I decided on orange, red, purple and black because it would be a mostly warm colour pallette.

via fc06.deviantart.net

Getting some proper depth here by adding red to the shadowy parts.

via fc09.deviantart.net

****

That's it. Credit to the photographer, who I do not know the name of but the photo is on Liz Carmouche's profile on the UFC website.

Cheers for looking! Have a nice day.

Oh, and DA page here: LINKY

Liz Carmouche Pen Portrait

Ilovethissport — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 22:56:32 -0000

Hi dudes and dudettes! I am back with another set of photos of a new artwork I just did because I woke up for some reason at 4:30 in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep. It's a different medium than what I've posted in the last few threads... assortedly coloured ballpoint pens. I hope the resemblance is decent enough that you would have known who it is without the title of the thread. I think the cheekbones are a little heavy but that's pen for ye, irreversible and god-awful if you use white out.

The reason I decided to draw Miss Carmouche is that she seems like an awesome representative for women's MMA, with her positive personality (Did you see her smiling after she lost? What a rare sight.), and her awesomely entertaining performance against Ronda Rousey. I am also very pleased that there is now an openly gay fighter in the UFC, particularly since she is a chick and it was great to hear about her experiences in the army as I was in a closeted relationship for 6 years (I was out, she wasn't) and get where she is coming from to a certain extent. Life eh? Now I am in a happy relationship with a dude but you know, you never forget what having to hide a part of yourself feels like. Hopefully with Liz Carmouche being in the UFC more fighters will have the courage to come out.

Anyway, let me know what you think:

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This one is just the linework so I wouldn't fuck it up too badly. I layer the source image over the paper and flick it back and forth while drawing in the basics so I get the positions as quickly and easily as possible.

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I find that with multi coloured pen drawings it is best to work from the lightest colour to the darkest. That way if anything is off slightly you can enhance the position with a darker colour.

via fc07.deviantart.net

I think at this stage I added some aqua/green pen. Gradually darkening the image until it makes sense.

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Time for black! It actually starts to look like her here. That's one of the most fun parts of making artwork, when it starts looking like what you want it to.

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Hair.... Long hair can be fiddly. Hair can be fiddly. Just thought I'd make the highlights red because red is bright.

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Bare bones background, as usual. At this point I have used all of my pens in roughly this order: orange, green, red, black, purple and blue.

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Source Image Is Here!

Couldn't have done it without the hard work of the photographer.

Anyway, that's about it. Cheerio. :)

Anyway, let me know what you think:

via fc06.deviantart.net

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via fc03.deviantart.net

I find that with multi coloured pen drawings it is best to work from the lightest colour to the darkest. That way if anything is off slightly you can enhance the position with a darker colour.

via fc07.deviantart.net

I think at this stage I added some aqua/green pen. Gradually darkening the image until it makes sense.

via fc05.deviantart.net

Time for black! It actually starts to look like her here. That's one of the most fun parts of making artwork, when it starts looking like what you want it to.

via fc04.deviantart.net

Hair.... Long hair can be fiddly. Hair can be fiddly. Just thought I'd make the highlights red because red is bright.

via fc06.deviantart.net

Bare bones background, as usual. At this point I have used all of my pens in roughly this order: orange, green, red, black, purple and blue.

****

Source Image Is Here!

Couldn't have done it without the hard work of the photographer.

Anyway, that's about it. Cheerio. :)

Chuck Liddell Painting

Ilovethissport — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 13:00:33 -0000

Hey guys and gals, it's that painter chick again with another paintish thing.

This one is Chuck Liddell. I read Chuck Liddell's book a number of years ago and it was a really good read, I didn't know much about him other than the fact that he was a dominant champion and quite entertaining to watch. Recently I have been quite lucky in that cable TV has started playing old UFC events (around the 40s and 50s) and I have had a refresher course in how awesome he is. The most recent fight they showed (that I've watched, I have a couple more taped) was the first fight against Tito. He threw like, a bajillion punches in a millisecond, it was just amazing to watch and caused me to want to do this thing that is below these paragraphs.

As always, let me know what you think. And also as always, happy to give and take advice. I know I am pretty slack with backgrounds, I just tend to put the work in on the faces and... I just do what I enjoy doing anyway. I am a bit lazy that way.

Here it be, including progress shots below:

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Just slapping on paint to work out where things go here. I asked boyfriend if it looked like Chuck Liddell at this stage, he said it looked like a combo of Mr T and a safari hunter.

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Adding in details, still not sure about the colour palette at this point. The shirt is purple there which at the time looked all kinds of wrong. The end result for that is mainly cobalt blue and black. Sometimes I will make a painting significantly darker or lighter than the original image in places the make it look bolder. I really don't like it when I am in the middle of a painting and there is not much contrast.

via fc05.deviantart.net

Actually starting to look like him here. It's a bit of a mess, but the features are starting to be in the right places.

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As you can see here I use a stable table. I don't have an easel because I am not a fan of standing up for long periods of time. I pretty much just sit down in front of the tv and half watch things while I am painting away. Full credit to the source image creator, who's photo you can see here...I found it on Google and can't seem to find a link to it now.

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I wasn't happy with the colours so I started adding a lot of yellow for the highlights. It's a cool yellow, mixed with a bit of green. I just don't like using to right colours for things, I want to test out different colour combos and see what happens. The end result was super green with blue, purple and black for a bit of spice.

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Lots more yellow here.

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Added some red to the background to fix the skull shape. I could never have a perfectly white background because my paintings always start out as such a mess. Added dabs of white here and there to highlight the hairs on his face. It doesn't hurt to embellish really, I am more of a loud painter than a subtle one.

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A couple of basic tips for anyone who wonders how to paint realistically. I tend to paint to the size of the photo I am using. It is much easier to get things right. This also helps me in another way, because every now and then I will overlay the reference image to see if the features are in the right position. It's a bit like what traditional animators do. You move the reference up and down and see what needs to be corrected, then move it away and start painting again. For me, realistic painting (I know the colours are different but the positions are basically in the right place) is very much about memory. It's like... I look at the reference and try to quickly memorise the position then move back to the painting and paint what I remember.

I hope this helps anyone interested in painting, and I also hope you enjoy my work.

Thanks for looking people!

Hey guys and gals, it's that painter chick again with another paintish thing.

Here it be, including progress shots below:

via fc02.deviantart.net

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via fc07.deviantart.net

Just slapping on paint to work out where things go here. I asked boyfriend if it looked like Chuck Liddell at this stage, he said it looked like a combo of Mr T and a safari hunter.

via fc01.deviantart.net

via fc05.deviantart.net

Actually starting to look like him here. It's a bit of a mess, but the features are starting to be in the right places.

via fc08.deviantart.net

via fc00.deviantart.net

via fc02.deviantart.net

Lots more yellow here.

via fc07.deviantart.net

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I hope this helps anyone interested in painting, and I also hope you enjoy my work.

Thanks for looking people!

Andrei Arlovski Painting

Ilovethissport — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 23:46:32 -0000

Hi there. It's me again, back with another painting. I hope you guys don't mind me posting individual threads for each painting, I've seen other people do it with artwork so, as I said, I hope it's cool. Anyway, on to the subject of the thread.

This acrylic painting took about 3-4 hours. Below the finished product anyone who is interested can see the work in progress, in about half an hour increments. Here it is:

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Now to the beginning:

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This was about twenty minutes into it. I don't put any lines down when I paint, I just slop everything into position and keep correcting stuff over and over until the features look right. Being careful is just not fun to me, that's why I enjoy painting over drawing these days.

At this point I stopped painting for the night because I just didn't dig the colour scheme. Too much like the reference image, which can be found here.

I also think this looks a bit like the dude who plays Marshall in How I Met Your Mother, at least the top of his head does.

via fc08.deviantart.net

The next day I was just like, fuck it. I hated the colour scheme so I was like, what haven't I done before? So, I went blood crimson and cobalt blue. I was instantly pleased with how much more interesting the colours looked. At this stage I did not realise how zombie/vampirish it would end up looking, I was really just excited to use a colour scheme I hadn't ever used before.

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At this point I'm just fixing things here and there, completely unaware of how off position everything is. The next image I completely re-position most of the middle of the face because while I like to paint kind of messily, I try to keep the important features in the right place so it looks like th person I am painting.

via fc01.deviantart.net

Used a lot of black, off white and red to establish the positions of everything here.

via fc07.deviantart.net

Just about finished here. It's funny how knowing where the position of everything is supposed to be makes progress a lot smoother.

And of course, you see the finished result above. I hope you enjoyed this post. If anyone has any questions or comments for me (whether it's advice for me, advice for yourself or a friend or any other random thing) please post it here, or you can send me a note on my deviant art page here.

Thanks to everyone who looks.

Cheerio.

This acrylic painting took about 3-4 hours. Below the finished product anyone who is interested can see the work in progress, in about half an hour increments. Here it is:

via fc05.deviantart.net

Now to the beginning:

via fc00.deviantart.net

At this point I stopped painting for the night because I just didn't dig the colour scheme. Too much like the reference image, which can be found here.

I also think this looks a bit like the dude who plays Marshall in How I Met Your Mother, at least the top of his head does.

via fc08.deviantart.net

via fc07.deviantart.net

via fc01.deviantart.net

Used a lot of black, off white and red to establish the positions of everything here.

via fc07.deviantart.net

Just about finished here. It's funny how knowing where the position of everything is supposed to be makes progress a lot smoother.

Thanks to everyone who looks.

Cheerio.

Cain Velasquez Painting

Ilovethissport — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 07:20:15 -0000

Hey guys and gals, again. Over the last couple of days I painted my first MMA portrait in a while, of our new heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez. I love Junior, and I really thought he had an excellent chance of winning the fight, but WOW... wow wow wow did he absolutely get brutalised from the start of that fight to the very end by Mr Cain. How can you not admire a performance like that? Plus Cain is just the nicest guy in all of the interviews I've seen of him. He and Junior are quite similar that way, both super nice guys for the most part outside of the cage, and absolute monsters inside.

Anyway, I hope you guys like this. It was painted with acrylic, over 4 to 5 hours on painting paper. The background is messy looking because clean lines would make no sense with the style of the portrait, at least that's what I think.

Thanks to anyone who looks and/or comments!

via fc00.deviantart.net

OH! And check out my Deviant Art page here.

Cheerio.

Thanks to anyone who looks and/or comments!

via fc00.deviantart.net

OH! And check out my Deviant Art page here.

Cheerio.

MMA Portraits

Ilovethissport — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 06:03:37 -0000

Hi there guys and gals. Here is a painting and some drawings that I have done of assorted fighters around the middle of this year. I posted this stuff on another MMA website ages ago so I hope you can forgive me if you have seen this stuff before.

Experience wise, I've had about three years of art education. I did an adult education course for two years, then a year of University. I have the most fun doing portraits because faces are bitchin', especially dudes faces because men are hairy bastards, whether it is face gravel or full blown beards.

You can view more of my non-MMA work (I work in bursts... every 6 months or so I tend to get really amped up about making things then I stop after a while for no apparent reason like weirdo) on my deviant art page here... I have also done paintings of Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad and Tim Heidecker for anyone interested.

So here they are with a little bit of info about each of them:

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This one is Urijah Faber, painted with acrylic paint on a very cheap A4 canvas. I stopped using canvas after this one because a) canvas is expensive to ship and I will be moving to the UK from Aussie land some time next year and b) they make these fantastic notepads you can paint on that are both much cheaper than canvas and have a much better texture to paint on when it comes to value for money.

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Tito Ortiz, drawn with black ballpoint pen.

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Rashad Evans. This one was done more quickly than the others, in a couple of hours I think. Black and blue ballpoint pens.

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Lyoto Machida, black ballpoint pen and greylead pencil. Lyoto just has the most fantastic face to draw, this one was a great deal of fun.

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My boy JDS on top of the fence after winning the championship against Cain. Drawn with a black fineliner and the background was done with photoshop. This is one of my favourites.

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Frank Mir, greylead pencil, black and red biro. It seems like most people who like my work think this one is the best, but it was the least fun the make. I just got really carried away with it being photorealistic and that made it more of a chore than anything. To be honest, I much prefer painting to drawing. With painting you are constantly correcting what is in front of you, but with drawing everything has to be perfect right away. It is just a completely different experience.

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Brock Lesnar. I just really, really dislike this drawing. But there was a lesson in this that I would like to share with anyone who makes art themselves. Always choose a reference image with good lighting. The image I used for this was almost flat with no tone to his skin. I tried to add depth by adding colour and shading to different areas of his face, and adding a blue background in photoshop but it just turned out quite badly, compared to the others at least.

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Last but not least, Nick Diaz, black ballpoint pen. This was the first drawing I did in a really long time, the first that led to the others above. The reference image for this one was just fantastic to work from, it has such dramatic lighting.

That's it.

Oh, a couple of things before I go. Full credit goes to the original photographers, whether I found the image on Google or the UFC website. I think I might have links to all the references on my DA page.

Another thing, I highly recommend doing courses to improve your skills as an artist. The adult education place I went to in Australia taught me waaay more than going to University did, because (perhaps it was the particular Uni I went to, maybe not) adult education is about building your technical skills from the ground up, while University is more like... well it is very focused on ideas and not about being visually or technically skilled, which I personally think is really important. Sure, ideas are necessary but you should always have the groundwork to be able to produce the work you want to in the best visual way possible.

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I hope you guys and gals enjoyed my artwork. Let me know what you think in the comments below. Cheers!

So here they are with a little bit of info about each of them:

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Tito Ortiz, drawn with black ballpoint pen.

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Rashad Evans. This one was done more quickly than the others, in a couple of hours I think. Black and blue ballpoint pens.

via fc01.deviantart.net

Lyoto Machida, black ballpoint pen and greylead pencil. Lyoto just has the most fantastic face to draw, this one was a great deal of fun.

via fc09.deviantart.net

My boy JDS on top of the fence after winning the championship against Cain. Drawn with a black fineliner and the background was done with photoshop. This is one of my favourites.

via fc06.deviantart.net

via fc09.deviantart.net

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That's it.

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I hope you guys and gals enjoyed my artwork. Let me know what you think in the comments below. Cheers!

MMA is the win, yes!

Ilovethissport — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 11:11:21 -0000

Hi there fellow BE folks. The following features a list of some of my favourite aspects of MMA. It’s kind of long, but I tried to make it as readable as possible. Let me know what you think in the comments. :)

Uncertainty

I started watching MMA back when the GSP vs. Koscheck series of TUF was playing on TV. As hard as it might be to believe I had never heard of mixed martial arts before I watched the show, back in late 2010 at the age of 27. In fact, I didn’t follow a single sport at that time, that sort of competition was just not something I found intriguing. I might have watched a few events during the Olympics but that was about the extent of it.

Then one day my boyfriend insisted on showing me the first episode of season 13 of TUF. I didn’t know what the hell was going on most of the time but I thought it was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen when an Alaskan rascal by the name of Cody McKenzie managed to choke someone out using a strange looking manoeuvre called a ‘guillotine’.

I wasn’t sure about whether I wanted to continue watching the series based on enjoying that single choke, but luckily I did, and as the series developed I became excited by the uncertain nature of any given fight, and most of all I looked forward, hopefully, to seeing the quiet and respectful Georges St Pierre pulverise the thuggish jock Josh Koscheck.

Boy did I love that fight when it finally happened. I had only a slight idea of who they were as fighters, based on what had been shown during the series, so I was crossing my fingers that GSP would be able to pull it off, not having a clue as to how dominant he’d been in his other fights.

I knew almost nothing about boxing at the time but watching GSP jab Koscheck’s eye into oblivion made me absolutely fall in love with the sport. I gained great satisfaction from Koscheck’s defeat, considering his behaviour on the show, and to know that a good guy like GSP could be a champion felt very rewarding as a newcomer to watching the sport.

Hype

GSP vs. Koscheck was the perfect rivalry to get someone like myself interested in the sport. The good guy vs. the villain… how can you go wrong with that? The hype for that fight really paid off in my eyes, the hero was the victor and the performance from GSP was highly entertaining. I came to love hype from then on, the build-up to every event made me excited as to who would rise and who would fall. It felt like anything was possible on any given night. They would bring up fights such as GSP vs. Matt Serra 1 or Brock Lesnar vs. Randy Couture, both undeniable proofs that a champion is capable of being defeated at any time.

But over time, I learnt that hype is not always a guarantee that a fight or fighter will be exciting. The first big fight that disappointed me was Jon Jones vs. Rashad Evans. From the very beginning Jon Jones rubbed me the wrong way with his smug attitude, and in spite of Rashad being cocky in the cage he seemed like a pretty nice guy outside of it. I really bought into the fact that they had been training partners and that Rashad had what it took to defeat him. As you and I now know, I was wrong.

The first round was pretty exciting, with Rashad landing a solid head kick but after that Jon Jones dismantled every weapon Evans tried to throw at him. In terms of disappointment, it wasn’t so much the fact that Rashad lost (although that helped), it was the way Rashad became unable to pull the trigger for the majority of the later rounds, no doubt due to those ridiculously long elbows that were aimed his way every time he tried to get into punching range.

I will admit it, I got too wrapped up in the hype for that fight. But I learnt something important afterwards that I hold very strongly to now. It is not who the fighter is as a person that matters, it is how they perform in the cage. I still enjoy learning about the fighters’ personalities in interviews, but that now comes secondary to appreciating the fighters’ skills. I feel like watching that fight made me grow a great deal as a fan of MMA, and I’m very glad to be in a place now where I can cast aside my dislike of someone’s demeanour outside of the cage and just enjoy them for the skilled athletes they are.

Speaking of skills:

Technique

There is so much to learn about this sport that I feel like I am only taking baby steps in terms of knowledge about MMA. It is crazy to think that only a couple of years ago I didn’t know what half guard was, or a body triangle, or a double leg, or feints, heck I barely even knew what combinations were. But my knowledge is coming together over time. At the moment I am trying to focus on boxing and Muay Thai with a bit of Jiu Jitsu here and there. I bought a heavy bag not long ago and I’m trying to teach myself the basics of boxing so I don’t look like a fool going to classes.

I really enjoy watching great fighters put all of their techniques together so I have something to aspire to. Every time I watch a great striking battle I want to get out there on the heavy bag and try to emulate what I’ve seen. It is such a beautiful thing to see people who are masterful at their craft, and the idea that I could be even close to knowing what it’s like to be at that level of understanding of a combat sport, well it makes me very enthusiastic for the future.

Respect

As much as I said that I try not to focus on fighters’ personalities, I do love a good show of respect between opponents. One of my favourite moments that can happen in a fight is when those involved are having such a good time that they high five, or give each other a hug. Moments like that make me smile. There are certain fighters however, who talk a lot about respect beforehand but continuously knee their opponent in the junk during a fight, knee their opponent in the face when they are obviously down, poke their opponent in the eye ‘accidently’ over and over again or even spit in their opponents corner after the fight as Michael Bisping did. People who foul repeatedly are pretty low in my opinion, it’s one of the few aspects of the sport that I really don’t like, and I wish points would be deducted more frequently, especially for poking someone in the eye considering how dangerous doing that is.

Back to the title of ‘respect’, it took me a while to appreciate the work the fighters go through, day in and day out trying to build their careers from the ground up in a sport that’s tough as nails to get into, reach the championship level, and even hold onto their careers long after their prime. Early on I would be judgemental about fighters who didn’t pull the trigger or dull fights with large amounts of inactivity. I still get frustrated, but I try not to rip apart a fighter because they have a subpar performance. I talk about what they could have done better, but I mean, fighters are human beings. I have seen so many horrible things said about certain fighters, male and female (I have been guilty of saying horrible things myself at times) but as much as you might not like someone’s fighting style, attacking them personally is not going to help them become a better fighter. Sorry, that probably sounded a bit preachy. My main point is that you should treat others as you want to be treated, whether it is in person, or on the interwebz.

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I think I’m going to leave it there. This is a really long article, and thanks to anyone who takes the time to read it. Cheers. :)

Uncertainty

Hype

Speaking of skills:

Technique

Respect

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I think I’m going to leave it there. This is a really long article, and thanks to anyone who takes the time to read it. Cheers. :)