Today's doodle from the balcony. Old school fantasy castle. Ink on A4.

It's been a while since I did any Bloggery. Ill health is one excuse and I'm sticking to it. Very busy times.

Here is another recent sketch done while sitting on the balcony at the leisure centre. Every time I do one of these I want to colour it in: the big kid in me trying to get out. More soon, lot's of WIP.

I was supposed to be doing something else but I was sidetracked. Procrastination Castle is the result.

While cataloguing sketches I rendered this black and white image using the basics of Paint.net. A few cups of coffee later this was the result ... only this time I took a few screen shots. Being a noob to Blogger I am redoing this post, pah.

The process: take 1 graphics tablet, pen and computer: add a paint program and an image. Now have fun . . . well I did.

First layer holds the image, subsequent layers are used for base colours then each stage of rendering and detail. I find it's easier to only merge similar layers after completely happy with the result. Although 'undo' works on layering controls too . . . came in handy a couple of times -ok, several times.

The background colours for the sea were done quite simply -select primary and secondary colours, select clouds and fiddle with settings.

The clouds were rendered using gaussian blur -also good for smoke effects. I drew some streaks in different colours then added blur, adjusting the settings until I was happy with the result. Took all of 3 minutes, hehe!

Using layers is a very convenient way of working . . . but don't do as I did, again. As the settings such as opacity or overlay vary between layers, merging too early changes overall saturation, hue or contrast levels. Poor cats were shouted at when I did that . . .