30 minute speed paintings

               

speed paintings for a daily speed painting group I've recently joined. a few themes come up everyday, you pick one and have 30 minutes to complete a painting from scratch, no photo textures or photographs are allowed (unless its just for reference). You can join the group here Daily Spitpaint :)

Generalised Anxiety Disorder: The Monster Within

This is a post about myself and my anxiety/depression experience. Happens to a lot of us right? Well it gets to me all too often. Saying that, I am feeling strong and I am learning to cope with this other side of Katerina. As artists we learn to embrace our life struggles and withdraw inspiration from them, the best way to fight while staying active and motivated! 

Have a nice, relaxing day :)

eh...

I call this beauty "Nudist Old Lady Tasting Soup". Created for the awesome Boulder Media Blog under the theme of Subcultures. Also this is my first ever GIF, yay :D

I do a lot of these weird little sketches lately. Sketches drawn from observation but driven more towards character and stylisation. I guess they are little tests and exercises, trying to escape the realistic and discover a more unique approach towards observational sketching, thinking about shape, form and technique, not being too afraid of drawing 'ugly'. This approach might hopefully take me somewhere new and exciting when it's more developed. 

random people live inside my sketchbook

felt that it was time for a blog update... although it's just sketchbook stuff. goodnight :)

more nudity!

      very pink ish! I like pink. who doesn't?

Selkie

Inspired after the Celtic legends of the Selkies, men and women that could (according to mythology) take the form of seals and live in the sea. Maybe I'll see one while I'm in Ireland!?

this is my selkie in her human form...she needs a name.

first life drawing session in Dublin - Sol Art Gallery

So I am waiting to start working at Boulder Media soon and until then I'm trying not to get extremely lazy! Life drawing seemed like a good idea, especially since I haven't done any proper life drawing for about a year now. I must admit that I almost cried during the first couple of poses,  after I noticed how 'rusty' I'd become. It was a good awakening and made me realise I should not take fundamental drawing practise for granted...so I've registered on this group of adults that get together every Tuesday at Sol Art Gallery to practise their life drawing and I'll be attending every week! the model was great -with a mixture of short and long poses- and the environment quite friendly so if you happen to be in Dublin and care for a good life drawing session you should come :)

My Knights in Armours

this is some more development work I did for that book Illustration job some time ago. these designs were followed by a few more until we ended up with our final main knight character that I cannot share online yet. Looking back, I am not super happy with these...not that I hate them, I just see so many other choices I could have made instead. still they were fun to draw and I've definitely learned from it. stay tuned for the next post :)

Ntoulapinitsa

sketches for the children's book I've  recently finished illustrating. The text comes from a talented Greek writer and I'm glad I was a part of the project. These did not exactly make it to the finals so I thought it would be ok to post. 

Other than that, I'm relocating to Dublin, Ireland in a couple of days for various reasons including work. Exciting times ahead - as I've never been there and know almost nothing about the country other than the fact that it rains a looot, the Irish like their beer, everyone is very friendly and the countryside is full of sheep! :D

soooo... the original sketch was of a cheerful lady enjoying her coffee at a shop...and then I chose to make it about someone being stood up on a date...which makes me realise I've been watching to many chick flicks including Sex and the City...I am ashamed. 

I tried not to use many layers for the human figure in this one. I finally managed to do it all in one layer , as I would do with traditional painting. It was good forcing myself to take more decisions since I could not manipulate it in different layers. It also 'forced' me to finish a lot faster. 

Lets do this more!

Animafest Cyprus

so... this is happening in Cyprus in a few days! My joint grad film Holy She*p has been in several festivals around the globe so far and has even achieved a few nominations and an award from the Hong 

Kong based festival Tech ex Cup International University Student Video Contest. This time I get to 

watch it in my home country! Animafest Cyprus is not the biggest animation festival out there but for 

me it is probably one of the most important ones since this is the first time I get to show my work to my 

fellow Cypriots. I honestly feel incredibly honoured! For such a small island facing huge problems at 

the moment, the fact that the arts are still being promoted and artists are somehow encouraged means 

the world to me. Go Animafest and congrats to the people bringing it together!! For those of you who 

love animation and are in Cyprus here's the link with more info. see you there :) http://www.animafest.com.cy/index.html

http://animafest.com.cy/program/

hmmm...

work  that was not used at the end but was a lot of fun doing and definitely good practise for a different style! I tried to re-draw this actress, sort of designing her, but in a semi-realistic look that could work for the purposes of rotoscoping. I found the task a lot harder than what I expected it to be, especially drawing the character so it would still portray the actual person but not in a realistic way, yet not in a cartoony or a caricature or a 'fantasy art' way. I am not sure whether I did a good job or not but it was worth a try either way :)

These are from a book illustration commission I'm currently working on. I was given the permission to post some of the work that's not going to be used even though I'm not allowed to reveal anything about the project. I can only say that the book is a lot of fun to read and illustrate. I cannot wait to see it published! 

self-portrait

I have a lot of work left for today... and yet I waste time painting silly little pictures of myself... oh well :D 

Do you ever wonder how you look like through the eyes of others? many of my classmates have been sketching me over the years and almost everyone is giving me a big Greek nose, massive eyes and a tiny chin! now there's a recipe for a cartoon character!

p.s for the those who can not read the Cypriot dialect - a Greek dialect, also influenced by Turkish, Arabic, English, Italian, and all the other 153800867400090821234 countries that have been invading the island over the years - the writing translates into "yes,  I like tea (mint tea)". i might be the one Cypriot who prefers mint tea over watermelon and frappe during a hot Mediterranean summer...

ah yeah... 15 wonderful minutes of procrastination...

back to work :)

AssassiN

NCCA - Group Project: Assassin from Magnus Kråvik on Vimeo.

Thought I should share this with you, the group project I worked on while studying at the NCCA. We were a group of five, 3 3D animation students and 2 Digital FX students! I've learned so much working on this completely different style of animation and collaborating with people coming from different backgrounds! I'm proud of the final results we got, considering it was all done during 7 weeks, including daily classes we had to attend and other assignments to complete.

For this project I did the visual development/ concept, part of the texturing for the frog and creature animation.

Thank you Aparna Janga, Magnus Kråvik, Venkatesh Kongathi and Hemanth Surana! You guys kick ass!

more..

I still have a bit of work left on this project... Maybe I should set myself a deadline cos there's many things I want to do when this project is done... and Summer is almost here :) 

what's next: some story and colour stills, facial expressions and finally Teiresias head sculpted in 3D
Stay tuned!

sneak peek

 work in progress: I'm currently working on the final designs of Teiresias. That might be the end of this project for now as I feel that I need to start working on something different, having all these ideas wandering in my mind... so here's some of the rough design work in progress to give an idea of what's about to follow!

'People are strange...'

yay, more faces...observational sketches from old and new sketchbooks...
that priceless moment when you flip through your old sketchbooks and feel so excited about some sketches that you have completely forgotten about and that are not as bad as you thought they were when you first drew them :)

note to self: Draw more women!!

"Στην πόλη των πουλιών"

I'm calling this done for now.. would like to go back and fix a couple of things in the foreground layer and refine it a bit more.. also the foreground outline is a bit too strong.. hopefully I will get some time after my uni assignments are over for the term.. too many things to do! 

I am quite happy with the colour palette I've chosen though, gives a good balance and just the right mood :)

...and some rough tonal thumbs before I went in with colour...

"Στηv πόλη των πουλιών"

πίεση και καταπίεση! ta simantika omos einai sta mikra pragmata. ti kai an den eimaste oso talantantouxoi tha thelame? ti kai an alloi einai panta kaliteroi apo emas? ti kai an niothoume ilithioi pou  mas pernei perissoteri ora na katalavoume kapia pragmata psilovareta kai stegna! ti kai an sto telos tis imeras den kaname afto pou tha thelame na kanoume! ta simantika einai sta mikra, einai stous dikous mas anthropous kai stis mikroplakitses metaksi filon, sta atoma pou pethimisame, se mia tainia pou mas allakse ton tropo skepsis, se mia kouventa ipostiriksis apo tin mana mas ...tote giati kolloume? kai giati piezoume tous eaftous mas na kanoume pragmata pou den mas aresoun? kai giati sigkrinoume tous eaftous mas akoma  kai meso facebook?! kai giati na niotho tipsis pou thelo ena diimero ksekourasis!

"Στην πόλη των πουλιών"(work in progress, ακόμα ένα που μπορεί και να μην τελειώσω)

a bird-priest?

character concepts

The first term of the MA has been quite intense and it took me a good week during Christmas to recover! And I know it's only going to get harder! All ready for the new term now, we'll be working on group projects amongst other assignments as well.. it all sounds very exciting and can't wait to start producing work again! Although I need to remember to take breaks this time and stop pushing myself to the degree I stop enjoying animation!

Now, about the new post, just a few quickies for an upcoming pitch for a CG 30sec short.. dunno if we'll choose to develop it any further but it was fun doing these! :)