Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Christmas Gifts

So here are two out of the three things I have been working on lately for Christmas. And now that they have them I can post them up to share with the rest of you! Though there is one other that is taking longer, that I'll post up later. But for now, 2 out of 3 isn't bad right?

The first is a picture of my grandparents dog Bruiser. Who recently passed away due to bone cancer. We all miss him dearly, and when they unwrapped it everyone got a little emotional. But it was happy tears, or at least I would hope. I decided to depict him in one of his funnier moments so it'd be something nice to look back on. And since you have not seen a picture of him, that painting is to scale. He really was that huge.



This other set of three images I did are of a video game my sister and her boyfriend are obsessed with, which is Red Dead Redemption. I can't say I don't love it myself. But! Their apartments decor is mostly art prints, and ones where the alignment of the prints are off on purpose. So instead of making just a poster like image, I thought it'd be fun to do almost a deconstructed set of three images that reflect the main character of the game. 

The other goal is to make it similar enough to where it would work with the other prints they already had. Which all have a very rough, possibly hipster feel to them.  I may do this again and make a series, since it was fun to try to think of three different instances, or objects that I felt really reflected the character as a whole. Doing John I found was difficult since he is such a complex character, so trying it with others could prove a nice challenge. 




They seemed really excited when they got them, and immediately pointed out that they would work well with their "gun prints" which was the point. So all in all, 2 out of the 3 so far have been successful! The third you will be updated on soon, probably in the next few weeks. 

Monday, December 20, 2010

Dog Chase


This is just a simple warm up sketch I did a while ago, nothing too fancy. Though I do feel like this may represent me right now. Running to keep track of all the holiday things I have to do. I missed a week of posting, but I've been working on Christmas gifts. Which I will post after the holiday is done since I know the people they are intended for are watching my blog. In the mean time though, you can have this funny little sketch, I may post up another later today to make up for my absence.

If you don't follow me on Twitter as well then I would like to take this time to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! :)

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Bad Mr. Fluffykins!

Mr. Fluffykins has been caught by the caring, but angry woman of the house...




This is just a simple holiday wallpaper I promised I would make you guys this season. If you need smaller sizes let me know via the comments (don't forget the dimensions!) or in the contact form I have. I hope you all enjoy it! I thought it was a hilarious little story, which was sort of inspired by a friends cat. Oh, and made it less busy for people who enjoy less on their screen. Which is understandable if you use icons. It starts to look cluttered quickly.

Anyway, keep staying in the spirit of the holidays and don't forget to tell people how much you care this season!

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Holiday Kids Part Two

The following is the second installment of a "How I paint" post located here. I wouldn't really say this a detailed tutorial of how to paint, but it's more a view of my process. I have more than this done but I'm showing them in baby steps for you all that want a detailed viewing. After the underpainting is laid down I basically start in the middle ground of the painting. I realize that is a little backwards, but I like being able to fiddle with the background slightly so I can decide how much detail I want back there.




So for this I am obviously working on the children first, laying down flat, realistic colors over top of the green. The reason I use green underneath is that the transparency of your skin over your muscle tissue actually causes a slight greenish hue in shadows. So there is a fun fact for you all! :) But that's definitely not the only color you can use, it all depends on preference. For shadows I really enjoy using a grey purple on skin tones, it seems to just work in most situations. But it definitely depends on the paintings setting.


After that I started putting in colors and shadows for the lighting, which will be coming at them through the window display. Even though the display is bright, or at least will be, the darkness of the night behind them will still cause some pretty dark shadows and over take the light from behind. Making the high lights small but bright on their faces and clothing. Keep in mind textures as well, since the clothing will have a duller reflection, than shiny skin, glass, or metal. I'm also not too concerned with making things super smooth yet, since that will come later after I have the lighting and colors the way I want them.

I'll make sure to show how to change and see less of the green underpainting on the coats of the second two children next, so they all don't look alike. Also, Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy the day and remember what to really be thankful for. I hope you all enjoyed the post, and let me know if you have any questions.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Blackbird Pie

I did this for a sketch contest, I didn't win which is fine. It's practice which is always good. :) But, I couldn't stop thinking about blackbird pie and this old Australian sign my illustration professor Steve used to have in his house. It didn't look like this but it had the same theme of blackbird pie, so I decided to revolve the sketch around it for fun.

I hope you enjoy it, and the next installment of the holiday scene painting tutorial will be next. I haven't forgotten!

Saturday, November 6, 2010

WIP Holiday Kids


This is a new illustration I'm working on based around some kids peering into a toy store. I thought I'd show some more work in progress stuff on how I paint. I typically paint like the old masters did, but change the under painting colors to suit the different subjects. Instead of just relying on green, red, or some other variation. An obvious difference here is I'm working digitally, but since Im working with Painter the same rules apply.  In this one I'm using purple, red, and green under painting and just blocking in the scene with those colors. After Im satisfied with a roughed in composition I start adding on the actual layers of color for the foreground, middle, and background. Typically I start with the background first as you can see from the finished light pole, and then work forward. It tends to make my life a lot easier.

This is obviously still in it's really rough stages and I'll be working on it for the better part of today. I'll make sure to make a few more posts with different stages in trying to explain them. One day I'll actually see about live streaming myself painting. That might be fun!

I hope anyone who is interested in the process finds this informative. If you have any questions let me know!

Friday, October 22, 2010

Sketchoholic Entry


Well I recently stumbled upon Sketchoholic.com, which is super neat I have to say. The basic idea is that artists come together and are given a topic daily to sketch and then submit to this forum. Then artists vote for which they like the best out of the anonymous entries and once voting is completed the winner receives a prize. Which from what I can tell is usually a sketch from Bobby Chiu. All I can say is I am SUPER excited about this. The prize is very cool but the idea and how they work is even better and gives me another way to practice. Any other artists that are already on there or think they might join in on the fun, let me know! I'll add you to my friends list there.

Anyway, this is the sketch entry I submitted for my first time on there. Which the topic was "Singing". I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I did things a little different this time around and combined my sketch with the painting style I usually do.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Halloween Wallpaper




I made you all a Halloween themed wallpaper! It's currently formatted for 1920x1200 screens. But if you all would like other sizes just let me know in the comments or via my contact form and I'll update with more versions. For now though I am giving you two other options which include a version with "Happy Halloween" and one without. Hopefully you all enjoy him, I personally keep cracking up with him as my wallpaper staring at me.

Friday, October 8, 2010

DA Damuro Test



I recently started also posting up my work on DA, but this is still going to be the main place I'd like to showcase my work. But deviantART will be another hub more people can find me at if they choose. I'm slowly uploading my stuff on there as well, BUT I had previously heard that they had made an oekaki like online art tool where you can digitally paint right there on the site and then upload it to your DA account.

So, I obviously HAD to try it out. Overall I'm pretty impressed with it, it's like a bare essentials photoshop or oekaki on steroids. The only problem I had was once I started adding more than three layers and coloring it began to majorly lag. So I only got this far in the sketch. Next time I go to use it I'll clear my cache and see if it makes things any better. For now though, you get this update and I am heading to bed! Enjoy! :D

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Underwater Wallpaper





Well I finally finished the underwater wallpaper gift for my friend David. This is also probably going to be a large image heavy post so I can show you all the progress pictures and what was put in, taken out, and how it built itself up over time. I know a lot of people find that interesting, at least I do so I hope you all enjoy it!

Oh and the last one is the finished piece. :) Also if you haven't seen the first post about this wallpaper the link to the progress picture before these is located here.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Killer Shower Caddy - Part 2

As promised here is the second part! I'm a little un happy with how the second panel looks so that may change tomorrow, but since I said it would be done tonight I'm posting it for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy! :) Oh and the story isn't done, so stay tuned!

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Killer Shower Caddy - Part 1


I had a incident with a malicious shower caddy while cleaning the bathroom the other day. So I'm doing a mini story board of the incident for practice, and hopefully bring some humor on here. This is only part one, so be prepared for part two tomorrow, and a possible part three. Depends on how long it takes me to tell the story. Enjoy! :)

Thursday, September 16, 2010

A Toast to George!

This is a painting I promised to do for a long time now for my mom of our dog George who passed away when I was in high school. I could never seem to get him right so it's taken me a lot of attempts over the years to get to this point. Despite that I think this painting completely encompasses what and who George was. I put him on a pedestal because he definitely thought he ruled the entire house and was some Greek dog god, along with hating everyone and everything unless you were in our immediate family. He was very loving with us though, but he did give us the loathing glare like seen here when he first woke up or we left him at home for a few hours. Surprisingly, even though he hated people, he loved to be taken to the groomers and pampered by the women there. I'm sure that has to tie in with his Greek god mentality and viewed them all as his own little harem, even for an hour.

Even though he was a pain to deal with on occasion (especially when the Fedex man came) we all still loved him dearly. So, without further ado here is "George Washington Long" as my mom named him.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

New Car

I've been insanely busy with several things regarding being a responsible adult and life. One of which has been recently buying a new car, hence the theme of the sketches today! I recently bought a 2001 Saturn Wagon which is really nice, but I've found it does need some fixing up in certain areas. But, I really like this car so I decided to try to infuse some life into him by sketching him.

And yes I named him Maurice, but I also think he looks like the brave little toaster (BLT for short). Go ahead and judge me about naming my car, I don't care haha! It amuses me. :)

Monday, August 30, 2010

WIP Wallpaper

What I have here is a wallpaper gift that I've been working on randomly for the last few weeks. It's for my dear friend David who has helped me with a lot of stuff in the last few months. So as a token of my gratitude I'm painting him this wallpaper for his desktop. I would say I have about a few hours here and there, but this is definitely not the finished piece. It still has a lot of things missing, more lighting, rendering, and a few more fish and corral thrown in but I'm fairly happy with how it's coming. I know a lot of artists and people like to see stages of artwork, so hopefully some of my friends here can help with some constructive criticism of it. Hope you all enjoy it!

And if you're interested in who David is he's known as "thecreativeone" on Youtube and you can find him on Twitter under @DavidDiFranco. Hopefully he enjoys this too, even though it's still a work in progress.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Monster Lips

I've been pulling from myself and my surroundings more lately than my imagination when I start sketching. Hopefully it'll be more interesting for the sketches, and I'm also trying to push myself to do more odd poses and perspectives. Since I've noticed lately I've been sketching things more head on naturally, which doesn't help for practicing.

So today when I woke up and after getting ready, I felt like my lips we're huge cartoon-like lips. Why, I have no idea. I originally was going to take a Dailybooth photo of it but then I thought, why not sketch it and make it even funnier. So here it is. :)

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Sleeping with Wolves


So as I woke up this morning, and as I was trying to figure out what to sketch I ended up remembering that every morning this is usually how I wake up. Both dogs smothering me all over my bed and my hair a mess. I ended up thinking it was hilarious and might make a good sketch exercise, and a funny title. I made this digitally in Painter if anyone is interested. I also have some other sketches from this week that I'll post tomorrow or the next day. But today you get this one! Enjoy!

Also let me know if you can find the little dog, and yes she actually DOES sleep that way. :)

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Daily Sketches = Weekly


So, I've decided since I get caught up in everything so easily I'm still doing the daily sketches. But! I'm just going to update them all in one post weekly. It'll make it easier for me, and I'll still be drawing everyday. It just won't be updated on here everyday, which will also help me from feeling like I'm spamming my own blog. So this is a win, win I think. Hopefully you enjoy these sketches, some I obviously felt off on days, others I felt better. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly* is what you'll be getting. :)


(*please tell me you all have seen that movie.)

I also realize I'm a little late with this post, I'm sorry. :(

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Adventure!

This is a quick sketch I did in painter this afternoon, and I decided to mess with the watercolor settings. Nothing too fancy but it's good practice. I'm still going to try this daily sketch thing, I just have to remember and stop getting caught up in other projects. I'll try to kick it into high gear. Let me know if you guys enjoy the quick sketches, I'll also post up longer drawings and paintings too.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

A little old, a little new


I promised some sketches, these were ones of me trying to figure out what I exactly wanted to do with my header, and this is an old WIP (Work in Progress) example I did a while back. To show how I start an image digitally and the different stages of painting. I'm not really into drawing elves much anymore, though it's still nice to look back. I thought you all might find it interesting! Sorry these are later than planned, I've had a lot going on today. All good things though!

Monday, August 2, 2010

New Layout

If you haven't noticed by the large fuchsia bear/tiger hybrid and small bird above, and the new layout and color scheme. Everything around here has changed quite a bit. (this is a theme provided by blogger, though I've tweaked it in some areas.) Hopefully you all enjoy it! I'll be adding some more pages soon, but they are works in progress. They should be up soon though, so no worries for the anxious people. I am currently working on a painting, and will add some sketches tomorrow so keep your eyes peeled for those.

Until then, enjoy the rest of your evening!

Friday, July 30, 2010

New URL

Just thought I'd let you all know that this is now under http://www.lizannlong.com so if you have this bookmarked the old url will redirect you to here, but it's always a good idea to update! I'll be working on a new header too, but for now you'll have just text up there for a bit.

Also my site may be changing a lot, since I'm changing things around. Pardon the slight mess if it is. It'll be resolved soon :)

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Eureka Springs



I traveled to Eureka Springs, Arkansas with my mom yesterday, I had never been there before but I took my camera to take some photos since I had heard it was interesting. These are a few of them here but if you'd like to see more head over to my flickr page here. I am by no means a photographer so they are mostly me playing. I hope you enjoy them!

Oh and if you're interested the camera I used was my Powershot G9, and I mostly used the manual setting.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Big Daddy


First off I'd like to say I do not own these characters at all, they are copyrighted to Bioshock and 2K Studios. I've just been playing the game lately and decided why not paint these two as a little exercise. Plus it's nice to practice a little bit of darker imagery than what's been shown on here yet. I had fun doing it, I haven't done "fanart" in a long, long time. It basically turned into a color and digital painting exercise.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Portfolio Examples





Here are some portfolio examples of some more work I've done over the years, all of it through the last four years in college. Most of this is traditional figure drawing, and may contain some nudity. So if you're at work you may want to wait. It's all tasteful nude modeling though, so no worries there. There may be a few digital ones too though that I did in my illustration classes. Hope you all enjoy!

Thursday, July 8, 2010

New Mural Photos







I finally got to go back to the mural I just recently finished at the end of June to take photos. If I hadn't had technical problems at the time it would have happened sooner and with much more in-depth view of my process. Though my Mac died, so my plans were changed. Some of these are also dark but I was using the lighting from the room to show the mural as its painted to be seen with. Since I had to paint it with that lighting in mind. Though I have added some photos of it in here with the flash on so you can see more detail. I hope you enjoy them :)

Oh and a side note, I didn't paint the "Live Laugh Love" on the doorway, they added that with a stencil after I was done. It was their own personal choice that I leave that spot open for them. As well as it originally going from an italian villa type feel to more of a southwest feel.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Illustrations!




Just some illustrations I did this past year. The first was for a BBQ poster contest in local Kansas City, and the other is just something I did in my free time between projects. Thought you all would enjoy them! I'll have mural photos up in the near future.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

"Troll Trouble"





I've finally posted up my senior thesis. I hope you all enjoy it! So I present to you "Troll Trouble"!

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Dr. Jekyll


I'll probably color him tomorrow, as well as work on this background Im working on as well. I've had a busy day doing more unpacking of boxes and helping move furniture around. So it's been a bit hectic.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Mr. Hyde


Quick sketch, maybe like two hours put into it. Now that Im moved back into a new room and with my stuff set up I can get back to working. I think Im going to try to do a daily sketch like this every day. :D This is my version of Mr. Hyde from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I'll probably do the good doctor tomorrow. Enjoy!

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Character Sheets Duex



Just realized after working on my thesis and getting ready to post it, that I had never posted the character sheets for the two main characters. So here they are! Enjoy!


Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Sketches


Just some random sketches I did today as a warm up before working on my thesis. They're just digital painted rough portraits. I just made up the facial features so they're no one in particular. though some of them do look similar to some people I know. My painting class has started to make me think in blocks of color when I sketch instead of lines anymore. I think that's a good thing but it makes it odd when I start to try to just do line drawings like I did with the little classy old man up top.

shout out to Michael Daley for the tips and telling me to update more often. Go check him out if you don't know his work. It's at http://biocreep.blogspot.com

Friday, February 12, 2010

New Animatic!

Hey all heres the 3rd and final animatic! By the way if anyone knows anyone who would be interested in doing music for it please send them my way. You can contact me via twitter or email at elong[@]kcai(DOT).edu It would make me extremely happy. But this is the final look of the backgrounds and timing. Its only missing one background due to that i just added it in. And i may change the angle of a few shots in the end. But you'll have to wait and see. :D


Tuesday, February 9, 2010

New BG's!





Yup, new backgrounds for my thesis film. Soon Ill post up the 3rd times a charm redone animatic. For now though Ill give you a couple of the backgrounds out of the 25 of them. Im using them in the reworked animatic so the ones you don't see here you'll see later on. Enjoy!