Urban Sketching in Sweden

It's been a while since I made an update here on my Journal page, but I have been busy! For whatever reason, Inktober 2025 really resonated with me, and what stuck with me is the idea that your artistic journey should always be in motion, even if it's only a little bit at a time; any progress at all is moving in the right direction. 

Inktober 2025 Artefacts Volume 1: Starfish Suit

The last few years, even while I am churning out drawings for Inktober, I always have a few that I wonder what I could with if I had just a little bit more time to spend on them. I started experimenting with AI tools for manipulation for the drawings, though I always feel like they need some further editing. This image started as a simple sketch of a starfish, but I felt like the starfish needed to transcend the limited mobility of its existence...so I made it more mobile. 

After Inktober ended, I felt like I could use Vizcom and a bit of digital 'overpainting' with Sketchbook Pro and my XP-Pen tablet monitor to flesh out the character further. The combination of SketchbookPro and the XP-Pen screen allows for a fairly simple interface that I can draw right onto.

The final version of the render from Vizcom with the edits looked like this:

Vizcom does an excellent job of preserving the overal shape and detail of a simple sketch, the text prompts are auto-generated and editable, and you have many render options. Maybe my favorite feature, though, is the ability to convert your render to a 3d object and then export it as an .fbx, .gltf, or .usd file that can be modified through 3d tools. I usually take it these exports into Blender, to check the scale and whether the texture map and overall geometry look ok; for this model, I repainted the faceplate in SketchbookPro for a new 3d output, as the starfish, though pretty detailed, was on the outside of the helmet, which was not what I wanted. With the newly exported .gltf, I decided to use Adobe Substance to just generate a .PNG file with the background knocked out so that I could make a composite in Photoshop using a Firefly-generated background with a prompt. It's not perfect, by any means, but it's interesting to see how AI tools can augment the conceptual process. 

Tan Beholder via Procreate

I have been doing more sketching recently, just pena nd ink and occasionally a bit of color, but the texture of the fur was just not coming along how I wanted. I picked up the family iPad, and decided to bring the sketch into Procreate for the fur and a bit of color tinting. I had forgotten how much fun using Procreate can be, and how intuitive the application is! 

The Sharing Pair

One of the advantages to being out of work for a few weeks is getting the chance almost daily to draw or sketch. It's a challenge to get back into the habit, I must admit. My plan is to make a digital version of these two, maybe even add a third character.