Hard Round

A Ninja On The Run 🥷

Happy New Year all! Sorry it's been quiet here 😩

Initially this was going to be a Psylocke pinup, but as I worked on it I realised it was going to be a bit too spicy to be Psylocke, so I referenced my own Ninja character from a couple of years back and then promptly forgot that I was doing that and just made this generic ninja character... sometimes I hate my brain lol.

Anyway, the main reason I wanted to do this is because back in 2022 I did a cover for basically the biggest ...

Anyone for a Quickie?

One last pinup to see out this year. I won't get into it much, but I'm glad to see the back of 2024. Good riddance I say.

I've always loved negative space in design, weather it's a page layout in a magazine or the composition of an illustration or photograph, there's just something I really enjoy about it. I bring this up because I also love it when a comic cover leaves out part of an outfit or a character's hair and just lets the background colour fill that space. Many artists have...

Merry Crisis

Or Merry Chrysler... (I hope you get the reference, and sorry if I panicked anyone!)

I'd just like to extend a massive thankyou to everyone here; you folks are the reason I'm still able to do this. Whether you're with family (biological or chosen) or are flying solo this year, I wish you a wonderful time.

In the spirit of the holidays please accept this hastily put together full resolution remake of one of my first modern attempts at a pinup for the holidays. I hope you like it, e...

Peaches

Sorry Jack Black but that song was horrendous, but it works as a title for this one!

Inspiration for this came kind of out of nowhere; initially it was just going to be Bowsette sat on a mushroom with some toys laying around her, then I added Peach, then figured she should be captured, then saw some shots of the film (I've never seen it, I'm not really a ninty boy) and decided it had to have a background and heeeeere we are.

This one's a bit different for me, but I hope you like i...

Femme Fatale

Been plugging away at this one for what feels like an eternity (it's probably about 2 months off and on)

At one stage I thought this was cursed because every time I tried to finish the colour work something went wrong. I had a blue screen and lost 3 hours of work on it, I couldn't get photoshop's brushes to work correctly, I couldn't get it to transfer over to my ipad so I could do it in procreate; even had good ol' art block and couldn't figure out the colours I wanted initially lol...

Come To Bed...

Storytime! "oh god" I hear you cry.

Back in the spring I got the chance to work on some branding for a craft brewery in London. I won't get into the nitty gritty of it because of NDA and all the legal shit; but, one of the ideas they had was for a femme fatale type character in a backless red dress. We did a bunch of sketches for it and I even had a model lined up to shoot for reference (though I suspect she never intended to follow through. bitch) then at the eleventh hour they decided...

Stretchy Sunday (fan tier)

EDIT: - I remembered instagram HATES ass cheeks so in an effort to not upset the puritans, I made an extra covered up version. I don't think it's a total killjoy but it would be nice not to have to censor a non explicit image 🤷‍♂️. So that means more art for you guys! (6 extra slides at the end 🫶)

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So I try and get warm ups posted to Super Fan tier once a week (I often fail... chalk it up to a chaotic schedule) anyway, one of the sketches was pretty popular the other ...

Have a Pizza This

My puns know no bounds.

Anyway; had one of those "remember when you got commissioned by someone kinda famous to draw April O'Neil in bondage?" things today and had to dig it out and share on Blue Sky (https://bsky.app/profile/hardroundbrush.bsky.social)

That then made me realise I never posted it here, soooo I'm going to tie it into Thanksgiving and say I'm thankful for the commission an...

Discord?

Alrighty sooooo with what appears to be the death of twitter, instagram's crackdown on spicy content and the general sludginess of patreon's tools for me as an undiagnosed-but-something-ain't-right creator I've been thinking a LOT about starting up a discord server with a subscribers only area for us.

I'm on my PC most of the day for my day job, and very often in the evenings when I'm working on stuff for here so I'm thinking it would be a place where I more regularly drop screenshots o...

Hey, dese are old but gold

Hades = Hey dese... see what I did there? Yeah sorry I know, that was a terrible pun.

ANYWAY

I made a post on bluesky about these earlier and thought it'd be fun to find some of the older bits for you guys soooo here's Meg and Aphrodite from Hades. I thought I'd share the original posts I made for twitter back in the day too, there's some closeups and peeks at the Aphrodite reference board I found :D

The Meg pinup is based on her boss fight arena, and the Aphrodite i...

Vi-olate Me Mommy

Questionable title aside I'm pretty chuffed with this one!

Just in time for part 1 of the new season :D

I kiiiinda went a bit overboard with the muscle mommy thing here but as you'll see next week, it's a nice contrast to the other character I plan to draw 🤫

In terms of style this is kind of a return to my "usual" look but with a nod to the absolutely STELLAR work that Fortiche did with the Arcane series. Those folks are absolute wizards and their art direction is S+ tie...

She's a Screamer

One last post for Halloween! 3 in a week omg?!

So I've got a confession to make... I've never seen Scream (or any of the sequels) so the only reference I have for Ghostface is... Scary Movie... 😅 I remember seeing it in the cinema and that Carmen Electra scene stayed with me for a LONG time... mmm Carmen Electra... ANYWAY the other one that stayed with me was Ghostface high, it STILL makes me laugh, so I had to do a meme version for this. hehe.

I'm trying something a bit m...

Scarlet

It feels like a lifetime since I've attempted a likeness so here's a quick(ish) stylised study of Scarlet Chase (Secretcrush) based on her IG story from the other day.

I loved the initial sketch and spent most of the time trying to retain the vibe (but failing, as usual 🙃)

Also... 2 posts in a week? What universe are we in? 😱

Spicy Pretzels

I dunno about you, but I like my pretzels hot, spicy, and very very moist... 😼

I planned to have this out late last week but prep for comic con and being ill kind of scuppered that plan 😭

But I'm back now, and I figured I'd get myself warmed up but finishing this off for you guys - I literally hit save on the psd 3 minutes ago so this is about as hot off the presses as it gets.

The pose was inspired by all the girls on socials doing "yoga" - and initia...

Spooky Painty Lady

I was gonna call this "horny girls in your area" but I dunno if that's a bit sus for patreon? 😅

This is a super loose exploration of a very different way of working for me, it's all done on 2 layers (one for the background and one for the figure) and there's no sketch, no drawing, no guides at all it's just painted in with full colour right from the start. It's... pretty challenging for me to be honest, I consider myself a drawer not a painter, and my mind works that way, it kind ...

The Offering

Soooo here's the finished version of the WIP post from the other day!

Making an offering of the flesh to an as yet unknown spirit... what could possibly go wrong? ...or right? 👀

Hope you like it!

HRB x

Quick Stretch

was just gonna call this "quick sketch" but... yaknow... stretches.

Anyway - I'm away this week helping my brother move so there's unlikely to be much progress on The Offering til next week at the earliest. To make up for it, here's a very quick sketch of my OC and exploring that simple beam of light and bloomy lighting style I've been messing with lately.

I actually cheated a little and used the symmetry tool in photoshop to get everything lined up perfectly ha. I was thinking ab...

The Offering WIP

Working on a bit of a monster piece with a few variants and I promised an update to the tier 2 folks today but I felt mean leaving you out 😭, so here's a sneaky peeky at where I'm at with it.

This is the safe for work version (or...safe ish - I'm wondering if I should give the pants a bit more coverage down there for the IG algo🤔) the idea is that she's about to perform a ritual to prove her devotion to her demonic mistress. Maybe she's going to film it and that's why she's look...

Light Play

Something quick-ish, a sort of pseudo sequel to one of the first pieces I ever posted here - the beanbag girl.

This started very loosely as a warm up/study a Riley Reid post from X, but I ended up changing a few things and like a lot of my pieces it took on a life of it's own. Instagram will get the frosted glass version, you guys get the naughty version as intended (and the frosted glass one cos I think it's funny and a little bit mean 😅)

Have a lovely Sunday, will catch up...

Juniper Commission

First of all I'm sorry about how quiet things have been here this month. Life's a bit of a struggle still and my advertising work has been ridiculously full on for weeks now. (I'm painfully aware that I've said something like this on almost every post recently, I really am sorry!)

I'm not going to make any promises about new/more artwork because frankly I barely know what day of the week it is and planning anything is impossible at the moment BUT, I will again say thank you so much for ...

It's On(sun)day 🛁

Onsen... Sunday... Onsunday... Onsenday?

I dunno. Nobody reads these anyway so who cares lol.

FINALLY got this devil off my back. It's been a wild ride (in my head) trying to get this one over the line, and it took an entire redraw and style change to get it there. Ugh.

I really want to do a fully painted piece again with no linework and fancy lighting etc, but this one was NOT the one to do it on and it took me far too long to realise that fact.

Luckily I picked ...

POLL TIME

CALLING ALL CULTURED FOLKS (that's you lot)

Which of these ugly AF sketches should I make pretty (relatively speaking) next?

I've got a horrific lineup of day job stuff coming up so rather than lilt between pinups I don't know if anyone's interested in, I thought I'd ask!

So, let me know in the comments which one floats your boat (I have a feeling I know which way the votes will go but lets see what happens!)

The Sin and the Sentence

The title kiiiiiiind of relates to the idea here of some sort of enraged Goddess about to deal flaming retribution... but in all honesty, it's just the album I was listening to while working on this. 🤘

I bought some reference packs from Grafit Studio recently (great stuff, check them out if you need refs) in an effort to break away from using the same couple of models and similar posing (I maybe overthink this stuff, but I dunno?) and one pose in particular stood out straight away - ...

Dungeon Domme-ination

Not my usual thing (in many ways) buuut here's a commission I finished up recently for one of the lovely folks on Super Fan tier.

There's a few closeups and a look at the inks and the initial pencil sketch in the carousel there.

Just a quick note on commissions - officially my list is closed, but super fan folks can message me and ask about my availability etc and if I have time/fancy working on their idea I might well do it. I know that's not exactly professional and it's kinda ...

Natalie Roush Sketch

Nothing major, just a quick sketch of Natalie Roush done after work today. Model and reference here - https://www.instagram.com/natalieroush/

No Doctor!

Get it?

This kind of came out of nowhere tbh, I was warming up doing some throwaway sketches when the idea of doing a Bond girl type character popped into my head. Having grown up on the classic Bond films I vividly remember Honey Ryder and I just figured I'd do something of an homage to the character, albeit with waaaaaay bigger chesticles because... why not eh?

Fun fact - I actually find boobs REALLY hard to draw, it's one of the reasons I tend to draw skinnier/fitter character...

Mercedes Portrait

After work one night last week I still had a little "gas in the tank" and I fancied drawing a quick Mercedes portrait. I liked it, but it was only a 20 minute sketch and there were some things off here and there so on saturday morning BEFORE work, I put an hour or so into drawing it up a bit nicer. It's only small, but, I hope you like it!

Let the waves wash over you

It looks like we're going to get a week or so of unbroken sunshine here in London so it seems like a good time to post this up at last! It's been sitting on my harddrive for a couple of weeks unloved because... life 🥲

This was initially inspired by (what I think to be) the iconic Kate Upton Sports Illustrated Swimsuit shoot of her on a rocky beach getting absolutely drenched by the sea. It was going to be a 1 to 1 study/recreation but the more I thought about it, the less interested ...

Shanna The She Devil

Ok so this is pretty different.

In an effort to bust out of this art block I've found myself in, I started getting back to basics, reading through "How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way" (A classic) and watching a few Proko videos on youtube. In the midst of all that, I realised one of my favourite artists Frank Cho also has a YT channel.

On it he mostly posts timelapse videos of him doing weekly sketches, and this one of Shanna The She Devil just kind of... I dunno, inspired me I gu...

New Balls Please

Well, summer's trying to get here... though for us in the UK it's struggling (tbh I don't mind, I prefer it cold and miserable lol) so to celebrate, here's something silly. Kind of an homage to the classic silly cartoons you might find in Penthouse or Playboy back in the day.

I do have an apology to make, I'm sorry it's been quiet around here. It's been a struggle the last month or so, and if you follow me on IG you'll have seen me complaining about art block and the BS that keeps comin...