Draw Box - Eerie Fortune Teller

Hey everyone, this one will be short! Why so? Food! That's why.

So to keep it short today I sat down to complete a Draw Box Challenge. This time I drew from the box and got a character! Lucky for me I've recently been practicing skin, unfortunately I didn't even use those techniques on the painting below, outside a better understanding of the fundamentals below is just a single brush and a bit of sweat. Originally the draw boxes are aimed at two hours, in that time I had the sketch down and a rough value lay in. Three hours later, and the Eerie Fortune Teller is complete!

Simple painting, no references used. Being a fan of fantasy, I found inspiration in Everquest's Erudites. Big freaky fore-headed magic users. 

I may go on to add color into the painting just for the fun of it later tonight. Still have another practice to complete for tonight before I can officially shut my brain off.



My later practice box challenge is on vehicles, and it's a master study. Never seen anyone do a master study on that subject, but I at least have a good subject. I'll be checking out Scott Robertsons work along with some of his awesome youtube videos. Already delved into one and gained a simple but useful idea of "P.S.D" meaning Proportion, then Surface, and Detail. A quick rule to follow when designing!

Thanks all, that's it for tonight!

Practice, practice and guess what, more practice!

Hey readers, it's that time again, time to share what I've been up to. As the title says, I've been practicing a lot. Some practices I'll show here, others may become full projects, where as others even got tossed into the trash.

So why all the practice? Well the girlfriend and I decided that the draw box wasn't enough! Now I have a Practice Box that includes things like Master Studies, Anatomy Studies, Texture Spheres and more! The draw box is now being adjusted to creative works only, two hours worth of sketching or quick.. ish, iterations and concepts. Still working on that one, favoring learning fundamentals so I'll let the clock run on some stuff. Which is why I don't have anything to show from that (yet.)

So yesterday I actually had a special challenge of doing 10 different skin tones / textures in the form of a ball. The catch for doing that many, was a trip to get some frozen custard as a reward. Which was totally a win-win since I'm really happy with how the practice came out. I even had a bit of fun with it, rather than doing simple balls of skin, I added a bit of character & detail to each. Admittedly though, it felt like the volume was still lacking. Started off low contrast, so that might have been why, or it could be because of no cast shadows and different lighting on each object. Either way, check it out!

Played with lighting on each ball as well. FX details come from Luvusi's tutorials.

Funnily enough the day before, I had received another practice involving a sphere. An odd one, but it was fun to try to wrap Chinchilla fur around a ball. Luckily they're ball-shaped enough so rendering hair on a sphere didn't require much imagination. Reference picture left on image for fun, I avoided using the grey on the coat, I was shooting more for the texture than local values. 

Ref. pic left on image for viewer benefit. I avoided the coat pattern, was shooting for texture more than local value.

Lastly, I'll be sharing the practice I just completed, thankfully I was using a different set of muscles rather than texture practice. The practice was to study the muscle anatomy of a human back, get it, using a different set of muscles! Ha. I'm funny right? I'll stick to the art. In this study I spent about an hour reviewing some muscle lessons from Proko, as well as observing similar studies to identify muscle location. Not as focused on names as much as location, function and general shape. 

Used a Proko model image to get a rough idea of muscle location by tracing over it and color coding it. Sketched from Burne Hogarth and reapplied coloring to locate muscles.

I've got a character concept in the works as well from a draw box, and that's all I'll say about that. Alright, that's all for tonight folks! Have a good one, thanks for reading!

Fallout Femme Fatale

Hey everyone! Finally ready to call this one done. This character was inspired by the game Fallout 4, the idea was very simple, a Brotherhood of Steel femme fatale. I've named her "Red," a fiery redheaded badass! 

"Red," a Brotherhood of Steel Femme Fatale, I hope her armor tells a story, and brings you to ask what does she do, where has she been?

Originally I had wanted to throw blood splatter down the side of her, but it just felt too artificial for my liking so I went without. I had a lot of inspiration from Dan Luvisi's works, especially after watching some character tutorials of his. I'd say with this piece I've learned the most, both during it all and in reflection. 

Just to name a few things, get better at composition, eyes, lighting, hair, skin texture, metal rusted texture, blood splatter effects.. actually doing thumbnails! This one started off just shooting in one direction, I know if I spent the extra time in the front half of the project I would have spent less time later noodling with ideas.

This piece took me way too long to complete, it felt like a grind, having one session of work span over 24hrs I've been ready to have this piece done and out of the way to move on to the next thing. In fact I'll be doing a practice to warm-up after this post. 

In other news, I found an awesome new resource to help me, ImagineFX magazine. I had always known about it, but never really considered giving it a serious glance until recently. Man, could I have used this a year ago! So much to learn, and so little time.

Thank you all for reading, keep an eye out for more soon! I've decided to amp up my draw box challenges and bring in practice box challenges. Master studies, texture studies, technique practice, etc. So one box serves as creative outlet, the other technique practice and eye training.

Falling From Space

Evening all! Picked up a tutorial recently from Eytan Zana on Graphic Composition for Environments, the idea is to nail your shape language and composition with just a few values so that it reads well. This is really important when trying to present a story or scene. So the picture below is a practice of that. I had done a handful of them but the one below is the only one that I liked enough to share. I may make it into a full piece sometime, I may not.

In other news, the Fallout lady is slowly coming along. Burnt myself out on her by overworking her face, so it was one of those two steps forward and three steps back, didn't like the road I was taking. Tonight I'll be hitting it hard, my hope is to have a final ready by tomorrows post.

It's like a gigantic thumbnail. My first attempt at this approach, hope it tells a story. Too many values, need to limit myself better next time.

Thanks for reading!

Fallout Fanart Work in Progress

Hey all, remember that awesome Fallout Fanart I was working on late January? Well I decided to pick it back up and get it to a point where I felt pleased with it. I also have every intention on returning to the Motoko piece as well now that I've learned more. As it stands I'm still working on this character, and it's been a blast doing so.

I've taken a lot of inspiration from Dan Luvisi and his way of decking out a character painting with rich story driven details. So no detail is for just detail sake, it all has a purpose. I'd like to think that's the best way to go about it. Check it out below, see if you gather any story from the character or not. I'm sure fans of the Fallout franchise will pick up on some details.

I've also been inspired by John Grello. The dude is an ace with characters as well. Simply put I've been watching available youtube videos just to figure out what the guy does and try to do similar myself.

Below you'll find my most recent shot, I had just added the idea of localized color and was about to attack texture like rust, more scratches on the metal, etc. Note that the red markings / text are all placeholders for ideas, yet to be rendered in.

Say hello to Red. Her power armor says badass and her face says pin-up girl, and I'm okay with that!

Remember the top left? That's what I last shared. The rest are some progress shots as I started reworking the face and armor. 

Thanks for reading! Hope to have this one done relatively soon!

Draw Box - Paint a Pumpkin

Got a fun little Draw Box challenge, paint a pumpkin. So I decided to make it sort of a study by having a photo reference to look at, but kind of make it my own at the same time. Very simple, was a good bit of fun and enjoyed trying to achieve the texture of the surface.

Simple practice is simple.

I also have been working closely with a friend of mine on a wood crafting of his, he needed a celtic knotting design on the top of  a jewelry box. My role was to help visualize some options and come to a conclusion on what precisely he wanted. Below is an image of a few early ideas. Last image is final. It's very rough, but it would be used as a transparency anyways.

Final

Last but not least, I've been working on another piece. Remember that Brotherhood of Steel Fallout Lady? Well, it should be done in time for tomorrows post. Super excited! Gotta work on it now! Bye!

Draw Box - 5 Fantasy Mushrooms

Hey all, today I decided to pull a challenge out of the "Draw Box" that my girlfriend made out of a tissue box. Got something that is out of my comfort zone, plants, well, fungi, specifically mushrooms. It was an awesome challenge for rendering out textures, and my newest brushes made a huge impact. I tried to design each mushroom with a different texture to it.  We also made up ideas for these different kinds of mushrooms on the fly, so some are more cohesive and others less. I had a blast with this little project. Made it with the intention of being a concept work.

I absolutely love the Wooly Mushroom and was extremely pleased with the hair texture. No photos used!

Thanks for checking my stuff out!

New Set of Brushes

Hey everyone, decided to revisit the drawing, sketch, doodles I did in my last post and paint one. Of course I picked the Asari, because Mass Effect is an awesome universe. Two things were going on here, a "new" set of brushes and the painting was more of a value practice. So I kept it to greys and practiced how well I could convey lighting and texture.

In truth these "new" brushes aren't so new, I've had these brushes for awhile, but never sat down to really attempt using them as they were intended. These brushes come from Shaddy Safadi, and I love the infographic-guide-thing that he put together for these brushes.

More details can be found @ http://www.shaddyconceptart.com/download

So here's what I did with those brushes, I was really happy with how they achieved a painterly look. I know it'll take some time until I am able to use these brushes efficiently, it's why I decided last summer not to touch them, and stick to learning the fundamentals. Thankfully I can say I think I'm ready to start using these tools more often. It didn't take all that long to really get the value study going, I spent most of my time noodling with what I could do with the brushes.

Didn't bother removing all the lines, and Asari eyebrows.. what are they?  Not hair, that's for sure. Left that untouched.

Consistency Is Hard

Hey everyone, it's been a few days since my last post, I'm still here! For whatever reason, I got hit with a creative block, or just simply put a lack of drive. It may have had something to do with participating in Ubisoft's closed beta of The Division. Really awesome game, went full hog and screwed my sleep schedule for a day or so just to get the most out of it! Outside of that this week has been full of shenanigans here and there, but enough excuses, back to art.

Sat down to do some face and head practices, I've always been more of a sketching and drawing artist than a painter. I also wanted to see how my skills have improved since I did my last handful of faces.

What does an Asari, a Division Agent and Henry Cavil have in common? Not a damned thing. Happy with the Asari, both dude faces are off.

Will be posting content over the weekend and keeping to my goal of a post per day. Be it studies, drawing or whatever work I've been up to! The Fallout Teaser from earlier is also being worked on, I expect it to be done very soon. Thanks for reading!