Learning & Practices - Great start to this week!

Hey all, I'm very excited to share some new paintings / practices that I've done within the last two days. Thanks to the internet and resources on it, I'm able to learn tons! Yesterday I purchased a super cheap tutorial on values, "How to Improve Your Values" by Anthony Jones. While it was a quick 45mins it was an important 45mins. In short he explains putting local value first before lighting information. I should have known this, but it seems like I never corrected that bad habit. Below is an example of my first attempt with this fresh new outlook!

This character was inspired by the video game Civilizaton Beyond Earth, she is a Pan-Asian Cooperative spy/agent.

I've always wanted to make my digital painting look more traditional, there is something about that oil painted stroke feel that just feels.. warm and I guess you could say it pleases my "aesthetic sensibilities," whatever that means. I also want to improve on my ability to bring a more vivid and interesting color palette. So thanks to a little digging on youtube I found myself a video on Monday on how to achieve just that, by an artist named of Ahmed Aldoori, Well, it's about using an underpainting and colors but it feels more painterly than what I've been doing. I'll share the video and my work below!

Helpful stuff! Also grabbed his brushes, nothing too out of the ordinary but it gave a different light to what I always considered was the "hair brush." So was also something learned. Below is an image I did in my own style, but using the same approach.

Anatomy wasn't the focus, and I found myself noodling on it just to fix things here and there. So I called it done in order to move on. So she may not be the prettiest woman out there, but I do like the style and color. 

Of course I've also done some Master Studies during this time, they're nothing crazy or to call home about but I'll share it just to share it, this was done before the new approach in values (this was done on Monday). Looking forward to my next study. These we're done in 15mins a pop. My goal was to get the major white/grey/blacks in the right-ish position to learn composition. So ultimately, squint hard enough and it should look the same. 

Lastly, a friend of mine asked me to make something creepy and gross. Again this was before my values lesson and would have benefited greatly from it had I done it after, but it does show a good before and after on what I've learned. So behold some quick 30min sketch-paint of a creepy dude-thing.

Yay! You're at the end! Well, almost. In other news, I'm starting to pick up commissions within my gaming community for super cheap, I'll be testing the waters on doing commissioned work, the goal here is to gain some experience with handling projects, people and hitting deadlines, etc. (just got my first one!) All things going well, I with a little bit of luck will go for commissions publicly. This will help not only with bills, but also with tutorials, lessons and online resources that can make up for the lack of formal education I decided to opt out on. To top it all off, I'll be starting projects of my own designed to strengthen my ability to... well, design. So more conceptual art, less illustration art. 

As always thanks for reading!

Also remember to check me out on Artstation or DeviantArt! 

D&D Characters & News

Here's a fun one I did for some friends in my gaming community! After hearing they've been doing D&D campaigns I immediately thought of doing this at some point because I figured I'd be fun, and it was! Especially after doing those recent character sketches, I felt up to the challenge.

While I can't say I really dig on their names, well except one, I can say I'm pretty happy with the quality of each character. Photo references were used on all of them to give me an anchor, and I feel like I got better rendering even within the picture itself as I did these in a span of two days. I believe the last two (the fighter and wizard) are a bit better planned out than the other two elf peoples.

Also what gives on the new 5th edition gnomes? Not at all what I expected!

I also have a bit of news!

I now have an official Paypal which means I can take on commissions (soon TM)! I'll have something set up on Deviant Art and on my blog to take in. Thinking about 3 slots at most to get the ball rolling. I've got a bit of research to do too, to prep myself.

Also I can now accept generous and awesome donations, I've added a new module to the blog at the bottom right of the website where you can now donate towards my art education!

All donations are STRICTLY used for tutorials and lessons. Places like Gumroad, Gnomon workshop, Art Camp and Learned Squared are on the wish list. Hoewever, starting small with gumroad tutorials will be the first step (approx 5-10usd per), because things like Noah Bradley's the Art of Freelancing is just too much without doing commissions.

Lastly, someone shared my work on reddit without me being involved, so that's cool and a first! That's all for me tonight! Thanks for reading!

Character Sketches

Surprised myself on how quick I did this. Gotta get faster, and do more. 

Here's some quick character sketches I did earlier today! These fun doodles lasted around 15-30mins per each character and a collective bit of time noodling around to render further because I was having a bit too much fun!

I plan on doing a ton more of these sketches in the future, practicing faces and characters. Eventually I'd like to do more than stoic expressions. The Lawman was the most fun, I may paint him later. Which one do you guys like?

As always, thanks for reading. More to come in the coming days!

I'm still kicking!

Hello everyone!

I'll cut to the chase, this last month I flopped on staying consistent and posting here to my blog! Sorry readers! Admittedly I've been in a bit of a funk, with the passing of a close family friend and all sorts of life drama, posting my little achievements didn't feel worth it. Well, enough of that BS it's time to get back on the horse.

In truth I really never did stop, but I did stop sharing which isn't good. Over the last month I've been watching and reading tutorials, reading good ol' Imagine FX, and practicing new techniques that I've learned. Watched a lot of interviews with industry professionals, one where Anthony Jones citied a dude named Steve Huston. That lead to searching about the guy and learning about him. As an example, I found this helpful lesson, "How to Draw the Head and Face / Portrait with Steve Huston," it's three hours long! For those interested I'll embed it below. Good stuff!

Within the last month I had been working on a piece for my Mothers birthday! At the moment it's at a near-finished state. It's colored and all, I could share it but what would be the fun in that (hint it has something to do with Everquest)! The hair gave me a curve ball and for whatever reason I didn't feel like I would do it justice. So I started something else, with a bit of focus on hair and how to take what I've learned and apply it to the other work.

This piece only took me a day to get to a point where I was happy, but I spent another day refining it and giving it that extra push. I was extremely happy with it and was near tempted to leave it alone, but I didn't! This piece is very close to my heart as well, it's a picture of Commander Shepard from the Mass Effect trilogy! Specifically Jane Shepard because I wanted to practice long hair. Admittedly though I've never played as her in the series.

Still surprised I did the majority of this in one day. Also lens flare, because Mass Effect. Also it fits my monitor perfectly!

I'm starting to think about going into some commissions to gain more experience and help out with the whole living thing, what do you all think? Am I ready? I plan on trying but of course confidence is another thing. 

To explain a bit of the process on this painting, it started without any line work at all. I just went at it silhouette first. Of course I used the hell out of clipping masks and transparency layer lock features in photoshop. Believe it or not the armor took longer to render than the face or the hair, I suppose that had to do with my approach and having no line art to fall back on. At the end I had done about 5-6 color level adjustments (orange hues, blue hues, green hues) and funnily enough decided to stick with my guns on this one. Especially once I put in the background and lens flare, it all started to gell. Hope you guys like it! I'm super pleased. 

I've got a lot in plan for pieces to do, but my biggest goal is to achieve a painterly look to imitate a traditional oil paint look. An example, while I don't often do this and tend to use textured brushes, the piece above used a soft round and hard round brush predominately. It didn't really bother me, I just had a ton of fun with it and I suppose it shows. 

As always, thanks for reading! Hope to post before the month is over this time!