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!