Baubles

One for mum, this time for xmas. I wanted to do something a little different compositionally, so i thought about having the ted (the key subject matter in most of mum's cards) being reflected in a bauble, suggesting the ted's in the process of decorating the tree. A mix of painter for the ted elements, and photoshop for the tree background (a filter effect applied to a photo). It didn't take too long to complete but it achieves that warm, festive feel i set out to achieve.

Groovy!

Another birthday effort, this time for the old man. Created in Photoshop, a mix of a couple of my favourite films, the Evil Dead and Hellraiser series. Took a fair while of toing and froing, getting perspectives right and establishing the bablance between foreground detail and background elements, ended up going fairly well though.

Sunflower

One created for my mum's birthday, I figure it's more personal than picking something up from Clintons! Created nice and roughly in Painter.

WHY SO SERIOUS?

The theme for this piece was a portrait...and though it's not quite a classic portrait, I was inspired after seeing the Dark Knight and Ledger's brilliant re-defining of the Joker. I used one of the posters available from the Dark Knight site as reference and painted the initial piece in Painter before taking it to Photoshop and adding shadows, highlights and effects over the card (which I found on Google images) to make it look more painterly. I wasn't trying to 100% replicate the poster but taking it into my own style, which I wanted to keep loose and sketchy, giving the image a more edgy look, reminiscent of the Star Wars image I painted. Took around 3-4 hrs, start to finish.

The Hunt

Inspired by one of my favourite films (the original, not the remake) i've gone for another concept art sketchy style. Only trouble being, to get that loose feel and to see how little you can get away with putting into an image so the eye recognises stuff and creates the story for itself without having to draw in every leaf and reed, is actually really time consuming and quite hard.

So another late post, but i'm happy with the result, i like the use of light and shadow to reveal the characters and even the depth of filed seems to have worked out ok. there is a sense of drama in the composition and the flat colours help this, with the slight offset of the splash of red.

Created in Painter X, using photoshop to add in some of the background textures. Time taken....too long!

Somewhere....beyond the sea.....

Another unfinished piece...not sure where the time is going these days. The premise being a sort of children's book panel with the kid and his motley crew of a monkey and a parrot spotting a far of storm heading in the direction of their home made raft.

Not sure painter is the best medium, maybe a flat vector illustrator style would be best. I had in my mind a monkey island type style, with a low p.o.v that is almost half in the water, but it didn't seem to come out right, partly due to trying to render the storm clouds. Doing them in a realistic fashion didn't seem to be right whilst getting the three dimensional nature of them and the way they affected the sky colour was causing some headaches. So all in all spent more time on the background without getting the elements in the foreground fleshed out. I do like the messy nature of the sea colour though. One to revisit at a later date.

Ho, Ho, Ho!

A Christmas themed challenge seemed appropriate after all the darkness I'd been producing, so I had a think and took my time on this one. I've gone for a nice smooth style this time around and concentrated on getting all the colours as rich and xmassy as possible. I wanted to get a real sense of depth with the light from the fireplace, and really utilise the vibrant, warm colours and shadows it produced, whilst working in the traditional greens and reds of xmas. I had the idea to do a scene of Santa getting toasted as he was coming down the chimney with a child at the fireplace warming his hands...and as i was concepting i realised it would have to be a fairly long piece!

Concepted the ideas, figures and composition in my little notebook, then went straight into Painter X to create the piece from scratch. Original size was 10000 x 4000 pixels reduced down to about 15percent to get it into the blog. Think it turned out alright, just took a while longer than anticpated!

Halloween

Another quickie sketch for the monthly creative blog, this time the theme being Halloween. So with all the things that are connected with the date I decided on the classic witch making some sort of potion, always seemingly involving unfortunate amphibians... Again this was an exercise in speed, what with the deadline looming but also interesting to see what I could get down in terms of composition, lighting and colour and how simply these elements would combine to make the illustration work.

Created in PainterX, with the cauldron glow added afterward in Photoshop.

Drowning

Second posting for the monthly challenge, this time Drowning. A chilling subject, the style was happened upon as I was playing with a large white pencil on the black background and ended up with the hand print shape. This I then used as determining the lighting of the piece. The Idea being that a sailor from years gone bye being dragged down to the murky deep by some hideous being. At first it was to be a tentacle and he was to be surrounded by the debris of a broken up ship, but I decided the drama was in the figure, and that the tentacled beast was a bit too much so I was struck by the thought of an alluring yet deadly mermaid dragging the unfortunate victim down. Pretty happy given the time frame and the trouble i had with the perspective, lighting and beast...not happy with the bubbles though...

Painter x, lots of hours over around 15 days

Mission to Mars!

Decided to start another blog, a monthly challenge where a brief is set, just one word, and you have a month to answer it in any way you deem fit. This was the first month's challenge the brief being Mission to Mars! After scribbling through loads of ideas I finally arrived at the idea of a kid making his own rocket to the stars from everyday junk. I did it loose and fast, and am actually pleased with the rough rendering of the image. Created in Painter x over the space of a week, about 4-5 hours.

Scribble

An idea for another pic one day. Based on a childoof memory of a fancy dress costume my dad made for me when I must have been around 5ish. It was a dinosaur suit with a head made from a painted cardboard box. Quality.

Korea

Went all black and white for this one. Based on an image from a book of war photography i chose this guy as his eyes really seem to tell a story of what he's seen, experienced and endured. I took a certain amount of license with his face, I made him look a little more square jawed all American hero and emphasised the point with the heavy black outlines around the jawline and neck area, almost to give it a comic book feel. Using Painter IX again, got my favourite brushes sorted out by now and have decided that it's best to have a few brushes that you use to create our own style rather than trying to mimic so many other fantastic artists out there.

Ben Grimm

How do you follow up the Lord of Darkness? With difficulty, so I simply tried creating something as fast as possible. I settled on Ben Grimm, aka the Thing from the Fantastic 4 thanks to his craggy rock surfaced skin...thought it would be a good exercise in using lighting as I wanted to create something quite dynamic. Not the best piece but was fun to crank through and get ever more familiar with Painter IX.

Sith

The very first attempt at something in Painter. Using Painter 8, copied the inside sleeve of the Revenge of the Sith soundtrack. I really liked the rough sketchy style I managed to get using oils, charcoals and oil pastels. The lightsaber was added in photoshop after. Took around 3-4 hours over a couple of nights.

Lord of Darkness

Second go with Painter IX. Much better attempt, using a photo placed on one screen whilst painting onto the canvas on the other (benefit of having dual screens). Took a long time, an hour or so a night over a couple of weeks, but I'm pleased with the result, was interesting how you learn about composition and how to use light and dark to create the image.

Mars Attacks!

First real painting (rather than a quick scribble experiment) effort of using Painter IX. Getting to grips with using the brushes and trying out the realmedia brushes and techniques used.