Artstream 15/07/2016: A Touch of Magic

  I feel I am getting a little faster at painting, that or the picture above is still relatively simple. Which took just under two hours. I felt this session was so brief I decided on a second picture, which admittedly isn't completed yet, but I feel the Minotaur I had in mind (below) is off to a good start despite only spending about 45 minutes on him. There's still a lot to do with him however.

  I considered making two separate videos, one for each picture, my current formula might be more suited to the time-lapses being compressions of my streaming nights.

Artstream 11/06/2016 - Battlefield One Art

  Watching the trailer for Battlefield One I was greatly inspired by the sight of a Bedouin warrior early in the trailer. What interested me most was the hint that Battlefield One might at least partially show the Arabian theatre of the first world war, a theatre that aside from tales like Lawrence of Arabia is relatively poorly-known to the general public compared to the fields of the Franco-Belgian border. I particularly enjoyed painting the horse, as I had spent a lot of time as of late looking at horses that got me particularly particularly inspired though I think there could be some improvements made to how it ended up.

Colo Colo: Texturing Begins

  I decided to take a break from skinning today and work on the creature's textures. Originally going for a kind of skin, the outcome of the current texture has made me rethink the approach.I may add a few scales to it, perhaps on the back or thighs to give it a little visual diversity.

  I included the above image as one thing that is cropping up is the display of muscle, and I felt this small section was one of the best outcomes, as it looked like definition and not a seam or a cut. So what I have tried (still working on it) is replicating this effect elsewhere on the model, although that is proving easier said than done.

  The texture is made up of several layers. The first is a pair of photographs of skin found online (I kept a record on a notepad document, but their licenses allowed for use and modification), combined them, tiled them then applied them underneath the UV map. The high-contrast outcome is what is making me rethink of doing only skin, as there are a few mottled patches that resemble perhaps crocodile skin, and that could reintroduce some of the reptilian quantity I was going for.

  To preserve the skin texture underneath, I made layers for the shadows, highlights, and the red tinting. Once these textures are complete, (the torso segment looks asymmetrical because I plan to mirror the highlights and shadows later) I will use these for the creation of normal and specular maps to give the proper 3D texture skin.

I'm getting a feel of H.R. Giger from these textures.Particularly the torso and the rear leg.

Adaptation B: Ink Stain Practice

  Yesterday evening, before streaming I investigated using ink stains to help get some idea for shapes to make the Colo Colo with. The set of images above were made on coarser paper than the images below, which were painted on cartridge paper. I plan to use these either to create a composite image or to combine these with the blackouts I created in previous sessions.

  I like the more spider-like qualities these ink stains have, and some of them I can see a vague shape that could relate to Colo Colo (5 could be used for a mouth while 13 could be a leg or a paw). The use of ink-stains gave me less control yes but also a greater sense of expressiveness.

Art Stream: Cityscape Concept

  The product of a three-hour stream. If anything this was an attempt to get my mind back into actual digital painting since aside from the concept art for Legends of the New Year, I hadn't picked up a stylus for Photoshop for anything more than silhouettes.

I suppose the buildings at the bottom could have a lot more done to them. There are still a number of rough edges and I might need to look a little into building layouts next time in order to make something a little more organised.

Painting Practice

  I had some time while a Maya tutorial was rendering so I looked into a little master study practice. I looked on line and I found the rather fitting for the project "The Heart of the Andes", an 1859 painting by Frederic Edwin Church.Though given this took me about an hour I'd consider classifying it as a speedpainting.

Summer Work: Cel Shading Practice

    Coming up to the start of the new academic year I decided I needed a push to get back into the mood of drawing. So to do that I decided to try some cel-shading. I had considered shading to give it a bit more depth and volume but that might send me into spending eternity adding shadows.

    The suit worn by the man in the foreground relates to a guilty pleasure of mine. A tailored suit is a thing of great interest to me, and while at a glance a £90 and a £250 suit jacket can look identical, it's how it feels - as well as the materials and where it is tailored - that can make the difference...this isn't easy to convey in a drawing though.

    But I tried

    The wall appeared a little blank after painting do I decided on some decoration to make the room look more stately as well as add some content to his desk.

    The man in the foreground is the focus of the picture. I wanted to make him look frustrated, perhaps infuriated at some important news. One thing I definitely feel proud of with this piece is his right hand: Hands have bugged me a fair bit for a couple of years now, so with a bit of looking in the mirror and some hand study I like the result I came out with for the right hand at least, although his left hand I'm still not sure about how it came out. Thumb seems okay but the rest I'm not so sure.

Personal Work: Human Forms Practice

    Decided to take a break from drawing dragons but considering the nature, probably shouldn't do too many of this nature. This piece is still very much a work-in-progress and an attempt at refining my ability to paint humans and especially my ability to create humans who don't wear skintight outfits. The soldier on the left was created by use of a colour layer over a values layer while the man on the right isn't as complex, consisting of flat colours with shaded colours painted on top.

@Jackie @Phil Life Drawing Collection

Life Drawing Collection 2014-2015

First copy of my collected drawings this year. However I am questioning if I should also include my self-portraits and digital art studies in this document.

Mosquito Development: Mosquito Markings

    While working on the texture map for the mosquito I had an idea to bring it back to the military-themed inspiration - markings. During WWII (and I think it happens now still) bomber and fighter crews marked their kills with tallies of pictographs on the sides of their planes.

   Another thing they marked was rather fun pictures to denote the wing the pilot belonged to, hence 3 and 5. However given the nature of some of the things air force pilots liked to paint on their planes; if I go though with this I think I'll stay clear from such images as saucy ladies or cartoon bugs as it really does not suit the intended sinisterness of the mosquito.

Infiltrate Exploit Spread: Texture Progress

Progress with texturing is fully underway. While owrking on the Sporozoite's texture map I discovered what a difference to texture a very tiny amount of monochramatic noise can do to alleviate the fine-plastic-smooth look, and it could do something impressive on the bump maps as well.

Aside from the length of the cap (which I am now thinking could be a little darker) the high and low-res maps came out pretty well.

This could probably do with a little tweaking around the ridges.

Note that while this image uses the refined texture map, the old bump and specular maps are still in place.

Photoshop Studies: Self Portraits

    Today was a very interesting Photoshop studies class. We were given a small mirror and tasked with creating self-portraits. Unlike the last studies we were not set a specific time. Instead responsible for timing ourselves to make four quick studies in the space of an hour. It was fun to get into skin and hair texturing in this lesson and I believe the final piece reflects this as it seems to have come out rather well despite my comparative lack of experience with faces.

    The next two hours of the lesson were then devoted to creating a detailed piece (above). Because I felt that one of my studies was quite successful I decided that instead of starting fresh I would build up on it, one of the key moments during its creation was advice about finding a way to make the skin appear less smooth, so I experimented with a few brushes to see which one would give me the best texture that I wanted.

    There is still a little distortion as the mirror I was given made my head taller than it really is, hence why a couple of the below drawings look like someone rather different.

Photoshop Studies: More Life Drawing and Master Studies

    I found today's photoshop lessons very useful as fot a while I've always had a little trouble with drawing hands in a way that made them look good. I find the colour values furthest left and right to be the least perfect (although the far right example I think is still a pretty good quality) but the best for me are the three in the centre, particularly the top-centre coloured value. I am not sure entirely but I think I used a pastel-type digital brush for it. Whatever I used, I' can remember the preset and will definitely consider it for further painting in the future.

    Feeling confident with the brushes, I had an attempt at replicating a painting by a Dutch realist. THere is still admittedly plenty to do but I am glad that for now I have the basic values in place. All I really need to do is work into them with the right brushes and keep an eye on my darks. While It's not quite perfect, I am rather happy however with how the buns - probably the most complete part of the piece - have turned out.

04/13/2015 Life Drawing

    Life drawing was interesting as we had the chance ot try paint, but using nontraditional implements. For the practice drawings at the start of each lesson I tried using pencil for my drawing - a slight deviation fomr my normal charcoal-based practice drawings because I wanted ot acquint myself with being comfortable with softer pencils..

    The painting sessions themselves: The first task (top-left) was to take a brush-tool (the less brushlike the better) and create a 20-minute picture with it. The tool I picked was a long toilet brush topped with a hemispherical fan of sponge "fingers", creating something remeniscent of  the work of Jackson Pollock. The second implement I used was a paintbrush taped to a pair of bamboo sticks that I controlled independently with both hands like a pair of chopsticks. I found it very fun painting this tool evel though I was using acrylic paints and thus I was a little limted due to the stickyness of it. The first picture I made (top-right) shows this clearly. The bottom-left picture was a group exercise where each of us were given three minutes ot paint a bit, then we would all move ot the drawing board ot the left of us and add something to our classmates' picture in three minutes. In the bottom-left picture, the smaller woman's red tone was my original picture while everything else was added by classmates.

First Master Studies Works

      Photoshop lessons have begun once again and the first session was on the art of the master study. Which overall felt like they went fairly well, some studies came out better than others but I feel happy that for most of them as the tonal range is still fairly close to that of the original. We were all informed at the beginning of the year that the reason old paintings were selected was because after decades, even centuries of scrutiny, the quality of these paintings still held up well in the eyes of generations of critics and I can understand the logic behind this. 

     Each of these were done under time constraints so some of them look barely started compared to the finsihed work. But even so I felt a little surpised at how skewed the top portrait is (The pictures are upside down out of recoomendation by Jordan, suggesting that by looking at the face upside down I might be less inclined to see it as a face and more a collection of shapes. It kind-of worked). I feel my composition of this man's face by the end seem a little jarring: His coat is fairly accurate, maybe a little loosely painted, but his face is definitely something that looks like it needs improvement. He also looks angry.

     The portrait and the picture just above were composed by John Singer-Sergeant. And this one due ot it's complexity I plan to further work on at some point. So an improved version will come soon. Especially since I had ended up going slightly off-track while painting, completing the woman before anything else.

Being a first lesson, Jordan wasn't expecting near-flawless replications and I'm both glad and understanding of that decision - these paintings probably took several hours, broken into several stints, and for each of these all I had was half an hour. Maybe a little more. ALthough then again I had it a little easier: No paint drying times and this was a copying effort isntead of creating something where only the eyes are the lens and the framing.