Progress on the Tree Bedroom

Some progress on the tree bedroom wherein I added more color and detail is slowly being refined:



Sick & Sketches

So I haven't posted in a while. Soon I should have together a series of slides on techniques and research but I have been battling a bad infection over the past week that ended up having some complications unrelated but that effected it strongly. Ultimately I just didn't take it as easy as I should have.

So I have here a start of the rock sketches. There also is a further progression of the last illustration, the tree-house drawing, but it's on my work computer and will be posted tomorrow.

Pretty much it has been taking all my strength to do work for my internship. I still have a mild fever as near-heat exhaustion (I tried to ride ponies in the heat when I -thought- I was better... but I wasn't) has hopped in and made the recovery a bit longer.

That said my sheer will to want to work again is promising. So here's a start on the rocks and I'll get up the slides of the over all progress. I may try and do a bunch of other things like trees, grassy bits and such in similar style to above.

More concept practice

Woven tree or burrow type of home... Inspired by another pintrest image of an old yew tree... I simply started to make those knobbly roots and limbs into furniture.

Color technique similar to the first tutorial I posted. Using gradients to set base colors/light sources.

Still working it up but here's these for now:

More arts!

More grayscale work!

This one was a subtractive technique. Erasing into the darker iron grey.

This one was also about an hour to get to this point:

Inspiration: http://pinterest.com/pin/526710118889979206/

It looked like a cave... Of course mine doesn't know which it wants to be. Both, likely.



1.25 Hour Concept Sketch

So I did this little dude in a little over an hour.

Started grayscale and then color. I also trid something new. Changed the gray sketch to a different color via hue/saturation to make the shadows less flat.

Also a random bird sketch:

....just cause.

Grayscale Practice

Here's some grayscale practice... I'm trying hard not to over work it... maybe because the composition is too simple? The most recent is the topmost... yet the lower one seems the most complete (minus the hill at center back) in thumbnail.

More to come with commission work and progress here. Plus a few more color studies.

More Tutorials

I've actually gotten the hang of grayscale painting in my internship as I've had a few pieces to do that I tried it out in. It's been very helpful when I just need to get the idea across which could be changed at any time. It also makes it much easier to slap some color on for a preliminary showing before finishing it out.

Hunted up a few more tutorials to peruse that I will store here. Both are in similar colors which is kinda amusing but they show a lot having to do with light.

http://k04sk.deviantart.com/art/K04sk-Environment-Tutorial-160404703

These two had some great examples of light and texture build up with a walk through on rocks:

http://oione.deviantart.com/art/Strangers-tutorial-part1-130448365
http://oione.deviantart.com/art/Strangers-tutorial-part-2-130448589

Another that walks through different types of rocks. I actually learned my own basic rock style from this. I'm excited to practice more of them:

http://scarypet.deviantart.com/art/Scarypet-s-ROCK-ing-tutorial-208101226

A water tutorial:

http://k04sk.deviantart.com/art/Water-Tutorial-279128000

More detail techniques:

http://kalambo.deviantart.com/art/Background-tutorial-Part-1-208346837
http://kalambo.deviantart.com/art/Background-tutorial-Part-2-255819198

This one is really basic but I think it really gets the point across. When I did coloring I actually really enjoyed scenes with this light scheme (cool evening ambient combined with a warm direct glow). I actually got to use it in a piece I did some sketches for recently.

http://rahll.deviantart.com/art/Lighting-Tutorial-82388860


No to go make some art not for my job! :D

Seriously sad I can't show what I've been doing. If it gets out in the parks I'll take some pictures and share, but I really have come a long way in a short time... so I'll just have to show you all on other pieces!

Tutorials

(for self mostly)


Tutorials to look into:

http://tervola.deviantart.com/art/Digital-Painting-Tutorial-254185735

http://psd.fanextra.com/tutorials/drawing/advanced-tutorial-creating-broken-link/
^-- how I was trying to work... may be able to help me see what I'm doing wrong.



Have tried some grayscale work... may just go insane doing so. I don't like to think that way for some reason. *headdesk!*


It seems I can do single objects/creatures fine. Environments? Not so much. Miss my watercolors...

OH! Maybe I'll paint the BG and then add it in and tweak it digitally!

A Couple More Dragons

Just a couple more dragons to pop up.

I've given up on tinted background work for now. I've actually started painting with more direct color.

The biggest issue I am having is keeping the shadows from looking too mottled... as if I've used the burn/dodge tool overmuch (which I haven't used at all!). Any suggestions? I've been working with multiplying the contrasting light color... but now am working more in multiplying a color that is just off the compliment of the color I'm using to help simulate light without getting too grey (which the compliment seems to do).

Still a bit... awkward. Maybe I need more highlights/glazes?

This dude was doodled when I was annoyed at work... but it lead to his less monochromatic sibling:

Still working away at the other commission. Bit by bit. Will get some more color studies in and then do a series of quick sketches to show how my sketching/drawing is going.

I hope to try another technique next week for composition: working on black/dark and building up highlights.
It's actually come into play at my internship as I have to work with luminous colors on dark. Or well, I'm choosing to because it'll look better.

Now to hunt up some tutorials/examples and artists using this.

Daily Color Studies

Todays and yesterday's color studies.

First one I relied heavily on the photo for color help (the sunset in the snow). The second, the seascape, had very limited color sourcing and was much easier. I've also finished a digital illustration at work so perhaps that assisted somewhat. I worked down and up the image (top to bottom, bottom to top, repeat) The first I did background foreground, mid-ground, sky which was not as wise.

The original images are listed to their respective sources.

The 2nd isn't quite as accurate to the photo but it was done in significantly less time.

Masking & Color

So a week of working with the other techniques on a commission has still been a struggle.

One of the commissions I've been working on has been slowly progressing. I feel very much like a baboon with a stick as I do this, but at least the color is coming along. Photo reference has been insanely important. I never realized how much I didn't understand color and light until I started doing digital. Or maybe I just never had to have such a precise knowledge? Hard to tell.

Here are some process images from it:

After a bit more research I have watched a tutorial from Fantasy Art essentials by artist Svetlin Velinov (An interview with him in ImagineFX here). The interview doesn't show much for composition. The piece I watched was much more interesting, though still not my kind of artwork. But what was important was how he painted to me. I watched how he went from sketch to color to refinement but most of my focus was on the sketch to color method. He worked strongly in greyscale to start out (well, monochrome) and then did gradient color with what appeared to be masking.

So back I went to Ctl+Paint to look over their masking tutorials. So it seems this next week shall be a great deal of understanding masking and practicing these methods.

Other techniques I'm looking for good tutorials on is color scheme sketches. I found a link a while ago of a digital artist who did a series of larger thumbnails copying the basic color compositions of various famous landcape artists and landscape photographers to help himself understand color. He'd do speed sketches of their work, no detail, to get a better understanding of how color goes together. I'm struggling to find this again but I'm thinking I shall try to do one of these a day just as an exercise.

I've also seen monochrome sketches too, so maybe that would be good to start out with. Any helpful links and suggestions of exercises would be greatly appreciated!

Exploring Digital Painting

So I'm embarking on an exploration of digital art. My background is very strongly in traditional art, much of which can be seen here: http://dubhreul.wix.com/lunatteo and here: http://lunatteo.deviantart.com


Lately I have been working more and more digitally, but it has been slow going. This blog will largely start with my independent study in the exploration of digital painting, particularly speed sketching for concept art. My current internship has shown me in just a couple weeks how drastically the industry is moving towards digital. Unsurprisingly it has also shown me how incapable people seem to be when deprived of digital material too. So my goal is to be proficient in both to convey my ideas.

My first couple weeks at the internship were slow so I did a great deal of practice painting both on a cintiq and then a tablet.

Much of my reference/tutorial help was from the site http://ctrlpaint.com/ while I learned how to manage the brushes and blending.

Prior digital coloring efforts: http://lunatteo.deviantart.com/gallery/4201714

One of my early pieces before I started using tutorials:

I couldn't save when on the cintiq ^

This took over 5 hours

I started using tutorials for the following piece, which took me over 8 hours to get to the finals stage.

Details

The horse has since gotten some braids for his mane and forelock added roughly before I moved on.

The next one took me much less time to get to the stage it is at, however I am still stumbling through color use in lighting. I have a tendency to lean towards monochromatic or duotone coloration.

After watching through a few more tutorials I have decided to work more with various brush types. So that likely will show up in my practice work. Ultimately I need to be able to place color faster. The above image took 5 hours to get to that stage. My insecurities like in color hue and value as well as building up form with shapes (because I never get the shapes I want).

I have since learned that I need to work more flat hard edges and smooth them out later, but my perfectionist self likes to get in the way and hyper-focus on areas. This is not unlike my work with watercolor... but I have found that this media form is more close to colored pencil and oil painting than watercolor. I have done coloring similar to watercolor (seen here: http://lunatteo.deviantart.com/art/Ranch-Bunkhouse-Colored-359129750 ) but find myself quickly frustrated working with opacities. Still I am going back to it for shadows in some current internship work which I cannot post due to confidentiality reasons.