Oh God, First Fall Semester Post

Hello Ya'll, I figure since you guys keep bugging me to update this that I should. Here is what I've been up to so far in my classes (Except no photos of my Figure paintings because I suck with cameras, do those laterz), right, so first things first.


First a bit of a tutorial-walk through for my goblin character.

First I started out with the kind of character I wanted to design, I knew I wanted something resembling The creatures in Lord of the Rings, plus a little spice from Hellboy. I then take a drawing I did on Drawing paper, and fully render it. Now, I make sure I leave place in my whites so I can push some mid tone and allow for more light tones when I bring it into photo-shop. Part of the reason I do this is it makes it easy to know where to render in photo-shop, as well as give me some nice texture from the paper.

I then block in the Colors that I will use for the overall tone of the Character, I do this by setting my Pencil Layer on Multiply, and creating a layer underneath it and blocking colors a little dark.



After this, I then decide to follow the light source I set up on my sketch layer, ensuring that the lights follow the form of the body, I keep things desaturated at this stage so I can push the colors later



Next step I make is I make a magic wand selection on the Grey background and inverse it, this way I can have a nice selection of the body of the goblin, I then take another layer and make a black to transparent gradient, that starts dark from the feet and all the way to the head, this helps establish a clear focal point. I keep the layer transparent by making it a multiply layer, and I play with how dark I want it. I also now know where the importance is, so I began using local tones with the eyedropper and pushing whites in places I think I want to emphasize, I began pushing the forms more and more. I also start adding details, things like wrinkles and skin moles, this helps make the character more believable and solid.



More modeling and turning of form, I push some dark's, and make a gradient in the background, this helps emphasize the lights of his face, which is the focal point. At this point I also begin showing a backstage lighting, this is often seen in photography, and it helps to turn the form quite well, you will see this more clearly in the next step.



Last step is I add some local color, warms around his eyes, nose, ears, these are the warm parts of a face, and it helps make something look more believable. I also add that rim light coming from behind, its cool which contrasts with the more warm colors on his body, and helps define his form more. I make sure the most intense part of the rim light is on the head, re-emphasizing the focal point.



Phew, that took a while, and now for some more Homework from Digital Illustration that I liked. I wanted to do a military style robot, so I gave it my best shot, this robot is a more military design, and so streamlining was my key design decision.

sketch


Tonal Painting



Finished piece



And now my Homework for this week, this was based on Morlock's from H.G Wells classic The Time Machine

Sketch



Finished portrait



And now for some old paintings from still life! I apologize for the quality of the photos...

2 Days in class painting session, it was by fun the most enjoyable and I think my best in class painting, although the photo doesn't really show how good the colors look



This was my final, and I'm really happy on how that Metal pot came, it was a challenge, and I only wish I could go back and work on these other shapes some more, oh well.

Stay tuned for when I can get my good Figure paintings, as well as some homework's from that class, also I'll try my best and get a photo of another Still life I didn't get a chance to take a photo of, (nothing from clothed figure because my scanner kill my lead drawings from that class strangely.) Laters~