Happy belated New Year 2011 everybody!

Well, just a quick post everybody.  Just to let you know, I'm still out here. I've  not been able to post recently because the display on my laptop is calling it kaputs very soon now. So now, I'm faced with the decision of when to fix this. I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, I should post something be it analog  ala pencil and marker. The main thing is to keep on drawing! 

Happy New Year everyone!

B

Face DigiPainting

Well, well I have been busy. To say the least, lets focus on this painting and what challenges I faced. To tell you the truth I had started this painting a very long time ago. Basically the outline was from a book, "Digital Character Design and Painting: the Photoshop CS edition" by Don Seegmiller. And this tut focused on the face. When I started, I had just dabbed some basic colors on this painting and suddenly stopped and let it sit in the bowels of my computer for more than a year I reckon. Why you say? Well at the time, I just couldn't come to terms with understanding values and tones in terms of painting in general. As a matter of fact I still don't. But as I continue in motivating myself with each piece that I paint, it all starts to make sense slowly but surely.

So, on to analyzing the painting. On this painting, I think the main focus was on the face. And I hope that was conveyed. The challenge I faced here was getting the folds on the turban to be accurate. And by accurate I mean the way the folds overlapped each other and having the appropriate shadows and light hitting the correct areas. I think of particular interest to me was the earrings. I think the "tricky" part was actually making the roundness of the earrings. But the coolest thing of the earrings is how to achieve that cool looking shiny bling. It was quite easy actually.

   Just by using a soft round airbrush and white as the color, I painted a big dot over the earring on a seperate layer. Then I Gaussian Blurred it and lowered the opacity by around 50 percent or less. Simple as that.

Digital Caricatures Part Deux

Yo! Me's back. This time I just found this caricature blog "out of the blue". It's called lovetodraw.wordpress.com I was just 'floored' at how amazing some people can really be. I think  painting  is the most fun. But I seem to forget exactly how much time I logged into this piece. I really need to make a habit of timing myself. I mean, rarely do I have those days where I can just sit down for a straight 2~4 hours  and just focus on a piece. So I do need to start logging my times so I can actually find out how long it takes to finish a damn painting! This particular  blog itself is in another language but they had very useful step by step tutorials on how to make digital caricatures. I'll probably attempt another one not too long from now. These are really addicting.

As for this particular piece, particular parts that I learned from painting this were how could I get a particular reflection on the glasses and how to go about creating hair. If you notice on this piece, I don't paint every hair strand but just on the outlines of the hair clumps I've grouped together. Does that make sense?

Anyways, I hope that with every painitng that I do I will be able to challenge and learn something from a particular painting.

Caricature Digipaint

Hello, hello again. I thought this time best to try my luck at caricaturing. I had a lot of fun doing this one actually. It was a tutorial over at Andrew Moks blog. I found it quite helpful actually. And I could see myself doing a lot more of these in the near future. Seeing as this is the first Caricature digital painting I've done, theres plenty of mistakes to be had. Hopefully, the next one will be better.

p.s. By the way, I'm still working on the Totoro bg but just decided to take a break from it. I think right now I'm at this stage of self-awareness where I just want to try different techniques and different approaches to digital painting. At the moment, I'm in a tutorial mode and at other moments I'm just trying to mimic great painters through analyzing the way they paint or their use of color.  I really hope in the near future I can start posting up my own stuff  because thats where the real fun and the most rewarding challenges will come.

Fantasy Tree Scene Tut

Well, this is a tutorial they had over Psd tuts plus I believe. I found it to be good practice. They claimed it would take about 2 hours. It took me a little over 3 hours. Which tells me I need more practice.  I think my main focus here was trying to focus on speed. But at the same time I have to keep in mind not to sacrifice the artwork too much. I think I might go back and work on the underside of this a bit more. And the background could be redone. 

Totoro Backgrounds

Wow! After what's been a busy nightmare of a week. Its done for the moment. So inbetween that busy busy time, I decided to tackle a fantasy nature kind of theme for my next digital paint.. I've always been and still am fascinated with nature. Especially, stuff like moss,  lichen, and mushrooms. This stuff is just amazing to see in real life. And to see somebody paint it as well as Kazuo Oga is just breathtaking. If you don't know who Kazuo Oga is just check out the anime, My Neighbor Totoro. He basically did all the backgrounds for that movie and some other Ghibli favorites. 


I can only attempt to emulate here. For the moment, this is where I'm at. I thought this particular painting has all the elements  that I favor. You've got a background and a foreground such as the hill on the left. And then on top of that many composited elements such as the ferns to the right and some flowers I'll be adding later on this weekend hopefully.  And the colors here are absolutely the kind of greens I rave for: lush, bright and saturated.

HellBoy,Just in time for Halloween brutha!

Hey everybody, well we're just getting into that month of Halloween. I decided to follow a tutorial in steps by another well known Digital Painter, that goes by the name HD Fortress. He's on facebook I believe. So he decided to do this WIP(Work in Progress) or step by steps of Mike Mignolas beloved character, Hellboy.  At the time when I started I said to myself this is doable. Little did I know that this would take me roughly 7 hours. Not all at once mind you. Quite a bit of work. I'm not truly satisfied with it but since I'm just getting back "into the swing of things" this will do. I might tweak it some more later. But I think 7 hours is enuff for me. Don't you think?