Hot girls that don't look so good once I've drawn them.

3 more portraits from earlier tonight - each one took 35 minutes, painting from google reference.
The first one was really bad, the second I was really happy with and the 3rd was a bit dodgy, mostly cause it lacked any definition.

Yes, they're all portraits based on great looking girls.
I'm a guy. I was in no hurry to draw crazy old men.

The first of many

Here's a portrait I did earlier tonight from reference.
This took waaay too long to do and I think I know what to concentrate on next time round - work smaller, be more loose, aim for a short time frame (15-30mins each maybe?) The plan is to do a bunch of portraits, hands, feet, and poses to get better at rendering the figure - something I've been lacking in severely for far too long.

The problem with digital painting for me is that I want to do *everything* - people, environments, vehicles etc. I don't stay focused on anything for too long, probably cause I get bored of doing one thing after a while - so you'll see me jump around a lot from subject to subject.

Thank you, James Kei

On recommendation from a friend, I decided to check out James Kei's 'Digital Figure Painting' tutorial from the Conceptart.org/MB website.

http://dvd.massiveblack.com/downloads.html#manchess

It was a great tutorial and he really does spell out the process he goes through in layman's terms. If digital figure painting is your thing, definitely check it out - its worth every cent of the $15USD it costs to download. Support the community that supports you artists!

Here are my results, I painted this while watching the tute, pausing it every now and again to catch up. Approx 2.5 hrs painting from google reference (cheers to whoever took the photo), good fun, and I didn't zoom in once!

Hold onto your hats, this is gonna get ugly...

Here's some old OLLLDDD work from 2004.
This is also one of the first, and sadly, one of the last times I ever played with 3d. Since then I have forgotten just about everything of what I learned about using 3d programs.

At the time of these drawings/renders, I was studying animation. We had a one year group project - a 3d short film based on the designs from the matrix movies - in which every student (all 13 or 14 of us) had to pull their weight if we were to finish. Unfortunately from the get-go, there was a tiny group of us (about 4 guys) who practically did all the work. Good times!

I was the concept guy, and I was responsible for creating the characters, including the lead character - the critter you see above. It was a great lesson for me in 3d and the patience required to do it. At this time I'd also barely touched photoshop for digital painting, so most of my stuff was sketched out.

Speedy 23 Jan 09

Meet Stef.
He likes music, Street Fighter and is a big fan of fruit.
I've also got a link to his photography blog in my links section.

For today's 30 minute speedpaint, we figured we'd try a portrait. This stuff is not easy, but it was fun.

Quick paint

Its a lot harder keeping up with a blog when you're not on holidays, but here it is: My first post in a few weeks.

Done in about 2.5 hours, pretty happy with the simplicity of this one. I need to work on my details though - i got really lazy with the wood and the characters.

Finished Argus

Here's my final for the cgtalk Steampunk comp.

The hi-res is here:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=278&t=702606&page=1&pp=15

Not very happy with it to be honest. It feels like for all the time I put into it, it should've come along much much further than it has, which is disappointing, but it at least shows me I need to probably work quicker in getting certain things down and to really focus my efforts where they're needed.

There are a couple of other competitions me and the work guys are thinking of taking on next, so I'll have plenty of things to practice with.

Argus the Bored!

These are the (rushed) options I thought of for the face of Argus. There are very subtle differences between the lot, but it could make all the difference. At the moment I'm leaning toward the variations on the bottom of the page... not entirely sure which one yet.

I was always thinking about trying to imply some sort of emotion in the 'face' of Argus. I never really wanted it to be immediately readable as having eyes and a mouth, but I thought it would be a nice touch if I could incorporate it without it looking forced or out of place. I'm not entirely sure the whole 'face' idea works, and its pretty late so I'm probably not making the best decisions, so we'll see what happens tomorrow.

Not much time left now! I'll have to settle on my choice really quick and get into the rendering this weekend.

Steampunk WIP 1

Plenty of work to do and lots of late nights ahead...

Steampunk compositions

I've posted some of these already, but I've also made changes to a few - these are my final steampunk compositions I'll have to choose from if I decide to take it to a final stage. #4 and #6 work the best so far in my opinion. #1 and #2 are ok, but I'll recycle them for other pieces.

The competition finishes in about a week, and it also happens to be the week work starts again, so finishing anything is a big call!

More thumbs to choose from

Unlike most of my other 5 enviro attempts, I think this one works well for the Steampunk competition. There's a nice contrast and balance in the pic. There's room for more of both 'Steampunk' and 'Ancient Greece', but that can be explored later.

Over-complicating things

I've realized the enviro's I've been doing the last couple of days have all been painted with the Steampunk challenge in mind, and that, for whatever reason, I've been trying to squeeze in as much information as possible.

This time round though I wanted to keep things really simple - sometimes that can be key.
Not particularly happy with this one - an important point is that I don't want Argus (the steampunk machine in the background) to look menacing or intimidating, which is difficult given his size. Its important to give him personality and a bored pose probably would've worked much better.

More exploration later.

Greece enviro

Another possible composition for the Steampunk CGtalk competition.

Not sure if the composition works very well in this one - there's a big empty space on the left (could be a good thing..?) and there definitely needs to be more Steampunk about it - cogs, old machinery etc. The trick is fitting that stuff in with the Greek architecture, which is something I really want to do right. Mount Olympus sits in the distant background and the Steampunk hot air balloons make another appearance. I'm fascinated with those things, all cause of PoP. Stupid game.

I actually think the pic works quite well without all the characters and details, so who knows? This could turn into something else entirely. I very much doubt I'll use it for Steampunk though.

Enviro speedpaint

Another enviro speedpaint - my first for 2009!
-2.5 hrs

Ushering in 2009

Happy New Year!

2009 has finally come around. You know what that means? Tons of public holidays and the footy starts up again in a few months! woooooo

Here are a few enviro speedpaints I did yesterday, each one took about 2 hours. I think there's a really good chance these could be used for the cgtalk Steampunk challenge that I posted about a few weeks back. They definitely still need some fine tuning, but I'm really happy with both pics actually - I'm starting to find a nice balance of implied detail and refinement now.

I used photos for both of these as inspiration and so I could try manually picking colours (just from looking at the pic, not from using the eye dropper tool), so I've attached one of the photos for you to compare, too. The photo doesn't belong to me, so thankyou to whoever took it.

My resolution for 2009? More painting.