A Quick Musing

So just a quick musing while I work.

It's become increasingly obvious to me to what I need to do in this learning process, is not just tackle the base concepts again, but also play with something far more important, that truth be told I never really thought about.

I don't know what to call it, I'm sure there's a term, and I'm sure I'll come across it eventually, but I what my drawings lack more then technical ability is Oomph (yeah see, need a better word).

 With backgrounds it comes down to visual impact, I'm working on a sci fi style hydroponics garden/lab right now, and I want to get it right, but I hit a huge wall. And it has nothing to do with actual technical ability. It's boring, it lacks oomph, and regardless of how many valves and pipes I add, it will still be boring. And then I got thinking even more about it, and one theme came into my head (partially induced by playing Journey), Style and aesthetic, play a monumental role, and even though I have become a much better artist since I started training way back in 2002/3, my style never fundamentally changed. Its remained based on my interpretations of how I should approach drawing back from high school and before, not now. The thing is, I know better, and I think I need to play more.

So two huge things I want to play with:

1) ensuring I follow some of the basic idea's of good art, composition, story telling, personality etc, in the pieces I do

2) Ensuring the STYLE and Aesthetic I use also has personality, story telling etc.

So its not just what I draw, but how I should draw it. I still feel like I'm just barely grasping the fundamentals of good art, but I'm glad I started looking into this. Because how I choose to draw eyes, hands etc, can really affect how my arts going to look and whats more, give it my own spice. Its not just about anatomical accuracy or proper perspective, or even gesture. All important things, but only part of the whole.

Water brush

A quick experiment with a water brush, I think the ripples are probably too big, but was fun none the less. Something more dramatic coming soon.

Mole Dreams

As a joke this morning I did this on my break and set it up on my gf's computer as a wallpaper for when she got up.

This is the beginning of me finally getting around to proper experimentation with brushes. This one was generated using a picture of my cats fur.

Soldierific

Inspired a bit by the Deadspace artwork, I wanted to do a painting of one of my characters in a standard 3/4 front. Ideally in the future I would like to get a bit more realism in the painting work, so I'll be working on that in the coming paintings.

 The design of the character itself was a bit inspired by the Mass effect series, I wanted to do my own light armored Sci fi-y soldier.

More to come in the future!

The Girl with the Puppy Backpack

  A quick sketch from my lunch break. Long story short, I'm working on a better "cartoony" style for myself, I don't like how Ive been drawing this kind of content to this date. But I do like how this turned out a lot and I'm going to try to develop the style further from this point!

Painting the Second

Okay, I'm a bit behind pace, this one took me longer then I thought.

This was inspired by a documentary I was watching called "Human Planet". In one episode it showed a group in Mongolia that use golden eagles to hunt their food. The coolest part was an image of the father and son riding their horses across the plain while having the eagles perched on their arms.

In this case I decided to amp up the size of the eagle and change the horse to a Muskox, I wanted some cool horns, what can I say?

Process below!

For the next few paintings I was thinking of trying a close up on the riders face, I've been wanting to try a portrait anyways.

Painting month, 1st post!

So the goal from today (Jan 12th) until the release of Dead Space 3 (Feb 5th), is that I'm going to do a painting a day. The reason for this is that I really want to spend some time playing with different Gamuts, brushes, etc.

In the spirit of the end date, the release of Dead Space 3, my first painting is a giant monster. Rawr.

1.5 hours - alwaaaays in Photoshop.