Tuesday, November 23, 2004

It's here!!!

No art for today. But a good thing...I got my copy of Digital Character Art Design and Painting by Don Seegmiller. I found this book online and it seemed the best suited for my nefarious purposes...hihihi. I don't expect to become a world class illustrator from reading this book, but I do appreciate the fact that it's loaded with great info about lighting, color theory, how to best treat scanned sketches, sample textures and brushes (on the CD) and a bevy of other useful information. It's nice to have all that info in one place in a simple, easy to digest format. Nice quality too! I think this book will be a great tool in helping me learn new techniques to enhance the quality of my work.



cover image Posted by Hello

Monday, November 22, 2004

What the hell izzat?

To be honest I don't really know either. Some kind of insect. This is a detail from the warrior pic that more closely shows one of the creatures that was perched on a rock in the background. I guess it's some kind of lobster bug. These cuddly critters come up out of their watery homes once every 800 years at dusk to lay their bright orange, roe-like eggs.

Actually, they're not harmful to humans, just kind of gross to look at....or beautiful if you prefer. In the final version of this piece there will more of these creatures under the water but they will be barely noticeable except for their glowing eyes.



Warrior_2_detail Posted by Hello

Returning to the scene of the crime...

I went back recently and starting adding more to this piece. Initially, the trees were more of a reddish brown but for some reason I felt like the main focus of the piece was not reading well at all... It wasn't until I went outside that I saw the solution. Trees in this painting had as much red hue as the character and the two were "fighting" for attention. By making the trees a more bluish-grey I think I have been more successful at getting the woman and her horse to pop out.

The swamp she is riding through will pose a challenge to me as I still don't feel like I know what Im doing when it comes to rendering water. I am currently thinking of how I might approach this challenge to lend the appearance of stillness and depth to the swamp water.

The sky is a lavender to orange gradient.


Warrior_2 Posted by Hello

Sunday, November 21, 2004

The Land of the Lost

Posted on this page is the result of my first attempt at painting a landscape. I guess it might seem weird to have only one cloud in the sky, but I am rather proud of it as it is only the third one Ive ever painted digitally and not half bad. (albeit a trifle cream - puffy) I feel that working in a digital medium is best for this kind of experimentation because it's so easy to keep track of your steps...or delete them if you aren't pleased with your results. For me. it's more tempting to experiment with color schemes and approaches that I would be more hesistant to try on a nice piece of water color paper. I got a basic tutorial on how to do clouds here:

http://www.optidigit.com/stevens/cloudtut.html

It gives some good simple techniques to do fluffy clouds primarily...a nice way to get started.

The ground in the pic is also the product of something new. In the end it reminds of some flat, barren expanse of dry stoney land. I originally wanted the stones to look more man made and polished..like round, flat cobble stones with simple patterns etched into them. While I was painting though, it seemed to evolve of it's own accord, so I just went with it.

I created the sky as a gradient. Then I did the cloud using many of the ideas form the tutorial above. Then I did the ground..first creating a light peach retangular fill and then drawing the lines over that in light purple with the paintbrush tool. The rest was a combo of paintbrush, airbrush and smudge and burn tools.

Soon I will post my first "water" experiment.






Duststorm Posted by Hello

Saturday, November 20, 2004

Warrior Girl

Some people may look at the name of this blog and wonder, "Why is it called First Steps if she's obviously been drawing for some time?" True, I've been drawing for a long time. But lately I've been wondering if I've been short changing myself by not putting more effort into developing my passion..in this case...fantasy art with subject matters that often include characters of African American origin and other ethnicities. So there you have it...on with the show!




warrior girl Posted by Hello

Better late than never

Ok,

This is my second attempt at blogging ever. I started this blog in order to keep record of my attempts at becomming a more accomplished fantasy and sci fi digital illustrator. I'm not sure where this will lead to (maybe going pro!....maybe) In any case, illustrating my own fantasy art is somethign I've thought about doing for a long time but never entertained seriously. Now that I am trying I'm finding that I lack a lot of skill in terms of other components I would like to have present in my work. Compelling environments, convincing trees or water, buildings that dont look as though they were fashioned from Playdough...that kind of thing.

So this blog will also encompass my attempts at growing and expanding as a visual artist as well. For my first ever post I am also posting a detail from a piece that I recently started coloring using a Wacom Pad and Photoshop. I drew the original piece in pencil, then inked it and scanned it in.