Finished Up...

Spent the weekend finishing up and tweaking a few pieces.

Hard to know when to call this one finished... it's a bit minimal in tone so I didn't want to overwork/ overtighten.



I put this one away a little too early to feel good about it for long... now I think I've done all I can do with it.



I was okay with where this was at, but while I was in the finalizing mindset a gave it another hour or two to fix a couple things that were bugging me.



click the thumbs for a larger image from Flickr. That's all for now...

News and Art...

Happy to say I'll have some worked featured again in Spectrum 17. Not sure which piece or pieces yet... I submitted 3 images this year. Can't wait to see what made it in.

I've been finishing up this image for the last week or so. I had tried this idea out last year with some pretty mixed results... mixed meaning, well.. kinda shitty and overworked...so here's another attempt.



A little something I wanted to make note of involving the process on this one...

When I sat down to draw this, I grabbed a blank sheet to scribble on a bit to warm up my hand. What I ended up doing on it was blind contour drawings of the reference I'd printed out. I just focused on the contours in the ref and felt them out on the paper getting a feel for the rythm and flow. It ended up being a really enjoyable exercise and I think it'll become a regular thing. I loved the feeling of just putting down the lines without getting all tight and overworking them.



When I'm warmed up for the real drawing, I've absorbed the contours and have the reference images more in my head - my lines are then more likely to keep some of that looseness. I'd recently read Itten's Design and Form and thought his thoughts on warming up and preparing for work were gold.

From Johannes Itten's "Design and Form"



"My first morning periods in class begin with relaxation-, breathing-, and concentration exercises to establish the intellectual and physical readiness which make intensive work possiblee. The training of the body as an instrument of the mind is of great importance to a creative person. How can a hand express a characteristic feeling in a line,when the hand and arm are cramped..."

There's a few other real pearls in there too. I found his Art Of Colour to be a worthwhile read as well.

Solace progress

Yesterday I worked up a thumbnail posted a bit earlier. I really tried not to overtighten and to maintain the value relationships...



click the thumb for a bigger size...


And I did up this thumbnail...another angle of the "Well" thumb - also posted earlier. Glad I experimented in the thumbnail stage for this one. If I'd gone ahead with my first thumb, I would have ended up with another passive compostion/boring angle. Funny how I'm such a passive observer in life and how that translates to how I compose images...at least until I finally break the habit of framing a scene like I'm just documenting it.

Character Sketch

So this is a sketch for another character from my wife's novel-in-progress. I think this guy is going to take some further development before I really get to know the character. Inspiration so far is a rouge-ish young guy... a rebellious, anti establishment type who's also a bit of an inventor/ engineer. There's a bit of victorian and turn of the century wild west influence going into the costuming, and he rides a cool vintage motorbike, too. Speaking of the bike, this is a painted over design from a 3d model I blocked into the scene. I've changed the design a bit to resemble a modern made, but vintage styled bobber.



...I tweaked this later in the day and refreshed it.

Carry On...

Well this turned out a bit awkward all around, but whatever...I'm pretty much done with it. I dropped the overall saturation - except for on the bird to pop it out a bit. I also changed the lighting a bit to cast it up on the baggage and the dude's face more - those things both helped it out.

Sunday Thumbnails

Still more of these...

More Thumbs and Progress...

Here's a couple colour thumbs from the last week. The one withthe tree shows how great these are for idea development, as I think it improves on the previous version in a few ways... more story, more interesting mood, more compelling.



This one came out of some interesting ref. I like the small hits of light.



and here's the progress on this one. It's just about there...



That's all for now. I hope to wrap the last one up this weekend, and I've got a few more pencil thumbnails that I'd like to throw colour on... just need to find the time.