New Batch

These are from today and yesterday, lot's of painting :)

Just returned from a weekend trip to Southern Utah visiting family. Soaked up a lot of imagery while I was down there, such beautiful and unique landscapes. Anyways, was good to have a break ;)

Any questions? Always happy to try and answer :)

Just Playing

Just playing on these, same sort of techniques - some new twists but I feel my enthusiasm waning. Time for something new ;). I think I'm going to do the OFDW at CGTalk, some other studies. Maybe it's time to break out the paints again? Can't wait for spring, can finally go outside and draw without frostbite.

Oh, you might have noticed a new face to the blog. Played with this for several hours today, who knows if this is what I stick with or not; was fun to play around. Just a template that I customized and altered a bit, this html and etc. makes my head hurt.

Anyways, more unfinished doodles -

Today's Doodles

Just some quicker doodles today; trying the same techniques as below but with quicker monochrome sketches. Using color balance and a few other tricks to stretch that a bit. Nothing special really, didn't even feel like fleshing these out - just playing with shapes. Let's just say, keyword: half-assed.

I do like the limited palette, almost duotone on these - so simple but can be so convincing. Will also need to play with the lone robot and master idea, they can be my anchor in cityscapes perhaps.

Snowy Landscape Process + PSD

Looks like you have to click this one to see the animated process.

PSD and other Files:
http://www.divshare.com/download/106503-828

MikeCorriero asked me a few questions I'll try and answer them as well as I can;
The brush I used 99% of the time in this was a default round; size, opacity and flow set to pressure. I almost never use the manual opacity and for this particular style I found it best to use 100% flow as I didn't really have to 'blend' much. After the initial sketch I used an abstract brush with many hard edges to sort of lay down a base coat of the primary color I had envisioned for this painting. Directly afterward I used a soft light layer and the same brush to create even more variety in color, overtop of which I also use an overlay layer with the same method. Here I was establishing the general palette I used for the next several rendering steps. It can also be great to use the clone brush with these methods as it adds another layer of grit, grime and variance. Now, next came something I've really been enjoying lately something I saw Andrew Jones demonstrate at the recent San Franciso workshop. Duplicate your layers, or hit ctrl+alt+e. Flip this duplicate canvas, set it to either lighten or darken and experiment with it's position on the canvas, you may also want to enlarge your canvas by 200% in each direction. I think you'll find that some things work quite well symmetrically and others work best if you stretch and distort the canvas. Overall I really enjoy this technique - it's helped me see many possibilites that I would otherwise never see. I think it's also a great tool for conceptualizing. Moving on I used a 'dirt' brush, very low impact with essentially small bristles to add even more grit to the canvas. Afterwhich came one of the most drastic changes done with the editing modes; curves, color balance and selective color. If you have Adobe CS or above you will be able to click on these adjustment layers to view them in more detail. These are very handy tools if you've changed your mind about what colors/values you want as well as changing mood etc. Even if I haven't changed what I have in mind, I will still experiment with these and most often find something that I think works even better. The next steps are just more rendering and in the final just a unsharp mask to help visibility for web as well as tweak some edges.
Thanks for listening to me ramble ;)

Robuts and RowBoughts

I know most of you have certainly seen these before, and they are a few weeks 'old' now. But I like them and want them here for the posterity of my blog :)

Done in Photoshop, these are what I've dubbed Digital Paint and Photo Montages. The majority of photographs used are from imageafter.com, they have a huge selection of images; be sure and check out the textures section too.

Again, this series has a few progenitors and derivations - you can probably pick out which is which.

If you have any questions please let me know! :)

Today's Paintings from Yesterday

Right, crazy title I know. Missed a night of sleep, but I was productive at least right?

Photoshop, 2 hours or so for the first one. The rest are "derivatives" of this first one, or derivatives of derivatives, with of course lots more to it than just that. Lot's of little tricks, that sort of thing ;)

Please feel free to post any questions!

Introduction

Hey All,
Guess it's about time I got one of these, I was really just waiting till 20 people told me I needed one. Hit that marker a few days ago.

So, me? I'm a starving artist, no better yet - starving art student. Bam! Many ways to cook ramen you know, try it fried with an egg - pretty good.

I keep a sketchbook over at ConceptArt.org, chances are if you are here - that where you know me from. Here's a link in case we're strangers:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=56810

Ok, let's get this party started.