Learning Digital Painting

The End

2007-09-13T13:32:00.000-07:00

Have decided to post my artwork to Deviantart instead of posting to this blog, due to my infrequent posting and minimal traffic.

http://vfxdude.deviantart.com/gallery/

Look Up There

2007-08-22T05:25:00.000-07:00

My goal is to create atleast one each month, so I made a new one today. Still just siluettes, not gotten serious about this yet, just having fun.

Celestial Kiss remake

2007-07-25T05:58:00.000-07:00

Just did a quick remake of this one.

Underwater

2007-07-17T05:04:00.000-07:00

A whale (or something) swimming through polluted water. Been thinking about doing some underwater stuff...just testing out the waters...hehe.

New Design

2007-07-15T10:34:00.000-07:00

Gone one year since I started this blog, so thought it was time to do something with the design. So how can I conclude this year...well when I got the wacom tablet my style kind of changed, more color and harder brushes and less grayscale soft brushing. When I look back at the stuff I did with the mouse, I must say I was going somewhere with that style, and then it felt like I had to start all over again with the tablet. The tablet is better for doing fast stuff, and that's probably the road ahead...and some more 3D paintover stuff.

Princess

2007-07-12T14:25:00.000-07:00

Just playing around with photoshop, experimenting with colors and blending modes. Did not care to work on the princess or if I can call it that. The point is not to get hung up on details...perfection is not a good partner in learning arts.

Bubble

2007-07-01T05:07:00.000-07:00

Slightly inspired of the movie "The Fountain". Seen it over 10 times...just dig it!!

Meditating in the Sunset

2007-06-24T05:01:00.000-07:00

the sunset is rendered in Vue PLE (free version of vue), the sea is created in photoshop (by mirroring the sky and using a ripple filter)...and the dude and the cliff is painted. This is the first painting since the previous posted here. Been busy, moving and stuff (to Malta). Will paint a bit more frequently now...

Bad to the bone

2007-05-09T04:04:00.000-07:00

Yup here's a new one. Decided not to continue with the number painting thingie...felt like I had to have a progression...instead I will just dump stuff here...sketches etc.

Kuler

2007-05-08T03:03:00.000-07:00

Found a very good free color app: http://kuler.adobe.com

and here's a video tutorial how to use it: Kuler Video Tutorial

btw I will start painting something now...so come back 4 some cool stuff!

Thirteenth Painting

2007-04-05T18:42:00.000-07:00

Yup so I did my first tablet painting today. Better stuff coming...

Color Tools & Free Stock Photos

2007-04-05T07:21:00.000-07:00

I have not had time to paint something with the wacom yet, it's easter now and I will play around with it and post something here.

Here are some colors tools i found:
http://www.steeldolphin.com/color_scheme.html
http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html
http://www.stylephreak.com/cm.php

And some free stock photo sites:
http://www.stockvault.net/
http://yotophoto.com/
http://www.freerangestock.com/

I will get into more matte paintings now, so free stock photos are good. I have a Canon SLR too, but have not taken any photos for awhile, it's maybe time to shoot some new landscapes.

Twelfth Painting

2007-03-20T17:28:00.000-07:00

The previous one was so scary that I had to do one more to get back in harmony. Speedpainting, still with mouse, without reference.

Eleventh Painting

2007-03-20T17:05:00.000-07:00

I ordered a wacom Intuos3 A5 tablet today!! Got exited, so did a speedpainting with a mouse while waiting for the tablet.

Tenth Painting

2007-01-18T07:41:00.000-08:00

Similar to a previous painting, but I like those celestial ones. Moon and tree is rendered in Terragen2, the rest is done in photoshop.

New PC

2007-01-16T04:56:00.000-08:00

I have bought a new pc, a core2duo e6600 with 2gb ram...wow! My old pc (a laptop) was struggling with high res photoshop images/paintings, now everything is instantanously. Heaven! And rendering in blender is fast, it is multithreaded and uses both cores. And also the sculpt mode in blender works like charm now, so now I can start beeing creative again. Next investment is a wacom tablet, but first I have to get a job.

Reference and Anatomy

2006-12-09T03:42:00.000-08:00

I found a great source for reference and learning anatomy, the Loomis books. They can be downloaded from here: Loomis books

Fineart.sk is a great free resource for anatomy. They also have online versions of the loomis books.

Many use Poser for figuring out poses for their characters and also for reference. This is a great program, but there's a couple of free alternatives out there. One is the DAZ|Studio, which is a light version of Poser. It is quite good, but the downside is that it only includes a lowres female character, other characters have to be bought. Another solution is MakeHuman, there you can morph your character to male, female or fantasy, and ofcourse pose it. It is in alpha state yet, so much is not implemented, but for the use of refrence in a digital painting it works well. The model exports as obj, so it can be taken into any 3D program and rendered, or you can render it right from the program itself. To do that you have to install the free rendering engine Aqsis, and it renders with shaders and a sub surface scattering skin shader, not bad!

3d.sk is a good source for photo reference, but one can also here use free photo sources instead, like sxc.hu, or a cheap stock photo source like istockphoto ($1 per photo).

Photo searches like google images can be also be used for finding refrences, but be aware that there is a copyright issue if you paint too similar.

Ninth Painting

2006-12-06T04:35:00.000-08:00

Yep he got muscles. Looked at reference...at least for awhile.

Eight Painting

2006-11-25T11:23:00.000-08:00

Another head.

Uprezed to 2K this time. Did not use any reference, something I probably should start doing, since nothing is anatomicly correct, but hey it's a cartoony character. Blindfolded him, since I don't know how to paint eyes. So I guess I need to find a good eyes tutorial...and one for hair.

Seventh Painting

2006-11-20T04:10:00.000-08:00

Continued playing with the scary face painting.

The background is a blurred terragen render. My next task is to practise rendering different surfaces, like cloth, metal, plastic etc. I like creating characters, so I guess I will continue that for a while. Characters need backgrounds, so there comes the matte painting practice, though I guess they call it concept painting. I really like the concept paintings by Ryan church, like the style, though he uses Painter, but I think it's possible to paint a similar style in photoshop. I hope...but it might be better to develop my own style, and not copy the masters.

Sixth Painting

2006-11-18T04:03:00.000-08:00

Yup I'm back. A scary face this time.

Tried painting on a black background, and I like it. Sharpened it with smart sharpen...hmmm it kind of looks like a photo manip, but it's not. Painted with a white round brush using different opacities and softness. I use opacity instead of pressure sensitivity, since I still paint with a mouse.

ConceptArt.org

2006-09-15T14:30:00.000-07:00

been checking out all those amazing sb's at conceptart.org. For those that don't know what a sb is, well then you need to go over there and check it out. It stands for sketchbook and is very similar to what I am doing here, showing the progress over time, but just soo much better. There are so many amazing artists there, why should I even bother trying this? Maybe that's the risk you run into when you're an art fan, you become the humble amazer, and just stop your own progress. check out this 22 year old for example: Andrew Lay SB

Painting in 3D

2006-09-05T15:14:00.000-07:00

Tested the blender sculpt tool today, here is the result:

It works very much like zbrush, but the good thing...it's free!! It's an addon tool for the free 3D program Blender. I feel that sculpting like this in 3D is very much like painting, you use a brush, and it's very fast and fun. It took 3 hours to make the model above and about one hour to do the photoshop stuff.

Alp Altiner uses zbrush in his matte paintings, since I'm just a hobbyist I will be using the free blender sculpt tool.

Blender
Blender Sculpt Tool

Focus

2006-09-04T03:41:00.000-07:00

I played around in photoshop again yesterday, and realized I have to narrow my focus to increase my skills in a certain area. I said earlier that I will eventually focus on matte painting, well it's time now. In matte painting I can combine photography, 3D and painting, a perfect blend of all of my hobbies. Maybe when I get a wacom tablet I will also do other kinds of art, like matte painter Christian Lorenz Scheurer does, in for example this piece, where he combines his environment skills with a character in the foreground.

So things to learn, skills to strengthen and dreams to be dreamt. Not that I'm dreaming of sitting in an office doing my art, nomather if it's for a blockbuster movie, nope that will kill the fun. Right now I'm sitting with my laptop looking at the mediterranean sea playing around in photoshop, sounds better than a dark office with a tight deadline?!...doesn't it?

The dreams are of distant excotic places I will create mattes of, like the great mountain city in the nexus range on 7 the planet in the ilios system called eilo. Hehe yep those kind of dreams :-)

Painting with light

2006-09-02T14:13:00.000-07:00

In 1949 John Alton wrote a very important cinematography book called "Painting with light", describing how he lights his movies. "Few cinematographers have had as decisive an impact on the cinematic medium as John Alton."

Bladerunner is a good example of a movie that is painted with light. Matrix is another good example. I like this style, dark and atmospheric.

Some of the paintings I like the most are subdued and painted with light. A good example is Steven Stahlberg's One Last Time.

Other examples: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7