Thursday 17 November 2011

Cat Women (sketch)

Been working today in my Dad's shop and in-between serving the numerous idiot's that waft in. I managed to sketch this Cat Women image. Why Cat Women? I have no idea, but using my visual memories of Michelle Pfeiffer in her suit...is never a bad thing! :)

Wednesday 9 November 2011

A Hard Day's Knight (pre-paint stage)

This is the final (cleaned up) pencil sketch. I've quickly dropped a multiply layer on there just help me imagine the cave entrance. The reason I've only toned a few areas with pencil is that most of this pencil work will be lost by the time I actually finish this piece. Therefore, I've only toned the areas where I feel the pencil will act as a good texture base (mainly the rock's and bit's of metal) I've also decided to not draw any of the rock's that form around the cave entrance. I felt it would be quicker and more fun to just paint these directly onto the image, I hope this method pay's off! :/

Tuesday 8 November 2011

A Hard Day's Knight (beginning process)

Last week I had a really strong visual image of a Knight entering a cave. Sometimes when you visualize an image it can vary in how clearly you can see it. Sometimes you have to grind away with the pencil, trying to fill in the missing pieces and patch's that you just couldn't mentally see. Other times, the image is so clear that you can pretty much recreate the image within your first sketch. This image was very much within the context of the latter. Though, I did have a problem clearly visualizing what it was that would be coming out from it's cave to greet our brave Knight! Was it a Dragon, was it a Troll, or was it something completely different? It turn's out, it was a Swamp Troll (who knew?)

With the Swamp Troll in place I very quickly set out an A3 sketch of the piece. I then scanned this into Photoshop and "flipped" the image to see all it's wonderful flaw's and imbalance's. Underneath the biro sketch I had left in the initial pencil crayon (this was a good idea) drawing from the original Troll head placement. Now looking at the image flipped I could see that the image would be a lot stronger if I kept in both the original head and newer head, after all, the troll already had four arm's, why not two heads!

The image below is a half fixed version form the original sketch. There are still plenty of thing's that will be moved, or fixed, like the owl, the fox type thing and the frog's. But, I will move and fix these issues when I make the final sketch.


Below is some thumb nail's (I prefer to sketch my image large size and then, once happy, produce my thumb nails just for quick colour test's...I'm strange, I know)

My last few (digital) painting's have been made up from using the a lot of blue and yellow's. So, with this image I want to really stay away from those complementary pair and instead push myself into using another complementary pair of colour's, red and green. 


Monday 7 November 2011

Goblin & Wolf (painted)

Needed some painting practise and was lured into painting over this quick sketch. I wanted to give it a bit of atmosphere whilst keeping the whole thing to a limited colour palette. Hopefully I've achieved that?



(revised: wasn't happy with a few element's)


(Wolf Rider- The Hobbit- character sheet)