ArtCtrl

During my time in Auckland I met Erik, he’s a independent game developer based in Auckland. Go check his website out. I notice it’s his birthday today so made this painting for him, similar to what I use to do with my Facebook friends before deleting Facebook earlier last year.

Anyway, I’ll format this post like any other - first up line:  For the reference I used Eriks twitter picture. I had a quick look around his site for any higher res images I could use but no such luck. It doesn’t matter though - still looks like him! Around the portrait I included balloons and cake plus the type: Happy Birthday Erik. Of course this was hand rendered. Tone added. I choose to cover his skin first with black before later bringing lights over it. I’ve been thinking lately about working from a darker background rather than white. I’ve done this in the past and been happy with the result - it makes it feel less scary than a blank white canvas.  And finally color. I kept with just three color - yellow for skin, red for objects and blue for the background. I decided not to color the hat because I think black hats are rather rand.

Happy Birthday Erik - Hope you have a great day!

More digital painting. I had a rest this afternoon and felt much better afterwards. Here’s another digital painting I’ve been working on. I especially had fun with the color layer.

I worked differently with this - working from photography reference, my own stock images. For this I used Auckland Waterfront images. The same proces has been used with the painting though - starting with the red line. Working from the photo gave me more control over where the lines go - sometimes I feel restricted with a trace over - not always, but it’s great practice to do some photo reference work.

Next up, tone:

I’m especially happy with the ship and water. All this practice and I finally believe I’m starting to get somewhere. I like the rough and quick feel it has - but still understanding what exactly is there.

And finally, color. I used red for the ship and object to the far right. The water - green. Background vegatation is yellow, and sky - blue. Strips of yellow and red along the planks on the ground.

I’ve been playing The Walking Dead. Good news is that it’s a game that allows me to paint at the same time. So during the game I painted this following scene, it took me a bit longer to paint than usual as I was semi engaged with The Walking Dead.

Anyway, here’s the painting:

The reference is common - both pencil sketches drawn in Wellington - the left waterfront, and right the railway. I painted the railway just yesterday so I think tomorrow I’ll have to paint something different. It is a fun scene to paint though. I want more drawings with figure sculptures in.Ok line. I currently have a bad headache so not really sure. I guess this line is what I expected. Nothing special or different to what I usually do. I’m just going to move onto tone which is far more exciting.

Gayscale tone. Now this is getting there. I spent awhile on this building up the tones. I’m  happy with the water areas and the interesting large pole on the right side (left of the figure sculpture). I’m not happy with the car, I had to go over it several times but it still feels wrong and out of place.

Color. As always I had plenty of fun applying the color. I kept with my usual colors, but was brave and mixed them in areas.. such as the green/blue and yellow/red for the water. The opacity is set to 30% for the color so layering of colors greatly helps the depth.

Alright, that will do for now. No video for this one.

During my final hours in Auckland I started playing The Walking Dead. I got the majority of the way through episode one. I’ve just reopened it up on my laptop and playing it.

Here’s a painting I did of Clem from the game:

And using some reference photos that I took recently I did this enviorment painting:

I used several different references for this - the first a clock tower photo in Levin, this also included the reference for the street lamps. The second reference was from Auckland - the Sky tower. The rest of the image was just tone building up from imagination - including the mountain. I’ll like to do more of these photo studies rather than just work from my drawings.

Finally here’s the video for this these paintings -

Good morning. Another painting complete. I started this painting last night and finished it this morning. It works out well even if I just get the reference sorted, I can jump straight into it. Once I get started painting I generally don’t stop till it’s finished - unless I’m interpreted  and that’s usually only by Dad.

Here’s the painting - 

Reference. Several of these drawings I have used previously but like yesterday I thought I’d redo them, something fresh. May help with the continued theme of subject manner. Plus I reakon I’m better now than ever before :P.

On the left is a drawing I did during my trip to Auckland in July. It’s in the Westfield mall. It was always one of my favorite drawings of the trip.

Top left is a bridge drawing from Wellington Waterfront.

The top right is the Auckland Railway. I did this several visits ago in Wellington, but happy with the drawing, and I always get decent digital paintings from it.

This third reference is from Takaka - a drawing I did on the beach. I don’t believe I’ve taken this digitally before but I have produced a acrylic painting using it as reference.

I almost forgot about my last reference - a portrait I did of a friend - Hannah. This is in the far left. I was happy with the drawing but the portrait didn’t work well in this painting.

Line. Simple really, I traced the reference. I didn’t change the reference much, only little things like making the figures look larger than life and standing on rocks in the distance.

Grayscale tone added. This is always the most fun stage, I love tone and building up those lights and darks. It brings the scene out of plain line into something that’s real.

Again I made the characters dark and light for the background. I used the same brush in this whole painting attempting to create a range of textures with it.

I wanted to create a water type effect for the ground. I’ve been told the way to paint water is paint reflections.  And finally color. My normal color trends here. I used the green for the sky area in the top left and for the water area on the ground. Something a little different, though I’ve used the green for water in the past. I wasn’t scared to mix the colors together, mixing yellow and red for the figures.

Overall I’m happy with this painting, time to get off the computer, take some photos and eat.

I’ve been taking photos. The majority of these have been landscape or street scene, but I have taken some photos of people. You can check out my new stock photography website - FreshFigure.

For this painting I used several of my photographs and painted characters. I normally paint enviorments so it’s always refreshing to paint characters. Here goes:

Line. The four figures are all the same height with the two portraits slightly wider than the figures. I especilly enjoyed doing the line on portrait with the tongue out - it’s very unusal and nothing like a normal portrait. Yay for differences. 

Grayscale tone. I focused on skin and hair - missing the legs on the left two figures. I went in with the middle gray and just covered areas before going in with dark to the hair areas. I used a light gray in certain areas of the skin to increase the contrast.

Color. I dropped opacity to 30% and covered the skin with yellow. Next was red for the darks (just laying over that yellow). Finally I used two shades of blue for the back wall and a green for the floor.

Here’s the video:

Good morning. I got back to Levin yesterday - my Fathers place. One of the first things I did was open GIMP on the desktop computer and produce a digital painting - and record it. I didn’t record the color stage, but managed to record all up to grayscale tone.

Here’s the painting:

The far left reference is a sketch book I did in Wellington at the railway station. I’ve taken this into GIMP previously and was happy with the result. I thought it was about time to have another go. On the right I added a drawing of a cafe in Takaka, and above that trees in Christchurch. 

Line. I modified my pressure settings in GIMP to get more variety in my line - you can see this in the figure sculpture in the middle - very thin line. I’m happy with this line as it gave me enough information to develop good tone over it. 

Grayscale tone. I made up the tone as I went by just applying a range of tones over the page. For more important areas or foreground I used dark and light for less important areas. Darks for figures always seems to work best. Now, color. 

I had lots of fun with the color on this. Mixed and layered. The colors are my normal ones, but I also included a different tone of the red that I use for the line

And the video, sorry for missing color. Better than nothing!

Busy today taking photos - over 500. Managed to start a painting in the morning and finish it once I got back from this Auckland Game Dev Meet Up. I’ve also included a painting that I started during my time in Highbury, but never finished it. I don’t have the high res file of this so can’t go back and finish it. Still, happy with the painting I did today.

First up, the Highbury painting. The reference I used for this was a combo of Poringa and Napier sketches. Here’s the reference I used:

Sorry for the small size. Having problems with the upload - stupid connection. The mix was simple on this - on the left a drawing I did during my time in Poringa and on the right, a drawing I did on the waterfront in Napier. I do enjoy waterfronts, but don’t like swimming.

Line added. I didn’t add anything to the line but rather just traced over. Looking at it I think I could of continued the fence posts at the top across - to mix the two drawings further. The bus in the center was extended somewhat to help this. Next up, some tone added:

Though it isn’t finished I was happy with this tone. I had used a layer mask on it and hid everything - painting out the tone. I tried this technique again today but couldn’t get it working - the color was very transparent. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong with it. I’ll try again in the next painting as the layer masks meant I could change the color to whatever I wanted - will make it much faster especially with recycling layer. Finally, here’s the painting I did today:

The reference I used for this is a pencil sketch drawn in Levin - at the skate park. I’ll be back in Levin tomorrow so will try to get out and draw the town again. Despite being such a small town I always enjoyed getting outside and drawing. Normally I don’t add so much line to the vegetation - but I did on this. Maybe I should have a go at using different colors for the line version? Getting layer masks working would help with this.

And tone added. I’m rather happy with this piece. I used the same brush on the whole thing, something that I should avoid. I guess using the same brushes causes me to have to use a range of different strokes in order to show the range of objects in the scene. The marks I did for the hills are completely different to the fence-posts and tiles on the buildings. Does the building need sharper edges? I decided not to do a color layer, though color can be added quickly.

Continued with more digital painting today. I’ve been on such a roll it’s just worth getting plenty done. Recently I uploaded portrait and figure drawings I had done several years ago. I decided to take one of these into GIMP and digitize. Since I need more figure works to use in my environment works I decided against a portrait - though I may come back to some of the portraits later.

Here’s the painting - 

Line. Overall I’m happy with the line - especially from the elbows down, the level of detail is working. The arms are a bit strange - even on the reference not alot was happening with them and seems to be dark to hide features. 

Grayscale tone added. The portrait looks great, I attempted to fix the arms somewhat by adding in a range of tone to them… I’m still not sure about them though. The chest and below has quite a steam punk feel to it.

Color added. With the color layer I did something I had never done before in GIMP - used masks. With the mask I hid everything and then revealed it by painting. This allowed me to easily change the colors and have more control over the painting. I used this feature before in Photoshop… but that would of been a long time ago. I need to get into the practice of using layer masks for all my layer - line, gray scale, and color.

Long walk today to St Lukes but afterwards I opened up GIMP and imported pencil works to work on.

I choose to work on two works - the first, a figure drawing I did during my time in Wellington last. Seems like such a long time ago now.

The line was created on the same layer as the drawing sadly. Normally I’m good at creating a new layer first - but this time I messed up. It’s alright. I normally don’t use the line for much but rather develop the painted layer further. I decided to draw the light and dark separates  inside the figure rather than just tracing around. This makes it easier for the next stage….  Black and white tone added. My favorite area is the top half, but I guess the bottom is interesting as well, how it fades into the background. Maybe some more dark in the bottom/right could help the contrast?

ok, onto the second painting I did today -  The reference for this was a drawing I did during my time in Napier visiting my Grandfather. It was one of my more successful drawings during the time. As you can see I didn’t make the same mistake as the previous work and it’s on a new layer. The detail is somewhat lower than some of the previous environmental works I have done. I had considered adding the right page drawing onto it - at one point I began scaling this image down in order to make room. I decided against it in the end, though I could mix other line drawings into this in the future and repaint.

Gray-scale tone added. I used two brushes for this - the first a standard flat brush that offered no texture and the second a charcoal. I guess it’s good I’m trying new brushes, but maybe I should be making my own. I used the smooth brush on the Church and charcoal brush on the trees to give a contrast in the objects. For a long time I just kept with a single brush but looking at this I know it’s very important to create a range of textures using several different brushes.

You may notice there is no figure or other object to help show the scale. I added in some figure that I had recently painted.

Ok. I played around with this for awhile, experimenting with scale and location of the figure. In this mock up I added Annabels figure to the left and scaled it large - in other versions I had scaled her right down and added her higher (where her face is currently). This didn’t look right and it worked bigger as a larger figure. I also tried adding the nude to this side of the page also but wasn’t happy - mostly because of the strange angle of the arms (still not happy about those arms). Added the nude to the right seems to work better.

I am going to the Auckland library today, I’ll look for concept art books for some inspiration.