ArtCtrl

So I’ve been in Takaka for several days now, and drawing every one of these. It’s been nice taking a break from Levin and being in a different setting.

Here’s some of the artwork that I’ve done out and about in Takaka:

I drew this yesterday morning when up Pig Gully - my Uncle owns a mountain there. We drove up, giving the dogs a run. Once at the top I stood around for sometime before realizing there was a cold wind, and decided to get back in the car. This is a drawing of the view from the car. Sadly I didn’t bring my green colored pencil with me so had to use yellow instead of green. 

Another drawing from yesterday. This was in Takaka town district after I had lunch with a wonderful woman - Victoria Davis and her Mother (her mother is in a wheelchair and reminded me greatly of Nana). Lunch was delicious - I had a flat white, salad, and wedges. Great to catch up with Victoria and met her Mother.

After lunch Victoria headed off and I stayed in town. May as well enjoy the beautiful sunshine. I sat across from the building I had lunch - The Wheatmeal and drew the building. I love drawing buildings so much and I think i’m lucky to be able to document my trip with drawings rather then photographs. Drawings say much more then a photo ever will.

This is a view from the house I’m staying at. It was a beatiful sunny day so I decided to sit outside and draw the view. The hills are inspiring and this can only help my digital environments once I return to Levin. 

I want to show a sense of scale - by drawing objects in the distance as well as the foreground.  Sitting on a bridge in the morning I drew this of the mountains in the distance. The blue is spose to be white, but putting some color into it made it feel finished.

I sent some of my artworks to Catherine to work on as a collaborative project. She recently made the blog post - William Mckee to show the work.

Here’s the result of her doings:

I love the story telling elements that’s in this piece. Two characters, the left one pull on the mask, when it comes out they are both wearing it. My work lacks this storytelling elements, so it’s great to see Catherine work at this. All this needs is more development - maybe color and detail - especially to those characters. Background could be developed further as well - adding them into some sort of environment.

Wonderful control over the line work, something I feel is weak in my work (normally I paint rather then draw with digital). That fine line work is something I need to work on - using my whole arm to create the line rather than just my wrist.

I wish I had my tablet with me to work on this further, but I have to wait till I’m back in Levin. Two and a bit weeks till I return.

Hello. This week I’ve felt very lazy in terms of artwork. Still no Blender works, but at least I got into some GIMP work. I want to go back to reference images and develop my digital painting further. I get distracted bad, and sleep too much. Sigh. I’m heading down to the South Island later this week with no computer, just my sketchbook. I’m looking forward to sketching the Island, should be exciting.

Here is some digital work I have been doing:

I had fun with this. I used an early attempt to warm up before progressing onto this.I focused on an area. Roger Key would always suggest this - that It’s better to focus on a smaller area and get it right over working a large area and making a mess.

So I focused on the mountains in the background, and trees in the foreground. Of course I didn’t stick to these and the image changed completely, but the main point was still kept - focus.

Taking these studies from my sketchbook into digital will work better for me then working from photographs.

I wasn’t going to upload the warm up, but really I should be uploading all the artwork I do, even if I’m not a fan. Here you go: Background turned out to be a dark red as it was the color selected when creating a new layer. I kept it there instead of switching it to a mid gray, working a mid gray over top. It was going great at first. I’ve had problems with the white and back. It just isn’t mixing together. It just wasn’t working so I gave up and created a new one…. and that worked great. I like to treat these like gestural drawings… something thats good to do but at the end of the day I’m going to screw it up and throw it away (not really true as I tend to keep all my life drawings - my room is full of brown paper some dating back to 2010).

The reference I used for the previous paintings. This was in Upper Hutt mid 2011. It was during one of the class trips - Dans Friday Class. Wonderful class, the life drawing and trips were the best bits. Both something TLC must do more of!

And finally here’s some sketches I did in GIMP to warm up. I’m not sure if I’ll work on them further but just sketching and treating digital like a sketchbook works well for me. Allows me to practice ideas and creative thinking.

It’s Wednesday. Today I need to organize my trip down South. I was planning on heading down Saturday but have needed to change to Thursday. I’ll try to schedule some posts when I’m gone so this blog isn’t left empty.

Have a good day.

When I was in Wellington I visited DeviantArt.com and went on the DrawPlz forums. It has been months since I’ve worked from them… it was fun.. something different and fresh.

Draw the item to your left. This was when I was sitting at a Bench… so had an empty cup of tea and my 2nd moniter setup. The lack of different brushes (or custom!) is limiting. Also I don’t have the pressure working on the DA Client…. Must be able to config it to work though

Someones Rabbit type creature that I drew. Practicing envroiments in the background with the long blue marks. This could be worked up further with a lighter blue color to contrast with the dark blue. Other colors wouldn’t hurt either - yellows and reds.

And finally a portrait of someones character. Out of all the paintings I did on DA, this is my favorite.

I still have yet to scan in my sketchbook to Wellington. I started it over the weekend but had problems with the format. A jump drive would do me well… or at least get cloud storage sorted… I should be able to use my webhosting for it.

More updates later in the week….

So back in Levin after the Wellington trip. I havn’t gotten alot done since I’ve gotten back. Mostly rested and cooked a little. I’ve started getting into a route with digital painting. I’ll get there

Attempting to apply a few techniques from Bridgman - Guide To Drawing From Life. I looked though it when in Wellington City Library and back home got hold of a digital copy (though a physical book would be great). I’ve mostly been working in a new visual diary, making copys of his drawings. I’d like to do the same with digital drawings.

Portrait practice. Was inspired to try a new color palette. It’s very different to what I usually work with. Needs more yellows.

Exploring the robot. Yellow and reds on the figure are familiar. Plenty of focus on the environment - sketches of areas.

I have drawings in my visual diary that I should upload. Thought I’d better upload something tonight, and this was the only art I had done.

Hello thest

Took a break from Unity today and worked on just digital painting. I also left the house and went for a trip to Upper Hutt. The view overlooking the Hutt was quite stunning. I got a friend to take some photos so I have some new reference for digital painting.

These are all much the same as my recent digital works. Keeping with the single layer and 60% to 80% opacity. conceptart.org has been a big inspiration… I’m inspired to better my artwork because of the works I see on the site. Practice, practice, practice!

Using the same colors and ideas throughout these paintings helps create a series and harmony. Feng Zhu suggests working on multiply paintings… so I do!

My least favorite of the bunch. Might be the angle I don’t like. But something about this I don’t like. It’s just not working.

Here’s a lapse of these digital paintings. No sound sorry.

Some of the process of the paintings is missing, but the video shows the switching between paintings. I’m going to produce more of these videos - I’m just having trouble with file sizes and types. I’m using the software CamRecorder but it saves as .avi - making it useless to take into Windows Movie Editor (crappy I know, but it works for me). I’d like it if CamRecorder was able to save it as a compressed movie file that I was able to edit in Windows Movie maker. If anyone knows how to do this - please let me know.

Tomorrow I’ll be heading into Wellington for two days - I’ve been in the Hutt. I’m looking forward to heading back to Levin. The Hutt has been fun… but so cold.

I’ll try to get in some digital painting tomorrow… and maybe some sketches in my sketchbook I have taken some photos of recent sketchbook work and just need to upload to the blog. I havn’t put up any traditial drawing works for ages so it’s about time. I do like working digital though - it’s fast, cheap, and not messy (not that working colored pencils is messy@)

I’m currently in Wellington for several days but have had time to work on projects. I’ve decided to give Unity3d a go - and move on from Blender. I still enjoy Blender but feel I need take my artwork into Unity. I’ve tried UDK and Hammer but Unity seems to suit me best.

I’ve managed to create a 3d first person environment using my artwork as textures. This was rather simple as I was able to use the standard character library within Unity. I used the basic cube to create the area then textured with my own artwork.

I also managed to make a fixed camera 3rd person camera view and a follow cam 3rd person. I’d like to experiment with these further as I’m more interested in creating something 3rd person over 1st.

My latest scene I’ve created. This started with a first person camera but I replaced with a 3rd person. I wanted a fixed camera as in my previous scene I had a 3rd person follow cam. This hasn’t been successful so far but I’ll keep working on it. The ground texture is a simple wood texture that I created with wood workshop - the textures on the side are recent digital paintings created in GIMP.

First person view. In this scene I worked with HUD - masking off areas to create a goggle effect. I’d also like to work with in game dialog - using my portrait skills to create portraits in game for character. The landscape is for the dialog…. I’ll work on improving this later but wanted more then just a blank color.

The 3rd person scene I was working on. I used the build in character and this was working great till I started messing with some settings and broke it. The third person camera still works but no character is showing. I’ll like to replace the default character with one of my own that I’ve created in Blender. I’m having problems working with the imported blender files. I need to figure out how to convert them to the same mesh as the created in Unity. 

Third person fixed cam working. A simple cube was the character.

And finally a video of a first person scene:

Before I started at TLC I was really into drawing portraits of famous people. Especially music and television.

In 2010 I did a drawing of MIA - pencil. I then took it into image editing - I think it was my ipod touch - Sketchbook Pro.

Decided to take that old drawing into GIMP and paint a portrait with the new tablet. Here’s the results.

Black and white start as always. Well digital painting the other day I thought to myself - I should start making my own brushes in GIMP. I could create these by cutting up my digital paintings or even using some areas of my paintings as stamps for brushes. I know it’s easy to make brushes so I should explore.

Color added. Inspired by my usually colors. Opacity has been dropped dramatically in areas - sometimes going in with eraser to enhance the effects more.

This is just a quick update. I have a folder of Blender renders - ‘Sunday Render’. I’ve started calling my Blender render files by days of the week. It helps me keep more organised. Having 500+ img and mpeg files in one folder is not fun - unless they are sorted correctly. Even then - it’s still a mess. ‘Sunday Render’ should be published tomorrow - I’ll just need to work on some more Blender works to render first. There is only 30 seconds of footage… I’d like 1.5 mins minimal for the animation now.

I opened Unity today. It had been a long time since I’d used it. Imported a first person package and created a small game of a character walking around an emptiness area. I need to experiment with it further - Need to get the .blend import sorted to show textures and such. Currently it’s only showing textureless models. Animation is working though! I’d love to create some NPCs walking about - maybe make them interactive.