ArtCtrl

I’ve spent the majority of my time working on GIMP - digital painting. Mostly just doodles but  last night I did work from pixellovely. I’ve decided I like GIMP much more then Photoshop. It’s friendly. Photoshop is just yuck.

This is experimenting with shapes in perspective. During the term of life drawing I had an increasing interest in shapes after my time working in Blender (something I havn’t worked on for a while…. I need to do more!). Taking these ideas into digital has been fun. I’ll work on developing this further.

Pixellovely sketches. I’m working with two minute timers on this. Again similar colors to what I’ve been doing in the past. I’ll aim to spent a hour or so everyday working on these. Allows me to keep up with the figure works without attending life drawing classes.

That’s all for tonight. I’ve also started work on a painting - on a large long board. So far it’s just in gouache but I’ll develop it further with acrylic and oil paint. I don’t have a photo of this currently but will take a photo tomorrow when there is decent light. Going to work on a collubrath painting with Andrew as well - have about 5 of these boards left.

So no updates for over a week. I’ve been playing Diablo 3 during the the week. I finished it on normal as a Wizard and partway though Nightmare. I’m not hugely motivated to play it right now - likely a good thing as I can get more important tasks done like artwork. I enjoyed the playthough but Blizzard isn’t the same anymore.

I have a new tablet pen and a new place to stay - so it’s a fresh start. I havn’t done any digital painting since I lost my tablet pen so I was happy to get back into it.

Thought I’d give Photoshop CS5 a blast since I have it on this laptop (though recent updates to GIMP are wonderful).

One of my goals I wanted to do with digital painting this month is look though my life drawings I’ve done this past term and paint over digitally. I wanted to stick with the colors that I had been using in traditional media, experimenting with techniques and brushes. I’m happy with this work but need to practice further with the digital tablet.

No background. All from imagination.

Background added. Painted this last night.when watching Primer. I’ve seen Primer several times before but it’s that type of film that I never get sick of.

The EOW of the week over at Conceptart.org is Orbital Refinery. I want to get into these activitys now that my tablet is functioning. I visit the site often for inspiration. A google for Refinery gave me some images that I worked from but nothing I’m happy with. I havn’t go alot of plans this week so may work on this further. 

More ideas for the EOW. Mostly just sketches or doodles. These arn’t really going anywhere.

Shapes! I used perspective heavily in my life drawing this last term so want to transfer this to the digital realm.

And finally, just a bunch of quick sketches. Again from imagination. This was just used as a exercise to warm up into using the tablet again.

That’s all for now. Expect to see further digital works.

Last weekend at Matchbox Studios I caught up with Catherine. I hadn’t seen Catherine since early 2011 so it was great to see her. She mentioned it would be good to collaborate on something…. I thought a  decided to do a journal swap would be cool.

The way we are working this journal swap. Both swap journals that’s filled with drawing/paintings etc… and enhance and work over one anothers work. I’m really exciting to see what will come out of it.

I have over the year followed her blog Black and Coloured Stuff. Go check it out, fantastic drawings and paintings. Plently of color which I’m always a fan of.

Here’s the journal that I’m going to be giving her this week. This is mostly filled with life drawings that I’ve painted over with gouache (found my nice blight brush recently). May take this into course tomorrow and life paint… something different to the drawing.

I may do another journal flip of the journal she gives me - before and after is important.

So. I just remembered, It’s been a long time since I’ve updated the blog with some IOGraph works. Recently I havn’t been running the program (forget it open it). But I’ve got it running now… so expect more updates.

Color! This was taken into Blender and used for a UV map on a model. Blender - something I should work with further….. neglected it recently.

Great. Hope you liked these. I’ve been spending most of my time learning Java. It’s been fun and I hope to make some cool programs with it.

Life drawing on Monday…. Double Models… male I believe… but only half a day. In the afternoon we will be showing some work from the term and discussing it. Friday will also be life drawing…. male again. Then it’s over for the term.

I’m moving next weekend so won’t be attending TLC onsite anymore. I’ll try to make it to life drawing in Palmerston

So Diablo 3 came out the other week. In the past I’ve rushed to buy Blizzard games. Except for Starcraft 2 I’ve basically got them on release date. Blizzard use to be my favourite game company. But several years ago Blizzard was sold to Activision. From there the creativity and inovasion in games have gone down. They are no longer ahead of the game.

I could buy Diablo 3. I want to play it. But the cost is too much. In New Zealand I’m forced to pay 80 AUD for the game. That comes to around 102 dollars in NZD. I don’t know about you, but one hundard dollars is alot to spend on a online only, downloadable game. How much would I pay for it? Between 30 and 50 dollars I’ll buy it. Make it 30 USD and I’ll buy it right now. Hell - for that price I’ll buy a second copy for my sister or brother.

So they lost me. Due to that price.

There is another game. Path of Exile. Made in New Zealand. It’s currently in closed beta but I went ahead and paid fifteen USD for access to the beta. Path of Exile will be free to play and there will be a store to buy trivial items - plus create different leagues (exciting to see where the leagues go!). It looks like Diablo 2 except with much better graphics. There is still lots to be impoved in the game.

Characters need more animation. The player character is very static in their movements. I’d like to see more animation. For example when standing still  for a period of the character swings their weapon, or moves on the spot etc. I think this would create a more engaging character. 

Monsters could be quicker at reacting. I found I could run though mobs and avoid damage due to their reaction time to be slow. This can only imporve as the developers work on it further.

I like the passive skill tree. It works the same as Final Fantasy 10 with a large grid - able to go into any tree. This is much better then say Diablo 2 where you get to put stats in str/dex/magic etc… Path of Exile allows for far more custom in the character. The spell system works similar to Final Fantasy 7 with spells gaining experience with you. FF7 had one of the best magic systems I’ve seen in games so I’m glad they have gone this route.

So there we have it Path of Exile. I suggest checking it. Open beta will be released soon I believe.

Georgette was the model on Monday. I found my 8b chunk of graphite so used that - especially helpful for warming up. Oil pastel was also used throughout the day, and plenty of dragon killing during breaks.

Next week will be the final week. The theme was clothed, which I wasn’t expecting. I’ve never been a fan of clothed model sessions. In nude I trust. I’d be interested drawing costumes but I felt the cloth that Georgette was using just covered her body and didn’t add anything. Disappointed.

That aside I tried to make the most of the model

No colored pencil. Instead using oil pastel for the tone. Oil pastel is fantastic, it spreads quickly and doesn’t smudge or cause problems.

I’ve been playing Skyrim. Good times.

Dan noticed these and said they were really working. The figure on the left is looking too muddy, I don’t like it.

I really wanted to practice techniques like this. Capture full body, and using tone fill in lights and darks. Typical color scheme

Strong portraits. Must be that pratice from Saturday night. Cmpletely different style then the portraits. This is my favourite work of the day.

For the last part of the day the model hid areas of her body behind a sheet with light behind. This cauesed an interesting shadow effect.

The drawing on the right is drawn from imagination. I’d like to practice further with recalling poses and such from memory.

Not as much life drawing as normal, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Life drawing. Lorraine was the model. I had her for a model last weekend so it was great to have her again on Friday.

I didn’t use any graphite today, instead a charcoal pencil.  Got it in the morning on Friday - It’s been a long time since I’ve brought a new media so thought I’d give it a go.

Charcoal pencil is 4b - Soft. I’d rather a harder charcoal, maybe HB? Might check French Art Shop or Gordan Harris.

Anyway. Here is 6 hours of Life Drawing Dans Friday class - Experimental Drawing.

I’ve kept with the theme of working with shapes, exploring straight lines in this one. T

he charcoal is dark so the drawings are clear. I have problems with the lighter graphite, especially HB. It’s got to have colored pencil added be notable. 

More of that same page. This was one of my larger figures of the day. I’ve been working smaller recently…. but exploring a range of sizes. Easier to fit everyting in!. This shading techniques on this image is quick straight lines. Areas that are dark I’ve made a harsher mark. With the direction of the marks attempted direction movements in order to create

depth and 3d.

Color! Kept with my recent color palette with a slight switch Yellow for the lights, blue for the negative space. For the darks I’ve switched to a brown grey colored pencil, no dark reds.

I really like the line work on these. Some areas arn;t working right though. Far left figures shouders need a sharper line - it’s currecntly just curved and has no impact. Maybe because of the shading on the arm, may help with more contrast (notice the middle figure and the contrast between charcoal and blue). The legs are strong on this figure. I’ve been spenting time on Concept Art looking at Pencil Sketchbooks.

Again, these lines are working. I’ll keep working on that S and perfect those curves. Along with a strong straight line \, will create a wonderful contrast in my drawings. 

Free oil pastels! Just cheap ones, but I was quick to grab several colors - including a white!. Here I’ve used white and blue together to color the figure. I’m looking forward to more oil pastel as I started it at the end of last term with the plan to keep it going this term - but switched back to colored pencils. Whatever media I feel like using I should do it - don’t let planning take over

Oil pastel again, this time two yellows for the lights and darks. Charcoal was built up over the pastel which is one advantage over graphite.

I’m happy with how this figure turned out. It was great to get back to working with the oil pastel.

More pratice with those curves.. few doodles here and there. 

This page started with a drawing of megan (middle lower). The pose wasn’t working for me - lying down with only back visible. Makes it hard to draw those limbs… so I drew Megan. I had to use the orange for her hair and the theme continued in the drawing of Lor

and the final, gesteral works. Again, just exploring techniques I’ve covered in this post.

Life drawing tomorrow., Georgette is the model! I plan to use charcoal and oil pastel… see what happens with the colored pencils - used them lots drawing portraits at Matchbox last night.

I think I better make am update on how my Blender work is going, I haven’t done much recently so hope this serves as an wakeup call to work on Blender more. Need that energy…

Normally I have photos to go along with this video footage - I’ve been quite good at taking a screenshot of my work as I’ve been using Blender and pasting this into GIMP where I can edit it down and save as a jpeg.

Next time. I need to get more complete scenes done, I’ve got so much models that I’ve been messing around with I need to go back and review and enhance.

Life Drawing Friday. This makes me happy.

Dan had a weekend class - Figurative Expressions. He mentioned he liked it call it this rather then drawing as people are free to explore other medians - like paint and sculpture. Knowing Dan - he won’t mind if you paint during a experimental drawing.

We had two models. On the Saturday - a male, and Sunday - a female. Both Days were a success, partially the works on Saturday and final works on Sunday. Longer poses didn’t go well surprising. 

Action poses. From Saturday. I constructed the model out of shapes. I don’t like measuring these shapes, they are always estimates.  I wanted to practice creating perspective around the model - this is why I used simple lines to contract an environment.

These are more developed - color! I stuck with yellow and blue for the negative space. On the Saturday the focus was on line so it was hard to capture tones - so I’ve just given it a flat color. Again - using lines in the negative space to construct an environment for the figures.

The drawing on the bottom right is working - torso, upper legs, and knees captured. I’ve been practicing the ‘S’ shape - in order to create a fluid line - I focus so much on straight lines - it’s important that I can produce other types of line.

These were some of the final drawings of the weekend - and some of my favorites. Dan was impressed by the scale change of the models/ I wanted to line up a character\.

And the final two from that sheet. As you can see I’m working landscape apposed to horizontal. It’s a habit I’ve picked up with all the brown paper drawings with life drawing. I enjoy it.

More pratice of the ’s' mark. I partically enjoy those legs that I colored around with blue, Forms really working. I’ll like to develop this further.

Need to create better lines.

I dared to use some promarkers. They just don’t do it for me.

This created an interesting perspective - leaning backwards while lying down. The few shapes I used created a basic idea of the shape of the model.

okk, im tired so this will do. overall a wonderful weekend life drawing. I’ve been rather useless on the computer lately - i think i need a break. but any computer work I do will be - Blender. Still more to learn. Need to render more material, expand particle systems further.

gamedev. I had a blast with Hammer tonight. It’s ok, but really what I need to do is import my blender material into Hammer. I’ve had a go with Unity3d, importing a .blend file. Though, no success it’s something I could use Youtube and find tutorials.

programming. I made a basic roguelike last week with python, I’d like to explore this further. Especially look at ideas that would allow me to create a 3d Roguelike.

Maybe writting more. That could always be helpful.

I hope you like the life drawing. More will be happening this Friday. I’m not sure who the model will be. But it will be a female! I’ll be using pencil and colored pencils again - lifting off where Sunday left me.

So this week has flown by. I didn’t get half the stuff I wanted to get done. I’m happy with my blender work. and the small level I made in the Hammer editor - lighting has been a big theme for the week.

Today I decided to get back into using python. I needed a project to work on. Something that could work with the blender works or my artwork in general. Roguelike.

So using Python and this guide I’ve been working on creating a Roguelike.

Here’s a screenshot so far.

I felt I’ve learnt alot about game mechanics with this tutorial. I’ll keep working on it tonight and see where I go. Life drawing tomorrow and Sunday. Have the make the Sunday market as well!

It would be awesome to create a 3d Roguelike with my own artwork and design.