Frozen Caisson

Above: Reworked image
Below: Original sketch



Sometimes, returning to an old piece can be rewarding.

After a year or so, whilst sorting through the image archives and folders, I thought i would take a stab at tidying and refining the composition more..albeit I got slightly carried away and ploughed a swath through the thick ice.

Charon's Junkard - Part I

Images May Morph

In keeping with the festive occasion,
I started this Halloween piece with an initial idea, but ended up with a more involved iteration. Thus this shows how a image can morph (when working on a personal piece).

Initially, it started as a strange sacrificial altar, however with further firmamation of various objects, ghouls, figures, lecterns, this has suggestion more of Charon's junkyard crossing the proverbial River of Styx.

Image Challenges

I liken each illustration as a new bespoke challenge, complete with seemingly straightforward challenges (that may turn out to be disastrous); appear ambitous but with lucky accidents, turn out rather well.

In this particular piece, the challenges I surmise would be:

1. Low monochromic key - moonlit landscape tends to have a silvered diffuse lighting. Any coloured glow eg. lava can easily distract/draw attention for the viewer.
2. Details - It is far easier to add key details to areas in shadow/relief. The drawback may result in overrendering of various areas.
3. Heirachy of Values - large shapes in the composition work best when grouped. At best grouped no more than 3 in recession as a general rule.
   
4. HOWEVER - far objects tend to get desaturated and lighter in atmosphere (daytime), but underwater/nighttime - far objects tend to get desaturated and meld into grey (nothing)
   

Extra Info: Book of the Dead

Its origins are perhaps quite interesting in that much of current day mythology and religion has strong Egyptian origins which centre on the Egyptian funery text: rw nw prt m hrw (popularised as the Book of the Dead)

The Egyptian afterlife was a dangerous place, whereby the soul in its afterlife had to endure, dodge, survive and fight to survive nefarious demons, monsters, gods and challenges.

If successful, you managed to survive to challenge the Halls of the Gods/Dead whereby a Book of the dead would be commissioned (Chapters 130–189) per family to allow you to have a Guidebook that coudl help you survive the Land of the dead so your soul may be judged by Osiris, and be weighed - hence the term light hearted/Heavy hearted.

High Mountain Valley Watchtower

Today, I had the opportunity to really practice a few things I have been grappling with the past few weeks. Thus, I took the opportunity to paint another semi fantasy piece. I imagine a lonely watchtower complex guarding a small village community in the middle of a mountain valley pass with the grey misty clouds rolling in from one direction and a small brook emptying to form a small lake.

My main challenges were:

1. Lighting a Form in colour. To have a well lit subject, it seems to work best if there is a side that is also in relief/shadow. (seems obvious until you ahve to paint it instinctively and wonder why somethign is too overlit)
2. Ice and permafrost - Its great to do more snow and ice work
3. Mood, Fog and Mist - the great thing about sombre landscapes in UK is they make for moody images. Here, in contrast I went for a more eastern influenced saturated happy happy coloured approach initially with elements of a moody desaturated grey in the background. The two do not probably mix well (the colour and value information may tend to end up as coloured mud) but worth a shot. Not living if you havent tried.
   
4. Brickwork - I had fun trying to paint suggested brickwork and peeling paint
5. Painting shallow water - Learning how to make thigns look wet, is certainly a ongoign challenge. I decided to submerge part of the pathway, becasue it looked more interesting for the subject matter (and just for the heck of it to get some painting exercise out of it as well).

Dharvish Ship at Klorken Port

I decided to delve more into the good ole epic fantasy realm this week, and helped birth this monster.

Sketch - Skylar Sky Hunt

This week, I thought I delve into the realm of mythology and the outcome of this mornings sketch looks promising

Space painting e-book

Hiya, the good folks at 3DTotal have decided to release a complete edition of the year long space tutorial series, originally published monthly on 2D Artist magazine.

It's quite something to see it all together as a 161 page tome. Here is what the folks had to say:

This mammoth 161 page eBook is an extremely detailed exploration
of the techniques and design approaches behind creating epic and lavish digital artwork relating to the theme of Space and Science Fiction.The series is divided into three main categories; Planets & Starfields, Transport and Environments and spans across 12 in depth chapters in total. The tutorials on offer cover a multitude of techniques and useful tips and tricks to painting all aspects of space and deals with the tools in Photoshop used to create such effects.

The author covers a multitude of the aesthetic considerations behind producing the wide array of both digital and traditional artwork alike,
as well as much of the scientific theory relevant to the design process ensuring a measured and realistic approach to the subject matter.
We look at traditional sketching techniques common to many design studios and how these practices work hand in hand with digital methods and all along ensuring a practical approach to solving the artistic issues, producing both plausible and yet imaginative concepts.

A retro styled Deep Space Mining Base, depicting the Vernier - DSEV (Deep Space Exploratory Vehicle) Mining Rig off to harvest and break down asteroids for raw materials for local manufacture. Asteroids are an amazing resource of water, rare metals and iron. A perfect stepping stone towards the stars




Designing the Vernier Rig

The secondary aspect was to design and provide a rapid mockup of a hero vehicle, in this instance we design a Deep Space Exploratory Vehicle (DSEV) Mining Rig named Vernier, based on the Vernier Thrusters used in high altitude adjustments.



The Initial designs were thus:



Once the side profile was mapped out and designed, it was a relatively straightforward affaird to paint in a front side profile and apply a quick colour pass.

Monster Hunt

This piece is a experimentation in multi asset character driven environment

Note: Please note, the initial workup is quite semi-random with the image jumping from composition to composition, and different lighting methods. Hopefully, you are able to take away what you can from this.

For what it's worth, you can think of it as trying to frame the right shot

FRAMING THE RIGHT SHOT

1. Initially - I have an idea of sorts. this involves the general gesture of the monster, and a ninja/shadow kind of warrior attacking it
2. If you have one, what happens when you have more. So lets add more guys, attacking in the fray against the central monster.
3. Tell you what, lets add some blood, or streaming magic from the creature
   
4. Hmm, or maybe...some sort of plated armour. yeah... and it could be underlit to make it more dramatic.
   

CLOSEUP SHOT

The background is psychedelic, however the shot works reasonably well as a one on one, with perhaps the lone shadow warrior , sticking some sort of sharp apparatus into the ogre's brain pan.

LIGHTING ISSUES

The colourful lighting in the background just isnt quite working, lets fall back on a more dramatic cliche. A fight in the bowels of a fort or courtyard perhaps.

SPECIAL EFFECTS

This is a quick test to see how it would look with some sort of magical barrier/beserker rage from the Armoured ogre.

DETAILING

Back to unifying tiny (tiny) tiny details and corrections that are barely perceptible

THERE AND BACK AGAIN

Sometimes, lovely details need to be sacrificed and colours desaturated, to unify the overall image. The initial dark shadow warrior on the far right, had transform into a bulbous figure but the form was not well defined. I know! Lets turn the warrior, into a fat bluborous dungeonkeeper. Classic!

It seems to work (Hey, I dont make the rules, but whatever works to make the shot work)

DAGGERS EVERYWHERE

Added an Obsidian dagger to the Ogre, and refined the armour somewhat

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COLOUR GRADE

Its almost 4am in the morning. I think the brain is on the fritz, and a few colour variations are explored. In addition, I decided to add some alternative bandings, and homogenise the image overall.

Object Studies

Every now and then, it is good to do a honest study of everyday still life to get a grasp on the illusion of art.





And to finish, it was quite therapeutic to convert a known model Gundam Mk-II RX-178 into an part illustration/form and lighting study. More and more, I find the value in painting from real life or maquettes to appreciate form that much better.