Second to Last

This will be the second to last update. This time with some scenes.

Thorin Oakenshield

And now to the leader of our company, Thorin Oakenshield. I decided to do another take on the character portrait that we had to do for class. Last time I did mr Bond. This time, however, I decided to do another Tolkien character, namely Thorin, hence all the sketches that have been posted here lately. One reason for doing Thorin was of course that he is awesome, but another was that I wanted to do try out Justin Gerard's technique of painting digitally on top of a water colour painting. And he loves to do Tolkien-art, so I thought I should aswell for this project. That's enough yaking from me. Let's get to the painting (PS: More yaking to follow underneath the picture, which is about the process).

First off, I did some thumbnails that only I understand. And when that was said and done, I started to do some concepts. Most of them you've already seen, but the one posted here is the first one I did, which was done on the iApple Pad.

When all of that was tackled to the ground I did the line drawing, in which I also decided to do value as well, since I wasn't pressed for time.

That was sort of wasted time and effort, since I was doing a water colour underpainting the way Justin Gerard does it and that means that the painting is supposed to be monochromatic and therefore I would only need to think of value anyhow. I suppose it was good to have a better idea before diving into the painting, though.

I also used white gouache for the opaque highlights and some brown colour pencils on some touch ups here and there on the underpainting. I did mess it up a bit, since I pushed the lights and the darks too much. The darks were okay, but the highlights were way too light for the digital colouring to show through. Luckily for me, I managed to tone down the white in the painting enough for the colors to stick to the white (which was now no longer white).

I'm not going to lie, colouring it was hard. Trying to color it digitally was like attempting to lead a wild wolf through a sheep pen without it ending in a blood bath. However, I did find it quite enjoyable and I liked the result. Don't be surprised to see this technique be used again by me in the future. Hopefully with better understanding of what the heck I am doing.

Into the Wild

More from Torn. This time, we're moving over to environments. Neat.

It's over....Sam, I Can't Remember the Taste of Strawberries

Finally, after blood sweat and tears, many, many tears, my project is done. Or at least the bits I needed done for class. Here are some more boards while I go to sleep and slumber for years.

Almost There....

One more day to go. One more late night of work. Here, take a look at some work before I start rambling in a state of semi-conciousness.

Steele Rabble's Used Cars

Now, whatever the subject matter is, I try to make my illustrations interesting. Even if the subject matter is just a man eating toast, I'll try my very best to jazz it up. Perhaps by having interesting design or lighting. Or throw in some UFO's. Or a slightly dressed (you can drop this too) pin-up girl. I don't care as long as I can manage to make a picture I enjoy making and one I think will look good in the end.

Take this one for example. The assignment was a conversation and I got "buying a used car". I was set on not having a straight shot of someone buying a car. I decided to play with design, making use of negative space and creating a vignette. I also played on humour and charicature to make to content more interesting as well. I also tried to throw in different elements to lead the eye through the composition. Not necesseraly to make it a better painting, but to keep myself amused. If I didn't, this piece would have been torture. It's nice when the bi-product of having fun is a piece of art you like. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, so here you have it "Steele Rabble's Used Cars".

Nerd moment of the day: The eagle eyed viewer may have spotted the car in question is loosely based on a Lada 2120.

O' Traditional Painting, Why Art Thou So Hard?

I love traditional art. How it looks, the colors, the texture, everything. Often even more so than digital. Don't get me wrong, digital art is great and there are certainly times where that's the best way to go. Heck, I even only almost do digital art. And therein lies the problem. I would love to do more traditional art, but I'm not very good at it. Or I'm not as good as I should be, compared to my digital stuff. Painting traditionally is a struggle. My kryptonite.

However, I feel more and more determined to master one of those techniques one day, though I do not dare spending a project spanning a couple of weeks, demanding blood, sweat and tears to only flush it down the toilet with a rubbish paint job. So, my goal is to squeeze in some small practice paintings from time to time. Let's see how that goes.

Here follows some of my flukes. Those paintings that turned out nice.

Sunflower

Breaching Orca

Unplugged

Rembrandt Rip-Off (Master Study)

The Nubian Queen Recieves a Visitor

Echoes

Reconnecting

On the Trail

Love Bond

It's a bit of a faff

My last post did contain some old relics I had deep down in my cold, wet and moldy digital basement and I thought it would be a good time to give them some fresh air. However, I thought it might be best to show some of the latest and gratest within Kirkeberg-art.

I'll let you in on a secret.... artists don't come up with stuff from thin air. BUSTED! It's true, we're all a bunch of con men, and women.....con people. What we do is to make a bunch of cryptic 20-sek thumbnails that only we and some archeologists and linguistics, specializing in old pictorial writing systems will understand. Then, when we have settled on an idea out of those thumbnails, we go to a layout sketch, where we figure out what on earth we are doing. After that, we gather reference as well as shoot our own (with a camera, all other forms of shooting would be awful). After that you roll up your sleeves and get started on what will surely be the master piece of the century. Oh! And remember to do a color/value study as well.

So here follow some shitty examples of my process (the layout is very sketchy and none of my reference is uploaded, since the models may not take that too kindly.)

Anyways, here follows my process for the piece "Humanzees Fight for Union!" The final piece will be at the bottom. Nevermind the Giant Tortoise.