Here’s another in the steps from the picture below. More work on the sky. You can see I’ve started to refine the clouds a bit more. Moved some stuff around. Added some shades in the background. Things are moving along nicely. There will be more this weekend. I should have all the clouds done by then providing I don’t go out and get too drunk.
So on my path to learn more about digital painting, I decided to work on a landscape piece. This way I’m allowed to play as much as I want. A cloud can look like just about anything so I don’t have to be exact about anything. In this piece I’m also playing around with colour. I chose to go with a bright vibrant red/orange. I’ve started with the sky as shown below.
It doesn’t look like much at the moment. Just an orange background with some redish shapes crudely laid out. And that’s fine for now. What I’ve done is made an indication of a sun by spotting out yellow on an orange background. I’ve then created a new layer and made all the red shapes on top of it. I have then taken the smudge tool and moved the clouds around a bit. Like thus…
So now we are getting some shapes and things. I’m going to end up over doing the sky a bit. For one, I’m just fucking around so it really doesn’t matter. And for two, I want to really play with the brush a bit and figure out the best settings and such.
Oh and by the way, next time I decide to do a painting in an intense red, slap me up side the head. I can’t look at the screen for more then 5 min at a time because it’s killing my eyes.
Coming soon.. more sky then on to the castle!
Ok so digital painting is a hell of a lot harder then I thought it would be. Being a colourist for comics, I figured this would be an easy transition. Well, I figured wrong. So here’s the new game plan. I’m going to chronicle my learning curve and then into the Iced Jem project. Every step I take in learning how to digitally paint, create PS brushes for different textures and some step by steps for different paintings.
It may be awhile till I post something, so here is one of the last pictures I’ve done to tide you over..
So taking a quick break from the Iced Jam project, I sketched up this pic of Scud the Disposable Assassin in photoshop. I’ll be digitally painting this one up. God I’m glad he’s back.
So to set the stage, the song starts out with a beat. It sounds like there are a lot of drummers on stage while this is going on. So I’ve broken it down into two groups. Greater deamons and Lesser deamons. So here’s 4 quick studies on the heads of the Deamon drummers. Basically they will all look the same. Same features, but their horns and certain facial features will separate them. I haven’t completely settled on these yet. I’m not sure if I want 3 or 4 large drummers on stage yet or not. Hair and horns are going to be the big factor in what changes their appearance. Their design is a nod to the devil from Legend and the balrog from Lord of the Rings.
Colour studies coming next.
Ok so there’s been a lack of posts thus far. I’m working on something. Promise. And what i’m going to be posting here will be something of a decent sized project and the pay off and all the steps will be posted here.
So what is this decent sized project. Well P. Craig Russell kinda started this off. He did a couple graphic novels based on Wagner’s Operas. Now that’s an interesting idea. The story structure and layout was based not only on the words or lyrics of the opera but also the music.
This is an interesting concept to me. Allowing sound to dictate visuals. Now a long time ago I found this song Iced Jam by µ-Ziq. This song invoked an interesting story in my head. If you get a chance grab the full song from some where. It’s a good song and it will also so be pivotal for you to understand this project. But anyway, so my idea is to jot down this story, based on the music of the song. I say story, but really it is more like a music a video, with out the animation. So this will be put out in a comic format.
What I’ll be posting will be character designs, objects, and the scenes where this all will take place. I’ll also be doing something slightly different then what I’m used to and will be digitally painting this whole thing.
So keep a weathered eye on the horizon, I’ll be posting some some pencil sketches shortly and there will be more to come.
Here is my first sketch post. This is a digital painting taken from a photograph. I finally managed to get some convincing eyes out of this one. I was happy with it. 
Well well well.. what do we have here? This will be my sketch blog. I will post all the little drawings and junk that I do through out the year. Maybe a couple a week, maybe one a month. Which ever it is, keep looking cause there’s bound to be at least one cool thing on here.
