I’m in the process of getting my new portfolio together, and as part of it, I’ve been tweaking some older images. This one is more than just tweaked – I spent 3 or 4 hours significantly repainting her, enough to justify the repost. (Compare to the old one, seriously. It’s much better now!)
Another CHoW again, finally. This time, the topic was the ritually-blinded young queen of an alien planet… lots of Queen Amidala influence on this one, not gonna lie.
I’m learning more and more what a difference really putting the effort into development can make to the final image. So here, just for fun, is the entire sordid process I went through this week.
Oh, and I keep forgetting to mention, there are two other places you can find my stuff. The first is DeviantArt (where I post far less than I post here, and nothing you won’t find on the blog), and the second is my sketchbook thread on Conceptart (where you’ll find a lot of studies, WIPS, and other such unfinished stuff that I never blog). If you like seeing this sort of process junk, be sure to check out the sketchbook thread.
Back at CHoW again, for the first time in several weeks. The theme was Alice, returning to Wonderland to find a world at war – check out some of the other entries, there’s some really good stuff for this one. I’m insanely happy with this, and I went through a lot to get to it – I did a completely different illustration for a couple of days before scrapping it and doing this one instead – but it was totally worth it. I feel like this is a real breakthrough piece. Kim is a happy illustrator. (And a very tired one. Have not slept much while working on this.)
Full view this one; the full size is quite big.
Already posted this everywhere else, but not here for some reason. This is the party and a selection of NPCs from our big D&D campaign last summer, DM’d by Vince! I was the big blue guy (who you’ve seen before on this blog). I’ve been working on this on and off for nearly a year now, largely because, with no deadline, I just… couldn’t let go. Every time I opened it, I ended up fixing things I’d done before instead of moving on to new areas. It looks a bit piecemeal, now, and I wish I’d planned out the colours and composition a little more thoroughly. On the other hand, it was such a massive learning experience in so many ways, I can’t really get upset about any mistakes. Learning is good!
Another CHoW, this one for the topic “Royal Wedding”. (Gee, I wonder why.) Playing with the idea of civilization and the wilds, possibly because I was reading Midnight Tides at the time? I don’t know.
There’re so many problems with this, I don’t even. I’m not happy with how stiff my paintings have been looking; I liked the energy and expression of the initial sketch way better:
Eh. Learning.
God, this is boring.
I’ve been really drilling facial proportions and anatomy the past few days, after realizing how poor a grasp I actually had on, you know, that stuff. This is in theory an attempt at applying my learnings, but then I went around intentionally distorting stuff (oh, those eyes) and there wasn’t much to it to begin with so now it’s… yeah, I’m gonna stick with “boring”. Only posting because my desktop is littered with unfinished stuff and for all its flaws, this is done.
I’ve had a hard time motiviating myself to draw in my physical sketchbook as of late. Instead, I find myself noodling around in Photoshop at 3 AM when I’d meant to go to bed ages ago. Sketching is sketching, I suppose, and Photoshop sketching can get goofy and painterly real fast.
My characters from various D&D campaigns – Deacon the Deva Avenger, Rice the Human Rogue (or Daru Assassin, I suppose – campaign’s based on Steven Erikson’s Malazan books), and Noale who is already on this blog like twice already because I cannot stop drawing her.
I had Deacon on the brain after the portrait, because even though he was from last summer’s campaign, I kind of miss playing the guy. So here he is with the elven ninja child he inadvertently adopted.
And finally, some girls, from a file helpfully titled “Girliedoodles.psd”.
Another CHoW! Spent a ludicrously long time on this, but I’m proud of the result.
The white ravens come, and tell you they are angels. That they have heard your prayers. That you are chosen – your faith, your strength, a beacon in these dark times. That the sword is holy, and many great heroes have held it before you. And so you fight – for the remnants of holy places, for what innocents remain, for the spark of conviction that lead you here. You fight, hoping that the angels cannot see the dark thing in the corners of your mind. All your life you have heard the stories of the great heroes who came before you, and each ended, one by one, in death…
After lurking for literally years I’ve finally decided to take a shot at conceptart.org’s Character of the Week challenge. (I saw that Mike was doing it, and it spurred me into action. THANKS, MIKE!) So here’s this week’s challenge, a Snowmancer. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to paint snow and ice before – if I have, certainly not on this scale, so it was a whole lot of fun and a huge learning experience.
I’ve got a busy week coming up, but hopefully I can find enough time in my schedule to do it again. More and more, I’m convinced that this is the direction I should be taking my portfolio. Haven’t had this much fun with art in ages!
It’s funny – as a fantasy trope, I hate elves, yet, for some reason, I love drawing those ears. Years ago, this gave birth to a character whose sole purpose was to let me draw elf ears. I tend to redesign him every few years. He’s certainly changed since 2003 and 2006. (Also, the skill jump from ’03 to ’06, compared to ’06 to now is actually pretty depressing. I WILL WORK HARDER.)
