sketchy 113

Yet another image which was stuck in my mind - kinda like the sunflower.

Happy with most of the image I guess, except perhaps the most important object, the lighthouse! I think the lighthouse will have a revision over the next week or two ...

Tools: Photoshop
Time: 2.5 hours(ish)

sketchy 112

Haven't found the motivation to finish this one, but posting it anyway so I can move on.

I liked the image as it was architectural and with a strong composition. Problem was, I somehow got bogged down in really fiddly detail - probably owing to the image having a lot of fiddly detail which I wasn't confident in simplifying.

Found drawing the details very time consuming and challenging - drawn freehand.

Three sessions which in total equated to perhaps 6 hours ...

(photo by me).

sketchy 111

Chose this image as it had a good sense of lighting and contrast. Not 100 percent happy with the proportions of the bug, but pretty happy with the result.

[photo source; flickr]

Tools: Photoshop
Time: 2 hours

sketchy 110

This one started out as a 1 hour challenge, but became a 1.5 hour challenge (i'm quite slow at this stuff). I limited myself to a completely opaque circle brush - so no opacity blending or feathering. It made things a lot harder, but was a good way to force me to try some different things.

Based on a photo I took in Europe.

sketchy 109

Playing around with a more simplistic subject matter.

As part of the challenge I could only spend 1 hour in the image.

[photo source; gettyimages]

Tools: Photoshop
Time: 1 hour

sketchy 108

Bloody hell! Of all the things I had to go and attempt, I chose possibly one of the hardest things ... Oh well, the results are far from perfect, but it was certainly an interesting challenge - although I think from here I might stick to still life for a while.

The post below (107) gives a little history as to how I ended up doing this image.

Tools: Photoshop
Time: Probably 8 hours all up

Would I try and create a realistic Willow again in a hurry? Oh no.

sketchy 107

It's kinda funny how perceptions can be changed and influenced. I always considered Photoshop to be the absolute last tool suited to drawing on the computer - it just seemed so clunky and too generalised. It also lacks paint based modes for mixing colours.

So it is with much surprise that the drawing above was created with Photoshop...

I was digging around Youtube for some time-lapse paintings created with ArtRage when I stumbled across this incredibly talented guy on the tube who works exclusively with PS. I checked out a bunch of his clips and decided it was time to give PS a go. Ironically, using PS I spend 90 percent of the time worrying about the 'look' of the image, instead of the 'way' to achieve the look (as was happening with the psuedo-real tool set of ArtRage).

Anyway, to get started with PS I thought it was important to focus on something relatively small and simple - a photo for reference while only focusing on the eye. Good stuff.

Tools: Photoshop
Time: 2 hours

--

It turns out, I wasn't content with drawing just the eye ...

sketchy 106

Holy crap, has it really been 3 years since I last did a sketchy post!? Hmmm ...


Sadly, it really has been 3 years since I last sketched something, so things are pretty rusty. But the other day I had this picture in my mind and had to have a crack at creating it. The result is vaguely what I was wanting, but not quite as realistic as I was picturing. Practice, practice, practice I guess.

So yeah, ArtRage to start with. Pencils and Art Pen. Then photoshop for grading, cropping and the addition of the atmos. Probably took 5 hours in the end, but there was a lot of arsing around with ArtRage updates etc. So perhaps 3 hours I guess.

Hopefully, it wont be 3 years between this post and the next one!

Tools: ArtRage 3; Pencil, Art Pen.

Time: 3-4 hours.

sketchy 105

After failing to get an illustration started all week, i thought it best to revert back to copying one of the photographs i have taken recently.

For the latest installment, i decided to go for photo-realism. To that end, i spent around 3-4 hours over two sessions painting up a rather inflated photo of Jo. Having finished spending a long time getting the curves and gradients just right, i hacked away at most of the painting with the knife - it didnt seem to make much sense creating something if it was going to look just like the original photo!

The plan long-term is that paintings like this can be created without the need for the original detail - i really like the idea of an image which is detailed in places and really loose in others, yet one which still maintains the overall feel should it have been detailed all over. Though getting those loose areas working with such rough patches of colour is very hard im finding.

Anyway - im actually really happy with the result, getting details like the face working took a lot of pushing of paint, it is really surprising just how much of a difference a couple of incorrect pixels can make to the overall impression.

Things started with the pencil and moved on to the oils, with the background a separate layer to the subject. However the pencil layer was removed once it had assisted with overall composition.

Tools: ArtRage2; Oils, Knife (pencils for initial blocking)
Time: Two sessions, totalling around 3-4hours.

sketchy 104

I thought it was time to try and do a character of my own creation - enter Chuck, a buff dude with a heart of gold.
A primary goal with this illustration was to have a sense of lighting and also a sense of warmth with the character, which i guess is always achieved through the eyes. Again, experimenting more with different brush stroke angles and varying levels of detail in the brush work to help with focus.

As with the last post, this one started life as a pencil sketch which was then painted, leaving parts of the pencil behind to add a nice, scratchy and loose detail. Prior to hitting the oil brush i thought it would be good to see how a real painter approaches the colour work - it was pretty much what i assumed and reassured me that doing a painting of any kind (digital or real), is going to take a little while.

Ive saved some work in progress images too. This time round i opted to do a little post grade with Photoshop, just a darkening of the corners and subtle balance of the levels.

Tools: ArtRage2; Oil, Pencil, Knife. Photoshop; Curves, vignette.
Time: Around 3 hours.

sketchy 103

I was scribbling away for a little while doing various perspective style drawings and before i knew it, i had drawn a street lamp with a piece of paper pinned to it - errr, very exciting.

Not really the best of illustrations, though im trying to do different things and get a feel for what does what. Mixing pencil and oil was kinda cool as it meant the oil could be kept super loose. Im committed to posting every thing i spend more than 10 minutes on, regardless of how crap it might be!

I know one thing's for sure, anyone who can paint successfully with real oils is a bastard!

Tools: ArtRage2 - Oils, Knife, Pencils
Time: About 45-60 minutes.

sketchy 102

Well it is fair to say when i started this image i was a little naive in thinking it would be reasonably straight forward! I was very wrong!

I really like this photo as there is a great sense of motion which i thought would carry across when rendered using digital oils.

One thing i tried to do this time round was make better use of blocking of colour to suggest blur - instead of trying to blur a detailed region using the knife tool.

While not as detailed as originally planned, getting those damn swirls working still took time!

The one thing which i am not really happy with is a sense of depth within the fur. The shadowed detail on a furred animal is not really conveyed well at all - next time :)

Time: 2.5 hours
Tools: ArtRage2 - Oils and knife

sketchy 101

Let the sketchy sketching begin.

Scott put me onto this really great little painting app named ArtRage2 which only costs $25AUD! So I thought it was time to test out the new drawing tablet and sketch something.

This is a copy (not a trace) of a photograph taken a few years ago. I opted to try the oil tools for the first effort which certainly proved tricky as the photograph contained a lot of blurry background detail which I found very challenging to replicate using oil tools. For the first few efforts, I plan on copying photographs which I have taken.

The goal with this image was to match the composition, lighting and colours. This image was chosen as the detail level was quite low and the colour contrast was very high.

My biggest issue is with the window. I really struggled to get this looking right owing to the level of 'blur' present in the original photograph, though am happy with the overall result.