Updates to Bazaar Scene

Zbrush to 3ds Max/MR

Zbrush Viewport

New Paintings - Color Experimenting

I've been practicing more color. Today I tried four times to add color to this painting and each attempt it came out looking really awful. I can't get things to look unified and I even found myself just painting over everything I just painted with a new color when I decided I no longer liked the old color. However, I accidentally stumbled upon these colors seen below and it started to look pretty nice so I kept it. I feel like I'm making very little progress with color. But that's better than none.

 

Here are a few speed paints of batman - 45 minutes each. There were three in all but I didn't think one was worth posting. I'm happy with the one on the left. That was the last one I painted. I'm trying to just mess around and throw color down just to see what happens and if I can get used to it. It is intimidating because I've always struggled seeing color and judging colors. I'd like to use color in my work but I've grown up dismissing color because I can never seem to point out colors unless they're highly saturated and obvious.

Here, I sampled some color from a photograph and made a color palette that you can see in the bottom right. Then I just painted... something. I guess that crashed space ship on the right.

Some Works in Progress Continued

Some Works In Progress

Started with Color - Ended with Sadness

After much hesitation, I readdressed this painting. I did plenty of anatomy studies in my sketchbook and this is where I got. Next, I'll apply color in several different ways in hopes of finding an understanding of how to use color. It is something I constantly struggle with.

This painting frustrated me. I tried slapping colors down from the get go like I had done with the sci fi character but something wasn't meshing very well and it did not come together. I gave up after 2 hours of endlessly painting with no progress. Meh!

Just Some Practice

Painted this in one hour. I googled some reference to help me with the expression. I've been getting back to basics some since I tried drawing an eye the other day and it looked awful. I struggle with the nuances of the face. I'm happy enough with the result here but mouth is not entirely proportionate to the reference. I'm planning on doing a painting tutorial in the near future and I want to paint some type of brawl between a tough female character and some thugs or something.

Realistic Character Concept Art v2.0

This idea has under gone several renditions. Here are a few of the looks that I liked while coming up with this idea. This is a second attempt at the sci fi character from earlier in this blog (scroll down). This time around I hit my original idea head on. I'm happy with it and most of the time I invested in this was not painting or fixing mistakes, but deciding which ideas I wanted to make sure I added. For example, the led lights, the super shiny clean finish metallic material, plenty of light effects, and a very clean hi-tech appearance.

Right now, I don't know what the do with the right arm. Should he be holding a gun or some kind of weapon? Maybe hes reaching out to the viewer with one arm and holding the data cube (just made that up) in the other hand? So far, I've spent about 8 hours time painting this.

 

Here is a material test shot I made with the mental ray car paint shader. I wanted to create a shader that would match the metallic qualities of the suit in the painting.

Let me know your thoughts, if you have any. Thanks.

Sneak Peak - Started with Color

Started with color this time, no overlay layers or black and white. It's been working out amazingly so far and I'm liking the way its turning out.

New Years Update - Time Lapse Painting

I'm quite happy with this, it was a total time of 8 hours as I found out when I compiled all the video files. After I started this little speed painting, I couldn't stop thinking about what it had the potential to be, so I've been working a little bit on it for a few weeks and recorded as I worked each time. The subject was just something I came with while painting. You'll notice that the bats in the background and the mask are revised several times and just appear, I didn't record those parts because I was being so indecisive about the look and kept starting over. Once I settled on something I liked, I started recording again. I'm not sure if it is apparent from the footage but my strength cuts off when I start adding color. I have so much trouble separating colors from each other that I just see general warms and cools. I can't judge for myself if I have 3 different tints or shades of blue... they all just look blue to me. Thats what red-green color blindness does I guess. It makes things pretty tough as an artist but as a handicap, I have a few techniques I can make use of. I actually wound up going to a website and selecting an analogous color scheme to assist me. This is what I sampled while adding the color. It definitely helped me!

25 Minute Speed Paint

Well, I wanted to practice freely without feeling too tied to what I've already done so I went and did this random painting. It'll look great hanging over my toilet.

Background Practice

Today I painted a background for this character paint I did a few days ago. I just get so anxious about
creating a complete piece and I usually struggle with backgrounds. Recorded myself painting and put it on my youtube channel. I liked the result, I feel a little better now!

1 Hour Speed Paint

Ow, my hand hurts. Lets hope I never get carpal tunnel. Trying to make up for the last painting failure. Limited myself to creating something in 1 hour and then walking away. This is what I came up with. I like it.

2 Hour Painting - Previsualization for 3d Portrait

UPDATE: I am now abandoning this stupid thing. Not happy with it. Not sure why. I painted the heck out of it and its just frustrated the junk out of me. Not sure what I was trying to accomplish or what I was going for anymore. Also, I apparently cant paint reflective surfaces at all.

UPDATE: One week later this is the newest version. I still wanted to make him appear more sci-fi-ish. He seems too plain still. I need to practice making for confident and bold changes to my work. Take risks.

Thats what I get for painting on my TV. Contrast and color problems! I hooked my pc up to my computer screens again and set up my workspace in my new apartment now. I revisited this portrait and made a lot of improvements. This was just meant to be something for fun to possibly make a life-like 3d rendering of in Maya later. I still want to just add a few more sci-fi-ish elements to it but I can't come up with anything other than glowing leds on his suit (which is over done).  Heres the updated image.

Ever since I built this new pc a few weeks ago, I've been wanting to push its abilities and make a photo realistic 3d portrait. I want to do something sci-fi-ish. Some kind of really high tech and really polished futuristic character with a neato future suit of some kind. This was what came out of my head when I sat down to draw it out. This turned out looking dirtier and more gloomy than I had intended. I think I'll do another rendition of it and pinpoint the look I was going for. It was supposed to appear clean with smooth surfaces and highly saturated lighting. Although, I like this painting for what it is.

Concept Art - Line Drawing Portfolio Piece

Update: Four more hours of work. It took me a while to find a rendering style that I liked to show the computer in action. I render out a fully lit hologram but it didnt match the style of the rest of the drawing so I redrew it and liked what I came up with.

Nearly finished.

The first rendition of the hologram.

I've been working on this simple concept drawing for weeks. The major challenge here was learning perspective. I know the basic rules but applying them to create an odd set of shapes like in this drawing was very difficult. Then I had to figure out how to draw circles and ellipses in Photoshop, which I never really was able to do. They NEVER come out looking natural.  I usually wind up with what looks like a ten year old crayon drawing. Its upsetting but I decided to just have Photoshop generate my circles for me instead and then I copy and pasted those parts. I definitely learned many lessons while working on this.  Its still a WIP. I need to do a few detailed window sketches of the tiny parts and then add basic value and color.

2 1/2 Hour Paint - Harrison Ford

 UPDATE: 2 More Hours of Adjustments

Definately not happy about this one. It took way too long and I didn't capture his appearance at all. :(  Why is this so hard to do?

If I keep doing these I should get better, isn't that how it works?

40 Minute Paint - Portrait Practice

This speed painting was done with the intent of working quickly without trying too hard to get everything perfect. Some minor proportion issues are noticeable when viewed next to the reference photo. For the most part, I'm pleased with the out come.

Minor Win with Perspective

Night two. One hour more of work.

Used a basic two point perspective unevenly spaced apart and got this in one hours time. I'm satisfied.