02-15-2023, 02:43 AM
@CBinnsIllustration Thanks so much man, and I'm not trying to work too fast here, but truth be told when I'm focused, I do work faster than usual, lol; I should probably slow it down some in all honesty. I have been in a unique situation in life where I left my home state to move to another with my sister and have been starting life over from scratch, so I have had some unusual time on my hands while figuring everything out and going through various waiting periods getting things in order, and what better way to spend my time then the gym, listening to audio books, and practicing my art craft? So, I make best of the time indeed.
I'm glad you recognize the conceptually strong aspect of my recent works, as that is something I always struggled with; being more focused on just making a great looking illustration and skimping on, or not fully elaborating on the concept. I'm very glad also that you liked the palette in the Gnome piece, I had to put a lot of thought into that one believe it, or not, it had me stumped for a good while. I'm glad you like the Salamander piece; the Gnome piece served as a great warm up into things, and I felt on fire once I got into the Salamander piece and I feel it shows pretty well.
I had a lot of fun with the Salamander piece as it posed its challenges with the lighting situation and the more analogous color scheme. I'm finding myself experimenting with color in my work to convey things like mood etc. The cameral tilt you mention I know as something from traditional painting called a Dutch Tilt, and I find it really adds a lot of impact when constructing unique and original compositions, add in perspective and you have a recipe for something really cool. Right now I'm free hand painting everything in regard to my edge work, so all the hard edges are being made strictly with brush and not taking advantage of masking techniques, which I may or may not employ in my final works or new works going forward. I'm torn between the hand done painterly look and using masking techniques at least on the perimeters of the main subjects to create the hardest edges to push things more forward, I know taking advantage of things like hard edges to push things forward in the images and blurring the background just a tad bit can really push the imagery into new depths. Time will tell my decisions in progression no doubt.
@Leo Ki lol, yes, quite the carnivorous smile indeed on the water spirit and she may not be at all about good deeds; just entertaining her summoner, lol, it will be interesting to see how this image evolves more for sure. Yes, I like how this challenge allows us to put emphasis on a two-character challenge, it's a brilliant two and one deal by @JosephCow . I personally find the priest characters to be a bit boring next to the more humanoid elemental characters.
I'm also the guy who usually finds the villains in the comic books to be a lot more interesting than the heroes, lol; the villains always have the better origin stories in my strong opinion, and they look more interesting in most cases. Yes, thank you for noticing the contrast adjustments in the Salamander piece, I really wanted that piece to have a lot of visual impact. In most of my images, I usually start off very dull and bland and then bump everything up gradually. Starting off darker and duller leaves lot of room for improvement. When I render my forms I tend to usually just put down my shadows and midtones and work back and forth between those two to build the form before adding highlights, once the highlights are added the piece really comes to life quite suddenly. I also notoriously work from black and gray into color in both my traditional work, and digital, I find it easier to deal with the values when in black and gray opposed to going right in with color. If the values are correct it doesn't matter what color you throw over them.
Your most recent compositions are interesting for sure. Try to not over think the idea because you will create unnecessary artist blocks. Instead, consider creating small thumbnails of your ideas which gives you a great way to explore your compositions and ideas freely and worry free. When thumbnailing be as messy and loose as you'd like to be able to get your idea out and explore the images layout. The great thing about thumbnailing is that it is fast, and you can produce as many as you want to get where you want to be with your image. I personally don't thumbnail much if at all a lot of times and will just dive into whatever I have in my mind putting all my effort and energy into the thing, but it's still a great idea to thumbnail those mental ideas first to get the information out, and down. Having a bunch of ideas is like a kitchen sink faucet recklessly running, but then as soon as you put a cup under the water flow you capture your ideas, and this is the idea of thumbnailing, thumbnailing is the cup. You can also use thumbnails to explore lighting scenarios and color. @CBinnsIllustration shows a great example in his first post on this forum of thumbnailing and a great artist to check out if you haven't already is Jesper Ejsing on the wonderful Muddy Colors site...Enjoy!:
https://www.muddycolors.com/author/jesperejsing/
I'm glad you recognize the conceptually strong aspect of my recent works, as that is something I always struggled with; being more focused on just making a great looking illustration and skimping on, or not fully elaborating on the concept. I'm very glad also that you liked the palette in the Gnome piece, I had to put a lot of thought into that one believe it, or not, it had me stumped for a good while. I'm glad you like the Salamander piece; the Gnome piece served as a great warm up into things, and I felt on fire once I got into the Salamander piece and I feel it shows pretty well.
I had a lot of fun with the Salamander piece as it posed its challenges with the lighting situation and the more analogous color scheme. I'm finding myself experimenting with color in my work to convey things like mood etc. The cameral tilt you mention I know as something from traditional painting called a Dutch Tilt, and I find it really adds a lot of impact when constructing unique and original compositions, add in perspective and you have a recipe for something really cool. Right now I'm free hand painting everything in regard to my edge work, so all the hard edges are being made strictly with brush and not taking advantage of masking techniques, which I may or may not employ in my final works or new works going forward. I'm torn between the hand done painterly look and using masking techniques at least on the perimeters of the main subjects to create the hardest edges to push things more forward, I know taking advantage of things like hard edges to push things forward in the images and blurring the background just a tad bit can really push the imagery into new depths. Time will tell my decisions in progression no doubt.
@Leo Ki lol, yes, quite the carnivorous smile indeed on the water spirit and she may not be at all about good deeds; just entertaining her summoner, lol, it will be interesting to see how this image evolves more for sure. Yes, I like how this challenge allows us to put emphasis on a two-character challenge, it's a brilliant two and one deal by @JosephCow . I personally find the priest characters to be a bit boring next to the more humanoid elemental characters.
I'm also the guy who usually finds the villains in the comic books to be a lot more interesting than the heroes, lol; the villains always have the better origin stories in my strong opinion, and they look more interesting in most cases. Yes, thank you for noticing the contrast adjustments in the Salamander piece, I really wanted that piece to have a lot of visual impact. In most of my images, I usually start off very dull and bland and then bump everything up gradually. Starting off darker and duller leaves lot of room for improvement. When I render my forms I tend to usually just put down my shadows and midtones and work back and forth between those two to build the form before adding highlights, once the highlights are added the piece really comes to life quite suddenly. I also notoriously work from black and gray into color in both my traditional work, and digital, I find it easier to deal with the values when in black and gray opposed to going right in with color. If the values are correct it doesn't matter what color you throw over them.
Your most recent compositions are interesting for sure. Try to not over think the idea because you will create unnecessary artist blocks. Instead, consider creating small thumbnails of your ideas which gives you a great way to explore your compositions and ideas freely and worry free. When thumbnailing be as messy and loose as you'd like to be able to get your idea out and explore the images layout. The great thing about thumbnailing is that it is fast, and you can produce as many as you want to get where you want to be with your image. I personally don't thumbnail much if at all a lot of times and will just dive into whatever I have in my mind putting all my effort and energy into the thing, but it's still a great idea to thumbnail those mental ideas first to get the information out, and down. Having a bunch of ideas is like a kitchen sink faucet recklessly running, but then as soon as you put a cup under the water flow you capture your ideas, and this is the idea of thumbnailing, thumbnailing is the cup. You can also use thumbnails to explore lighting scenarios and color. @CBinnsIllustration shows a great example in his first post on this forum of thumbnailing and a great artist to check out if you haven't already is Jesper Ejsing on the wonderful Muddy Colors site...Enjoy!:
https://www.muddycolors.com/author/jesperejsing/
LEGEND'S SKETCHBOOK_001
To all artists struggling to create and are intimidated by A.I. (anti-imagination)
"Everything has been done, but not by you"
To all artists struggling to create and are intimidated by A.I. (anti-imagination)
"Everything has been done, but not by you"