Jan 18 2011

Its All Good in the Wood

I think I was the palest person in California.  I’m probably the palest person in New Jersey as well.  Anyway, happy belated new year to everyone.  I’m back in the studio and working hard, and hope to introduce a new website and a new comic project in the next month or two.  I’d like to get ahead of schedule with that before we go live.

In addition I’ll be updating the blog again regularly with sketches and photos. Here is one now. Enjoy.

Gazelle


Dec 17 2010

Red Christmas

Red Christmas

To adults, Santa is a capitalist icon, co-opted by the likes of department stores and soft drink companies to push products.  But from a child’s perspective, he’s a commie.

Think about it.  He travels the world distributing gifts equally to rich and poor alike.  He wears a big red coat.  He has a massive and (presumably) unpaid workforce which he keeps on a tight leash. And he can fly.  What, communists can’t fly?  Oh yeah, that’s robots.  He’s also a robot.

Here’s the poster of Chairman Mao that its based on.

Of interest here:  In the East things are read right to left.  In the West things are read left to right.  The people march the same way, forward, in both paintings.


Dec 14 2010

Process: DDC

Here’s a look at the process I used to complete my piece for the ArtOrder Dungeon Delve Challenge.  You can view a larger version of the finished piece by itself in yesterday’s post.

Process: DDC

Stage Zero (not shown):  You will have to use your imagination for this one.  A thumbnail sketch is a small drawing (mine are actually about 2 or 3 thumbnails high) that allows me to work out composition and lighting.  I settled on one with three interesting shapes (which later became the adventurer, the stone head, and the pillar/skull structure on the left of the drawing).  There is no detail and the sketch takes no longer than 10 minutes.

Stage 1:  The sketch.  This is important for two reasons.  A good sketch helps you concentrate on painting and not drawing later in the game by taking the guesswork out of the process.  If I know how things fit into place, and that my proportions are generally correct, I can concentrate on things like value and color.

Second, in commercial work, the sketch allows a client to see what they are getting.  This doesn’t mean it will be an exact indication of the final, but adding in some requested detail such as in a character’s costuming helps avoid unpleasant surprises, unnecessary revisions, and keeps everybody happy.

Stage 2:  Tonal Study.  Tone is the degree to which values in a painting change from dark to light.  If this piece were black and white, I would refine this and it would become a final.  Because this piece is to be in color, I could stay loose at this point.

Stage 3:  Base Color:  In acrylic I would usually take care of this during the tonal study phase.  In photoshop, I find it easier to do a grayscale drawing in black and white, then add a new layer (set to multiply, color, of soft light usually).  Then I fill this layer with a base color, in this case brown.  I chose brown because the painting would eventually have a earth-tone type palette with some gray-blue accents.

Stage 4: Begin painting.  Here I begin actually painting.  I block in colors and build up forms using my value study as a guide.

Stage 5: Continue painting.  Still painting, pulling out forms from the background, adding small details to the character, Still staying relatively loose and slopping around colors.  By this stage the palette is complexly resolved and I can pick colors from the painting with the eyedropper tool in photoshop.

Stage 6: Adjustments and Final.  I make final adjustments to shadow and form, making some elements more crispy and pushing some into the background with lost edges.  I adjust the composition a bit, as I am unhappy with his legs pointing to the corner.  This should have been resolved earlier, but thanks to the magic of Photoshop it is not a huge deal and I make the adjustment on the fly.  I make some minor adjustments to his armor, resolve the stone head, then stick a fork in it, because it is done.

Hopefully this was helpful or at least interesting.  I plan on doing more features like this in the future.  I am working on some acrylic paintings right now so it might be interesting to compare the techniques (even thought the subject matter is completely different, so I wonder if it would make sense…)

Anyway, remember to check out my blog daily for new sketches, paintings, and features.  And while you are at it, check out the other Dungeon Delve paintings in the ArtOrder Ning Forums.


Dec 13 2010

Dungeon Delve Challenge

The server issues have been fixed, so now its back to business and a new week of posts. Here is a freshly finished piece, done for Jon Schindehette’s ArtOrder Dungeon Delve Challenge.  Jon runs a great blog where he explains the ins and outs of the illustration business, interviews illustrators and other art directors, and runs frequent art challenges.

Check out the painting below, and check back here tomorrow where I will explain my painting process step-by-step, accompanied by work in progress shots that I saved along the way.

Dungeon Delve


Dec 10 2010

Server Issues

A funny thing happened on the way to upload some pictures. Well it isn’t so funny.   Apparently there is some sort of unrecoverable error on my server and I can’t upload any new work right now.  Which is an issue because this is an art blog.  I’m working pretty much non-stop now through Sunday, so if the issue isn’t resolved by then I’ll have to make some calls.

I am not amused, interwebz.

On the bright side, all my images are backed up and if I lose my site I’ll be forced to hurry up on my new scratch-built site I’m working on offline right now.  I’ll leave it at that, on a positive note.  As Michio Kaku once said, “Optimists make history.”


Dec 8 2010

Robot Santa Sketch

RoboSanta

Here’s a sneak peak at my Christmas card/ImagineFX contest piece/possibly ArtOrder contest piece if Jon Schindehette allows the double entry (I seem to remember that being against the rules of the blog, but I’ll ask).  Always nice to be able to use one piece for multiple purposes.

The theme for the ImagineFX contest was robot santa. I took it a bit further with a sort of 1920s art deco rocketeer-esque santa figure.  The color scheme will be, what else, red and white.  I’m playing with a cut-out color separation look but I might switch back to my normal painting style.  I’ll have the final up tomorrow, or at the beginning of next week.  There’s nothing like trying to figure out how to put a beard on a robot.


Dec 7 2010

Moo


That is all…


Dec 6 2010

Skellenaut Sketch

Skellenaut

A quick drawing I came up with while warming up on the tablet earlier.  I suppose its sort of like the astronaut finds the puzzle box from Hellraiser in space (no, this exact same thing did not happen in Hellraiser IV… by the way, why did 80s horror icons always end up in space during the 90s?).

Something a bit different to start off a new week of daily sketches.  Hope everyone had a good weekend and remember to check back every day this week for a new sketch, painting, or nugget of information.


Dec 3 2010

Roots…

…look like chickens’ feet.

Last post of the week. Like I said last Friday I won’t be posting on weekends because that is probably the busiest time of the week for me.  I’ll be back on Monday with some new sketches, maybe some finished stuff.  I’ll be redesigning the site soon. A lot of changes and new things to come, stay tuned.

-CR


Dec 2 2010

Faunus

“Hello old friend, what news from beyond the woods?”

‘caw!’

“How fascinating…”

I was hoping to have another alien piece I was working on done today, in time for NASAs Astrobiology announcement but instead here is something completely different.  Its based on any number of the ram or stag-horned wood gods prevalent throughout various mythologies (Celtic, Norse, German, French, North American…).

The name Faunus refers to the Roman god, or one of the many fauni that were thought to exist as place spirits.  They were thought to commune with and protect the fauna and flora in their domain.  That said, they could also present a mortal danger to any human stupid or loud enough to disrupt and disturb them or their charges.