Reference and Anatomy

I found a great source for reference and learning anatomy, the Loomis books. They can be downloaded from here: Loomis books

Fineart.sk is a great free resource for anatomy. They also have online versions of the loomis books.

Many use Poser for figuring out poses for their characters and also for reference. This is a great program, but there's a couple of free alternatives out there. One is the DAZ|Studio, which is a light version of Poser. It is quite good, but the downside is that it only includes a lowres female character, other characters have to be bought. Another solution is MakeHuman, there you can morph your character to male, female or fantasy, and ofcourse pose it. It is in alpha state yet, so much is not implemented, but for the use of refrence in a digital painting it works well. The model exports as obj, so it can be taken into any 3D program and rendered, or you can render it right from the program itself. To do that you have to install the free rendering engine Aqsis, and it renders with shaders and a sub surface scattering skin shader, not bad!

3d.sk is a good source for photo reference, but one can also here use free photo sources instead, like sxc.hu, or a cheap stock photo source like istockphoto ($1 per photo).

Photo searches like google images can be also be used for finding refrences, but be aware that there is a copyright issue if you paint too similar.

Ninth Painting

Yep he got muscles. Looked at reference...at least for awhile.

Eight Painting

Another head.



Uprezed to 2K this time. Did not use any reference, something I probably should start doing, since nothing is anatomicly correct, but hey it's a cartoony character. Blindfolded him, since I don't know how to paint eyes. So I guess I need to find a good eyes tutorial...and one for hair.

Seventh Painting

Continued playing with the scary face painting.



The background is a blurred terragen render. My next task is to practise rendering different surfaces, like cloth, metal, plastic etc. I like creating characters, so I guess I will continue that for a while. Characters need backgrounds, so there comes the matte painting practice, though I guess they call it concept painting. I really like the concept paintings by Ryan church, like the style, though he uses Painter, but I think it's possible to paint a similar style in photoshop. I hope...but it might be better to develop my own style, and not copy the masters.

Sixth Painting

Yup I'm back. A scary face this time.



Tried painting on a black background, and I like it. Sharpened it with smart sharpen...hmmm it kind of looks like a photo manip, but it's not. Painted with a white round brush using different opacities and softness. I use opacity instead of pressure sensitivity, since I still paint with a mouse.

ConceptArt.org

been checking out all those amazing sb's at conceptart.org. For those that don't know what a sb is, well then you need to go over there and check it out. It stands for sketchbook and is very similar to what I am doing here, showing the progress over time, but just soo much better. There are so many amazing artists there, why should I even bother trying this? Maybe that's the risk you run into when you're an art fan, you become the humble amazer, and just stop your own progress. check out this 22 year old for example: Andrew Lay SB

Painting in 3D

Tested the blender sculpt tool today, here is the result:



It works very much like zbrush, but the good thing...it's free!! It's an addon tool for the free 3D program Blender. I feel that sculpting like this in 3D is very much like painting, you use a brush, and it's very fast and fun. It took 3 hours to make the model above and about one hour to do the photoshop stuff.

Alp Altiner uses zbrush in his matte paintings, since I'm just a hobbyist I will be using the free blender sculpt tool.

Blender
Blender Sculpt Tool

Focus

I played around in photoshop again yesterday, and realized I have to narrow my focus to increase my skills in a certain area. I said earlier that I will eventually focus on matte painting, well it's time now. In matte painting I can combine photography, 3D and painting, a perfect blend of all of my hobbies. Maybe when I get a wacom tablet I will also do other kinds of art, like matte painter Christian Lorenz Scheurer does, in for example this piece, where he combines his environment skills with a character in the foreground.

So things to learn, skills to strengthen and dreams to be dreamt. Not that I'm dreaming of sitting in an office doing my art, nomather if it's for a blockbuster movie, nope that will kill the fun. Right now I'm sitting with my laptop looking at the mediterranean sea playing around in photoshop, sounds better than a dark office with a tight deadline?!...doesn't it?

The dreams are of distant excotic places I will create mattes of, like the great mountain city in the nexus range on 7 the planet in the ilios system called eilo. Hehe yep those kind of dreams :-)

Painting with light

In 1949 John Alton wrote a very important cinematography book called "Painting with light", describing how he lights his movies. "Few cinematographers have had as decisive an impact on the cinematic medium as John Alton."

Bladerunner is a good example of a movie that is painted with light. Matrix is another good example. I like this style, dark and atmospheric.

Some of the paintings I like the most are subdued and painted with light. A good example is Steven Stahlberg's One Last Time.

Other examples: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Fifth Painting

Yep a space art piece (click on it to view larger version).



Starfield and planet made following the tutorials by Greg Martin (links in previous post). hmmmm many of the stars seem square...so not the best starfield, but hey it's just practice. The couple is doodled in very quickly, so if they look human...cool. The grass is made with the standard photoshop grass brush.