They say that sunrise videos are the holy grail of time-lapse and I’m beginning to see why. My first attempt turned out ok. I’m still getting used to the gear, but I thought it would be a sharper image. When I compare that video to my second attempt, it is so much closer to professional though.
As I’ve been working on the shelf, bike rack and lumber box this week, I’ve been practicing with the Wacom some more. This thing is going to take a long time to get used to. I can see where it would already be valuable for coloring sketches or doing really loose stuff like The Last Stronghold. For precise drawing, it takes a lot of effort. I tried doing The Thing a couple of weeks ago and eventually just did it by hand. This week I was determined that I would get something decent done 100% on the tablet. I present to you my version of Wonder Woman. I’ll be following this tutorial for digital coloring in one of the coming weeks. I’m looking forward to that part. I think it will be much more fun and easy than the line art.
Of course, Wonder Woman is owned and protected by DC Comics. I am not claiming the character is my creation.
Not much to say for this week’s Thing of the Week. It is a painting of a wizard with a glowing orb in hand. Crystal ball? Magic missle just waiting to leap into a foe’s eye? I can tell you painting it and the highlights it created was by far my favorite part of the painting.
I have been working like mad to do a decent person painting for the last two weeks and it just hasn’t worked out. I’m struggling not only to learn the drawing tablet and brush settings in Photoshop but with my basic sketching ability. I have many attempts now. All have been spatula city bad. Just ask Steve what that means. I have faith that I’m doing the right kind of practicing and that I will get better at this.
Attached is the best of the worst. It is acceptable on many levels but still falls flat on others. Clothing is hard unless you go very realistic. That is part of the reason for this attempt. I hope everyone has a wizard of a weekend. It is supposed to be cold here.
What is a jellyroll lurker? Perhaps we’ll explore that more in future work. For now the quote will have to do.
This was my second attempt at a digital painting. It was a lot of fun and much faster – it only took me one day. That’s half the time of the last one. I think if I can keep this up a painting like this should be doable in two hours. It helps that I have some of the Photoshop presets set up now and that the design is my own. I’m extremely happy with the way the forest turned out. I’ve got to work on drawing bushes. My solution for this painting looks like smoke and is much too realistic. I wanted to come up with something like the ferns you find on the forest floor through out the SE US.
Incidentally, my friend John let me know that he used to do stuff with a digitizing tablet. Maybe he’ll share some of his work. Perhaps a link in the comments section of this post (hint, hint)? John is better at sketching than I am so I imagine his work is beautiful.
For last week’s Thing of the Week (published in this post) I had to take a step back and find some sort of tutorial to follow. The video I found was not as detailed as a step-by-step and I struggled to find a way to explain it until my wife said “It’s like Bob Ross but without all the specifics.” That is exactly what it is. So what you see below is not my concept, not really my color palette and mostly not my design, but I did do the entire thing from scratch and am happy with the way it turned out. I would love to give credit to the guy who originally created this but the tutorial is something I grabbed sometime ago and I see that his website no longer exists. If the original artist ever reads this, thank you very much.
The idea was to take a phrase and generate a quick concept sketch in thirty minutes. The phrase was “The Last Stronghold” and pro doing it was able to finish in about 40 minutes. It took me about two days. Both his version and mine have problems that you’d want to correct for a rendering but I think they succeed in conveying a mood. I tend to like more gestural painterly images than tighter more realistic ones anyway. If you want realism, why not just mash up some photos in Photoshop?
The final concept was a giant walled city near the base of a mountain. The invading army approaches with their siege engines. The city has already been softened as is evident from the smoke issuing from within. High on a rocky ledge an armored individual watches. The sun is setting.
Jason Patz 