St. Never

I thought I'd never finish this... :)

Photoshop and Painter for this one. I used a few textures for the background (which was done mostly in Painter): crumbled tinfoil, painted surfaces, and a texture by Aegean-Prince and one by DianePhotos (many thanks for sharing!).

Fall from Grace

sketchbook page + fluffheaps

I liked these two pages from my sketchbook. From Monday evening, some during transit. I was unspeakably tired.

Also, a bad case of unthinkies:

Passage

 

Touched up an older quick environment posted in March: I think the water looks decent now, if a little frosted (which would be fitting for a Stygian-like river like this).

Soulrip

From a mindless tiny pencil doodle drawn in February 2010, coloured in Painter and Photoshop. An earlier colour version can be seen in the March 2010 'Souls' post.

Original sketch:

Close-ups, at 25%:

Fall-From-Grace, in progress

She crept up on me out of the blue yesterday afternoon. Succubi are like that, I understand. :p

For the uninitiated, this is Fall-From-Grace from Planescape: Torment (if you haven't played it, do: that game takes most fantasy clichés and trounces them, hard). She's a strange succubus, in that she's lawful neutral, runs a Brothel for Sating Intellectual Lusts, and is a priest who doesn't believe in any god.

Some 45-60 min for this one as yet. She's slightly referenced after a photo of Ingrid Bergman.

 

Finished version here: 

Look up

From mid September, a very quick pencil/watercolour sketch. Fixed a portion of the sky in PS, though!

St. Never, in progress

Almost done... I think. Not too sure about the heavily textured background, though. It's supposed to be a highly stylized piece, but it looks kinda messy. The horse's legs need fixing, too; the hind ones are much thinner than the forelegs. I think in the next take I'll clean up the figure/horse VERY neat, with regular sharp outlines, and see how that will look against the busy background.

Going home, in progress

I'm not at all sure where this came from.

Spaceborn

A meant-to-be-quick sketch gone overboard! I aimed for a stronger style with this one, starker lines, less fuzziness. It's quite liberating.

And yes, that is my version of Commander Shepard of Mass Effect. It's one of my favourite games. :}

Mass Effect universe & characters © Bioware

References: from various in-game screenshots.

Close-up, 50%:

deviantART muro

I gave deviantART muro another try -- and hey, for once it didn't crash! :)

Turian, in progress

I was itching for a dynamic piece, and to try out a new technique I'm trying to get comfortable with. It involves switching between low and high opacity brushes, and use of the lasso tool to achieve stark outlines. I suppose I'm a little jealous of the strong bold style common among guys in concept art circles. :p

So far, there's this:



A few random colour blobs have turned into a turian (Mass Effect universe). I think I'm fangirling. -_-

Lack of time makes for a peculiar kind of 'speed' painting: only a few minutes spent on it a time, but over a span of several days. I think I've lost the pacing needed already. :(

Closeup:



Will post a steps sequence once it's finished, along with any tips I've learned. :)

Autumn Findings

I never got round to doing a proper spring cleaning, so I'm doing it now; I came back to Athens on Tuesday evening, feeling rejuvenated and seriously aggro against the clutter in my tiny apartment. Out, old stuffy stuff!

While sorting, I came across a few things that made me think "wait -- did I make this?!"

Tengwar Calligraphy!






A couple years ago I sat down and learned to write in Tolkien's tengwar script; I always thought it was very beautiful. I was faster at writing it rather than reading it (which was also the case with some custom scripts of my own I made up in my late teens), but right now it looks downright impenetrable.

Also, ancient history :p





A weird oil sketch I must have done around ten years ago; I think I was just out of school. Couldn't remember it for the life of me!

Plus this:



A sketch and some artsy-itchy thoughts from around 2005, the latter heavily influenced by AKTO post-modernism. Ack!

I turned 28 yesterday. Time flies!

Under the Sun

A wallpaper textured version of an unfinished sketch. (Right click for larger view)

Could be

I drew this with a friend's character in mind, but it doesn't actually look like her.

Ballpoint pen sketches

From left to right: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigerian author: a VERY interesting TED talk she gave can be found here, I highly recommend it!), Palestinian graduate from An-Najah National University in West Bank, a young Edward Said, and artist Natascha Röösli.
Likeness is not very good in any sketch, though! :P
(The palestinian girl especially was VERY good looking. I ought to give it another go... )


Characters from Mass Effect 2. The first one kind of looks like a young version of my Shepard, but I did it off the top of my head, and didn't remember her features too well. I got some screenshots of her, though: At some point I'll draw her too, I guess.
Next is an unfinished one of Samara, and last is Garrus Vakarian.

Hungry

Souls

Two WIPs:







Both originate from tiny mindless pencil doodles. I'm in the habit of doing those, especially when I'm talking on the phone (at work or otherwise) and I am never conscious of what I'm drawing until well after I've stopped.

For the first I have this odd idea of a soul (despite its grotesque appearance, I have positive, compassionate feelings about that figure) floating at the end of a string like a balloon, leashed, unable to find release. I even considered adding balloons around it, a tragic/cheerful/scary mix. But I think I won't. It doesn't fit.

In the second, this could well be Charon (from Greek mythology), ferrying a soul across the subterranean river Styx (or Acheron, in different sources).

I don't know why I have been coming up with these concepts lately. Like I said, it's not conscious. But they are very emotionally laden. I was worried about my father a lot lately, who was facing serious health problems. He is much much better now, but the notion of our mortality is still heavy on me.

At any rate; now, to find time to actually finish them. And I have many, many more unfinished paintings in my hard drives, gathering digital dust. They'll rise up and eat me one day. D:

CGSociety daily sketches

Daily Sketch 2090: The Purple Man

 

2096 Red Queen

A story of books

And a few days later...

Harbinger

An odd old piece, and a digital/traditional hybrid.

Originating from a small pen drawing, which was scanned in, worked on in Photoshop, printed, coloured with watercolour pencils, rescanned, textured in Artrage with final touch-ups again in Photoshop.

Don't remember exact dates. The drawing was perhaps from 2005 or 2006. Last touch-ups were in 2008.

Mine is prettier...

More fluffheaps:

Inatten

She has been troubling me for quite some time.

I have struggled with her features and expression, in a way not too dissimilar to how we struggle against ourselves, until I felt I knew her well. I could well be mistaken.

--

Photoshop, Painter

No direct reference, just looking at and impressing features, textures, lighting, both from pictures and from life.

Closeup:




Steps + brushes used:



Brushes:

In almost all cases, I set the brush's opacity to 100% and turn on 'Other Dynamics' setting Opacity and Flow to Pen Pressure (brush #1). So from then on I control opacity with how hard I press my stylus. In detailing, I turn on 'Shape Dynamics' (and turn off Other Dynamics), to achieve stark, refined strokes (brush #2). I use this for hair, details around the eyes, and the chain. Specifically for the hair and more subtle detailing, I will turn on both size and other dynamics (brush #3).
Textured brushes are very useful. I didn't go overboard here, but I used #4  (from a pack by concept-on-mac) for the background, #5 for speckling the face, creating pores so as to make the skin look less plastic (a common mishap with digital), and #6, very sparingly, for some areas on the hair and for smooth colour blending on the face.

The Night after Christmas

Happy New Year, everyone!

I hope you all had a great time and wish you all the best for 2010 -- health, joy and creativity, and a measure of good luck (we all need that, don't we?).

As for my holidays, well, I sort of had some trouble with my resident fluffheaps, and...

Fluffheaps!

I've been lately populating the world with fluffheaps*. You can see a couple here, others will certainly follow (they breed like mad and in the weirdest of places: under the bed, the room corners, notepads, math notes...).





________________________________
* they originate from this character from this painting. They're supposed to be little monsters growing out of the dust and fluff under my bed. They share in my geekiness, gawkiness and altogether silliness, general commentary and they carry affectionate messages.
They are often talk lolspeak, but it's not their fault.