Dec 29, 2012

Ipad artrage experiments



 Here are six paintings done with Artrage on the ipad.  It's fine for doodling or doing color experiments but it's really hard to get fine details.  The first one with the girl and crab sleeping was something I repainted on my home workstation using a proper wacom tablet and I achieved a result I was happy with (you can see that version two posts down).

The others are all experiments that explore the subject matter of the story.  Barnacles and seaweed, pink anemones in a ravine of seaweed, swirly sandstone, a tunnel with light filtering in from the end, and a contraption made of blocks.

Dec 16, 2012

Oils again

Another take on using digital oil painting tools.  I'm really starting to like this blend of pencils on top of oil painting.  Feels a little like a still from an animation, which isn't a bad thing.  I think the general color I used here for the sandstone beach works pretty well and contrasts against the sky enough.  Sandstone in real life is quite grey but I think keeping warmer tones on the ground will help.

I'm also happier with the how the crab's legs turned out here.  I find I tend to draw his face and claws and then sketch in the legs as an afterthought behind him.  He feels more grounded when the legs have some definition.  I'm still undecided if he needs lids around his eyes.  I go back and forth between pupils that float in a larger dark area and embedding lids in there.

On her I think I need to practice side views of her face, her head seems a bit tall. I think I could do better.  She also feels older in this image.  She's supposed to be ten so I need to be a little more careful with my proportions.

Dec 11, 2012

Trying out digital oil paint

I wasn't entirely happy with the colors I was getting with my watercolor experiments.  I think I want something more vibrant and saturated.  This is an experiment using oil paints in Art Rage starting from a blank canvas and building up layers of color.

It's a scene in the story where our hero and her trusty companion find some shelter in an unlikely place.

I was trying to get a feeling of morning light filtering through a crack in the ceiling of where they're cuddled up.  If I do decide to stay with oils for color the final art for this scene would probably end up looking a lot like this.

I found when painting with the oils it was much easier to control to color saturation than with watercolors.  I just completely covered the paper and built up the hues I wanted, with watercolors the color of the paper seems to play a more significant role as you tend to dilute and add water to bring things back to white.