Landscapes, Landscapes and Starting Again!

So the 21 day art challenge was going pretty well.......then the weekend hit and my social life derailed it completely! So we got through a total of 5/21 before I failed, not very impressive is it! My original plan was to just carry on from where I left off but I feel like that defeats the whole purpose of the exercise. So I have decided to start again back to day 1, albeit with a few more back up plans for if I'm going to be unable to post that day. Here's hoping I can pull it off this time.

 

Above is day one of the second attempt if you're wondering, this is actually my second attempt at todays piece, the other piece has been saved away for possible use later on, it involved over cast lighting and I really seem to struggle with that. That's why I went with the very stark lighting you see in the above painting, it's a little more forgiving and to be honest looks a lot more exciting. Till next time! 

Back From The Dead

 

It's a new year and that means it's about time I kicked myself back into gear with my art! I think it's been about three months now since my last update, surprised the blog hasn't started collecting cobwebs. My lack of activity has been down to a multitude of things, starting a part time job and actually getting some freelance work (which unfortunately I can't tell you about) it's real though, honest!

 

So how am I going to motivate myself then?? Simple, I'm going to do Noah Bradley's 21 day art challenge, which simply put is to create a piece of art every day for 21 days........he explains it much better in his blog, so go have a look (https://medium.com/@noahbradley/21-days-to-be-a-better-artist-48087576f0dd#.7a8v2d92k).

 

Above is day one, for me personally I'm trying to achieve a few things, one is to get back into a routine of painting daily, two, improve my speed so that it doesn't take me days to finish a piece. Three to concentrate on the piece as a whole and not get bogged down with details and finally to conquer my fear of landscapes/environment's! The first piece is a step in the right direction, I didn't zoom in at all when painting it, shock horror! but there is still a long way to go, 20 days in fact ;) Till next time! 

The Duke's Watchtowers Final Design

 

After some great feedback from the initial designs I did for my steampunk watchtowers I decided to do a much more detailed pass. The only criticism I got previously was that people wanted to see the watchtowers in a 3/4 view, so that was the first thing I went to remedy. I think you'll agree that they look much better this way than previously!

 

Design wise I stuck to the initial design of #1 from the last image, mainly due to it being a favourite among every body on twitter. Obviously I couldn't help and make some variations, always remember, re iterate, re iterate and re iterate. The main thing I want to push was the idea that these are functioning machines powered by steam, so I added a lot more chimneys and smoke stacks and also made them look very weathered, with soot stains, oil leaks and dints all over the metal. Finally I added some hints back to "the duke" the man responsible for building these, mainly in the form of the heraldry. I'm really beginning to form an idea of where I want this IP to go but you're going to have to wait a bit longer before I reveal it. Till next time!

Art Test

 

So I have not been feeling so great for the past few days, dam winter bringing along it's infectious colds! Which means I haven't got a lot to show you, so I thought it was time I showed you guys an art test I did for a job, a few weeks back. As you can guess I didn't get the job but it was a great learning experience.

 

The brief was pretty straight forward, create a environment and two tank sprites for a top down tank battler, the theme and design was completely up to me. As you can see above I ended up going for a sci-fi/war of the worlds vibe, where the player would play as a human tank battling invading alien forces.

 

This was a lot of firsts for me, sprite design and top down design were things I had never done before, so I just approached them in the same way I would do any other design. I created about eight designs for each tank sprite and then rendered out my favourite one, trying to make sure they were easy to read, as you would view them from the top. The environment was again designed with readability in mind, the player needed to be able to see clear paths they could move around.

 

Hope you like it, it' not one of my favourite pieces I have ever done but I would love to do more in the future. Till next time.

Steam Powered Watchtowers

Just a quick little update today. I've started on the next piece in my fledgling steampunk project and above are some initial sketches I did for  it. As I've been thinking about the world and how I wanted it to look I began thinking of an oppressed London, one where technology is being used to keep people "safe" but in reality is a means of control. Obviously I didn't want to make weird steampunk security cameras so I came up with Duke......(haven't thought of a name yet) mechanical peacekeepers.

This watchtowers patrol the streets of London and have a sniper posted at the top to keep "order within the city. Hope you like the idea and feel free to post which one's your favourite. Till next time!

Clockwork Assassins and Inktober

 

He's all finished! It feels so good to get a painting doe after taking a break from it all, got my drawing mojo back. I'm still not sure where I want to take this "steampunk project" as I am referring to it but I at least have an idea for the next piece in the series, which will be a giant mechanical walking watchtower. It's going to be a return to environments as that's still one of my weakest areas, for now I will just leave you with "Master Sneech".

 

As a quick little extra here's my first sketch for Inktober. If you don't know what that is then I will enlighten you haha. Inktober is where artists from all around the world create a drawing every day of October using finliners, biro's, promarkers. I will dropa  link down below that explains it a little better. Till next time!

 

Inktober - http://inktober.com/ 

Steam Powered Motivation

 

 

So.....erm....it's been a while but I have new work to show you and this should be the first post of me getting back to blogging! So why the absence I hear you cry?! Honestly it's been a combination of a few things, art burn out, job hunting and uncertainty in myself, it just got to a stage where I had no confidence or motivation to pick up my graphics tablet. Then Dave Rapozza came along!

 

I recently bought his bog witch tutorial on gumroad and it really opened my eyes, he talks a lot about how he got to the stage he is at (super awesome amazing artist stage that is). A lot of what he was saying I could really relate to, I began to feel that motivation coming back. I also bought Dave Luvisi's tutorial on creating an IP on gumroad and he said something that really stuck. "While you're not working on your craft, someone out there is and they are getting better than you". 

 

So I did some doodling and came up with some fun little steampunk style characters you can see below, oh and a Barely Alive character doodle. A few of these I really liked but had no idea what to do with them, so going back to the Dave Rapozza tutorial I decided to take one and incorporate it into a portrait. Working on the things that I struggle with, such as; backgrounds, eyes and texture. It's been tough with the above piece coming up to about ten hours work now but I'm really pleased with how it's turning out, I hope you guys like it and I promise to blog more often than I have been recently. Till next time!