Sep 30, 2012

Joyride

#2 of the Princess collection. Hah. I give you Joyride:

Sep 28, 2012

Her face


So, the biggest thing for me with this is really pushing the light to work well. The reason I started  this concept last year was to create an image that relies less on character and form, and relies more on light. I'm not sure I am succeeding in that yet. Once the forms are set, I'll continue to work on the light.

I've been looking a lot at different photographs of fire and skin. It's an interesting combination, skin has a reflective and translucent quality that really becomes apparent when it's next to fire. Here are a few examples... one from Cabin in the Woods (great flick, btw). Note the red glow, and the yellow highlight.

And the same effect is apparent here in Adam Hughes' painting of Phoenix:


So much simpler and eloquent than what I'm trying to do.

Sep 25, 2012

Atari Tooth

Just did this yesterday for my buddy Dr. Gonzo...

Sep 23, 2012

So much dicking around

This should be so much further, but I've barely touched it in a few days...I just spent a few minutes making some choices about a few things. I didn't like the way the girl's body and legs weren't straddling the beast properly. His feet weren't very convincing, or masculine. I tried a few different female figures and beefed up the feet. Not sure I'll keep the daisy dukes. 


I'm kind of treating this one like a painting where I work and step back, work and step back. This is somewhat rare, I usually go right at it, a lot faster. Not sure what philosophy is best. Probably the other one. 

Click to enlarge.

Sep 18, 2012

Dragon Girl part...let's say ...six

Pushing forward. I tried something smoky at the top of the fire plumes, I don't think I like it. One of the toughest things when I was thinking about this was figuring out how the light and shadow look around the pipes and fire. I thought they'd be a bit more chrome, but this works better, the dark, sooty pipes make the fire look brighter, plus chrome, it's kind of an immobile thing, a static, curvy mirror. It looks good because it sits still and we can see the sky and the desert in it. Yawn. No desert sky here. This is grit.

Sep 17, 2012

More...

Blah, blah, words about pictures. We're getting there. I'm thinking about giving her sharp teeth. I dunno, we'll see.

Dragon Girl update

Quick update. Got a few minutes this morning.

Sep 7, 2012

Monstruos

I think we're there. I think I'll call it Monstruos after a Goya piece that stuck with me since I first saw it in 9th grade.

Adobe, fix the Simplify tool

More issues with Illustrator CS6. Let's start with this shoddily drawn object:

I'd like to smooth it out, using Object > Path > Simplify:

Looks pretty good, but what's going on with this point?

Oh, it's two points, one on top of the other. Great.

Issue is not unique to CS6. This used to occur in older versions of AI, just not nearly as often. Happens almost every time now. And a huge pain in the

Sep 6, 2012

New halloween piece...

I'm a bit further along, maybe close to done with this one I've been working on all week. This is what it looks like now...not sure if these are the final colors...

Sep 4, 2012

Halloweeney sketch

I thought I was going to use this for the new halloweeney piece I'm working on. It really doesn't fit. I like the characters, though.

Sep 2, 2012

On the desk right now

...small piece of the current project. Dragon girl is waiting for me to finish this...got a few more too.