2017

Using a Buffy painting as the base and playing around with texture and the palette knife.

After just watching the latest Star Wars film the best thing in it was the Porgs!, so I thought I would try and put my own spin on things, I reused the background for created for C3PO and drew the focus as much as I could on those eyes!

This was a rework of an original piece that I had painted on my rucksack when I was younger in acrylic, I thought it might be a good idea to give it a digital paint over. I decided to completely redo the lighting from below to give a more creepy atmospheric vibe. Using ArtRage on a Surface Pro to create some digital art!

Using ArtRage on a Surface Pro to create some digital art!

A commission I imposed on myself for my sister’s birthday, a family portrait, this one took quite a while and I had to be especially precise with the faces, every pixel had to be very accurate. Using ArtRage on a Surface Pro to create some digital art!

Using ArtRage on a Surface Pro to create some digital art!

I found a creepy reference of a doll face and decided that with a good texture brush I could get this to look quite creepy.

I thought I would try a portrait with no colour in the reference so I could primarily focus on the tonal aspects. As it turns out frankenstein’s monster really lends itself to some nice texture and the palette knife. Also a key aspect was exporting to GIMP and applying a sepia colour. Using ArtRage on a Surface Pro to create some digital art!

Using ArtRage on a Surface Pro to create some digital art!

A simple portrait painting using mainly the oil brush but really pushing the tonal contrast, I was quite happy how this turned out and is really the style I want to try and achieve for my portraits. Using ArtRage on a Surface Pro to create some digital art!

Using ArtRage on a Surface Pro to create some digital art!

An improvement on my original Dark Willow effort, much better blending and overall refinement on this one, I think now I have really moved on from my pastel techniques to that of using more of an oil brush.

I really wanted to change up the colours here, to obviously keep the essence of Buffy but to shine a much different light. Also to have a sticker spray configured to cast a splash of blood, for dramatic effect!! This was one of the first times I tried running an exported painting in gimp to have a go at tweaking the colours. Using ArtRage on a Surface Pro to create some digital art!

Using ArtRage on a Surface Pro to create some digital art!

This year we actually had a proper Christmas work do!

The initial reference was just of a frog ornament which I thought looked interesting and had some character. It took me a while to figure out the colours, including exporting to gimp. It was only when I started to apply blend mode layers using the bucket tool that the piece all started to come together. Using ArtRage on a Surface Pro to create some digital art!

Using ArtRage on a Surface Pro to create some digital art!

A paint over and update to one of my first pastel type paintings in ArtRage, it is always useful to attempt this to see if I am actually making any progress on my art journey. I can now see a lot that was wrong from my original effort. I think the key to the improvement was to blend better and now being a little more confident with the oil brush.

Using ArtRage on a Surface Pro to create some digital art!

Something very strange, I just was having fun and playing around with just about all the tools in ArtRage.

Sometimes I like to take a reference of an innocent children’s toy and then tweak it to extraordinarily creepy levels. I chose to start the painting using the thumbnail technique as to get the proportions and ideas down early saves time later on. At one point the colours became quite muddy and I couldn’t quite work out where to go, but a little overlay of my Daenerys painting, as is often the way got me back on track again.

Using ArtRage on a Surface Pro to create some digital art!

A simple still life, and in the style of an old master, hence the dark backdrop. Surprisingly this didn’t take too long, I held off applying the higher tones and the saturation for as long as I could so the luminosity of the orange tones could come through. This was just about the first still life I have done using ArtRage and actually surprisingly I enjoyed it, it was nice to have no pressure to achieve the likeness of a portrait.

Using ArtRage on a Surface Pro to create some digital art!

A spliced painting taking my dragonfly painting as a background and then the lizard painting to adapt into a dragon, this gave me the opportunity to experiment with the ArtRage editing tools.

Using ArtRage on a Surface Pro to create some digital art!

I found a cute picture of a teddy bear online reading a book and thought that it could look pretty cool if it had a bit of an edge, like if it was a little evil for example. Ironically the bear fur sticker spray brush came in very useful to overlay some interesting texture, and in the end I decided on the reflection digital trick and hint that he was sitting in some water to add to the effect.

Initially I was just going to follow the reference of a lion faithfully while applying a little texture, but as it turned out I decided to give him a little bit of an edge by colour dodging a red highlight around the eyes and a little rim light. I managed to better use the standard palette knife this time to move the paint representing the mane in a more controlled manner.