2021

Creating a Married At First Sight (Australia) advent calendar using ArtRage

I originally started this piece about a year ago and had it hanging around for while, when I revisited I replaced the original cat with a dog and added a teddy bear. Very much experimenting with this by piecing previous art together and trying out the canvas textures again, which I always forget.

Demonstrating the effectiveness of bigjpg.com AI upscaling algorithm

I don’t often do a full body piece as I prefer to focus on the face so I get a bit caught up in not putting enough detail into the face itself. I overlaid a texture file created from playing around with GIMP to give the effect of rain and changed up the background from the original reference.

Using ArtRage and InfinitePainter on various drawing tablets

A ghostly portrait! using ArtRage and GIMP

I had lots of fun with this one, I initially tried a spherical stencil in ArtRage to get the basic shading and then went from there. I followed quite closely to the reference with extra emphasis on the top down lighting and a changeup of the colours

The start of a new playlist series in which I demonstrate how I use ArtRage for simple graphical tasks. This time it is to finish my Christmas advent calendar.

Showing the immense power of layer effects in ArtRage

All three of them!, I tweaked Winnifred a little and blended her hair with the other two using the palette knife in ArtRage. Originally I had Winnifred a lot lower down but it didn’t really seem to work so I added a little more chin and aligned with the others.

The first of the Sanderson sisters that I attempted, the final version here is a little different than my original idea when it came to typing all three of the sisters together, originally I had also cropped out the lower part of the chin (as an accident) and it seemed to work well, but eventually relented.

This was actually the second Sanderson sister I completed but set the tone for all three of them. I went for a more comic book graphical look rather than get too realistic and I think the flatter look of the face worked quite well for this, I then went and retrospectively tweaked the Winnifred portrait to align better with this style as I over sharpened / saturated / contrasted and impastoed the original.

The third Sanderson sister that I attempted, struggled a little, I think mainly due to the flat lighting on the the reference so had to add my own in for interest. I paid a little more attention on the shadow colour to focus more on a dark saturated red rather than a boring shadow to black which is what I normally do.

Using ArtRage and GIMP for Hocus Pocus Mary in this time of Halloweeniness!

Girlfriend art

In honour of the rainy evening that is the wonder of Halloween I present to you Katie, the Vampurr Slayer!!1

A suggestion from my girlfriend to create a poster featuring our cat Binx and the aforementioned girlfriend. Each aspect is former art that I have combined. For example Binx was overlaid almost as is (with the extra fangs of course). The slayer body came from my portrait of a terminator with the head from a portrait of my girlfriend. The background was a very old piece I did featuring a scary tree to slide in the moonlight.

Demonstrating how to set up an .arscript file association for the windows store app ArtRage Vitae so a .arscript will open up Vitae with a double click

When the canvas is horizontally flipped (H) there are some black artefacts relating to the brush on the screen, have also noticed some others too not necessarily relating to the brush on the screen. Running on: Windows 11 (although pretty sure this also happens on Windows 10) Glaxy Book Flex

When recording a script playback and selecting Import File rather than Import File to Layer accidentally, the replay stops on the Import File and the recording can only be stopped. At this point the original recording can be continued to be played back by switching to the original painting but now the GUI elements are present on replay which wasn’t desired for a clean video playback with all GUI elements removed.

Using ArtRage and InfinitePainter on various drawing tablets

This year a bathroom was replaced after a foot went through the floor!

Using ArtRage and InfinitePainter on various drawing tablets

Yes I know the title is somewhat disquieting, shocking even, it wasn’t deliberate, its just an honest opinion and of course I shall explain why. Sport can be exciting at times, exhilarating even, but this is often not the norm, often it is tedious, boring and a grind. Of course a perfectly formed athlete can be marvelled for their own sake, the honed body of a physical specimen, a freak of genetics put through a lifetime of training.

Ok, sleep hygiene, these are the things I do to have at least a modicum amount of rest, I don’t sleep much anyway, but I’m not too bothered as everyone needs a different amount, the fabled 8 hours that everyone should get is BS : No ipad / mobile phone / computer usage late at night. Now this rule I flout but only because I use filters to block out the blue light, if you have an ipad it should kick in automatically, hence you will notice the orange tint.

Four minutes they say!, they are just around the corner!, ready, set, go!, the phone call is terminated and what ensues is a mad dash around the house. Well mad isn’t quite the applicable term anymore, it is now more of a practiced execution of known steps, repeated already this year a measly 15 times. Firstly the central heating needs to be ignited, throw it up to 10 degrees hotter then hell!

My girlfriend has a tube coming out of her nose. Well to be more precise, her right nostril. “so why did you choose the right one?” I ask “because it is my favourite nostril”, she astutely replies. I don’t particularly have a favourite nostril, or have ever given it much thought. Having a girlfriend with an NJ tube makes me consider, and yes I think I agree, the right nostril is also my favourite.

Using ArtRage and InfinitePainter on various drawing tablets