oil and pencils

Last weekend I picked up my brushes again. I painted a couple of quick sketches to get back the feel of oils. I always forget how much I love the smell of oil painting. I hope that I do not put my brushes back down for an extended time again. I also have sketches from my sketchbook. The internet is great because I control what makes it here. I don't have to put up anything I hate to look at.

Random work

A sketch for this week's ChoW, a sketch for a layout and an abandoned figure for an interface layout. Hopefully, I'll find some time to finish the chow by monday...

Mary of the Blue Lights

This week's CHOW was "Mary of the Blue Lights". She is supposed to be a young orphan that survives by the help of invisible (except to her) blue lights, interpreted however we like. I thought "Mary" was reminiscent of something religious so I went with a halo. Also I kept this painting in a greyscale. Color has been giving me trouble lately and I just wanted to focus on technique.

Actually...

Ok, apparently its not a file size issue. If I put two images in a post the second one can't be enlarged. Its weird and doesn't make sense. Oh well, I'll remember that.

Paranormal P.I.

This weeks CHOW was pretty open ended; E.G. Brownstone, Paranormal Investigator. I always fall back on the portrait format. Its not terribly exciting compostition wise but I think it shows improvement over some of my early digital pieces. This was mostly done in Painter with a little bit of Photoshop for the adjustment masks. Speaking of that, I just learned a ton (like 3) of good Photoshop techniques from this guy. His tutorials are really good, I'm a beginner so it was really helpful. Also I have to mention that the pattern on the wallpaper (probably only clear in the detail on the WIP sheet) was my first ever pattern created from scratch in Illustrator. yay.

(total of 3 programs used to create this image)

Edit: I have no idea why some images can be enlarged and others not. If anyone has the reason for this, please let me know. Its got to have something to do with the size, I'm thinking. nope.

Baba Yaga 2

I started working on this one before the image in the previous post. Interestingly I did a large part of the work for this image on paper and I like it better. I think that since I am more comfortable with traditional media and can control the outcome a little more the work turns out better the more hand drawn elements are evident in the final piece. I am trying to get better at digital media but it will take time.

Baba Yaga 1

This weeks CHOW was Baba Yaga. I have been feeling my entries have been rather sub par so I decided to go at this one hard. I did two. This is the one I didn't enter. When I try to do a full rendering like this it never seems to come out as I imagined it. There are some things in it that I feel pretty good about though and I thought I'd include a detail of the face and hands.

queen titania

Thought I'd post last week's CHOW. It was Queen Titania from Shakespeare. Still trying to get the hang of Painter and find a style and working method that I'm comfortable with. Lots of issues with this one but I got sick of looking at it and decided to leave as is.

Super Villian Self Portrait

This past weeks CHOW was a pretty fun one. The theme was make a super villian self portrait. I figured if I were to become a super-villian, it would probably involve killing plants. After having accidently ingesting too much herbicide I finally wilt and die only to rise from the grave as a zombie plant killer, stalking from flower garden to flower garden laying a path of plant destruction.

chow #144

Ok, so last post was a character of the week submission at conceptart.org. So is this one. I'll give a quick rundown on what that means. CA is a web community of artists, illustrators, concept artists, and (mostly) wannabes (like me). The forum community is huge with people from all over the world helping each other out for the most part giving critiques and such. Anyway, its cool. they have weekly activities there. Character of the Week, Environment of the Week, Creature of the Week, etc. they have a moderator that comes up with an idea say par example: post nuclear apocalyptic siamese twins that work as protectionists, extortionist, and mercenaries. Then every one illustrates this idea and submits it on sunday. there are specific rules like it has to be at least 3/4 figure and so on. After it gets submitted a moderator makes cuts and then members vote on their favorite. Typically its the professionals (or near pros) that win. I have yet to make it to the voting round. Im not too worried I have only entered two, the siamese twins (above) and the caterpillar (below). Actually, its only pissing me off in a good way. I just want to work harder. It gives me competition. I like it. My current goal is to make it to the voting round, then win one.


On another note, NateShawArt.com is going to be seeing a major facelift in the coming days... Look for it next week, its going to be sweet.

Also, don't forget about the Everglades Comic...