Rosebuds

I'm pretty new to digital painting and haven't quite aqcuired a prefered method in which to work. I decided I needed to change this so I began a copy of JW Waterhouse's "Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May." I will post images of the progress here. Digital painting has become nearly the standard for commercial art. The ease of storage, speed of creation, and never suffers loss of quality or color that occurs when you photograph paintings are just a few of the advantages of computer art. When the end result is a printed image or something that is only going to be seen in reproduction anyway there is little advantage to messing around with oil or acyrlic paints. Having said that, a digital painting is never going to have the power that a physical work of art has. I like both. Anyway, Here is my initial pencil sketch of the painting and then about 5 or 6 hours later. More to come...

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.

Two Roads

Like character of the week, there is also an Enironment of the Week. This past week's theme was "two roads." This is what I came up with. I was thinking about JMW Turner when I started this. I like some moments but overall I should have started with a more concrete composition and idea of specific architecture. This is mostly to get the hang of digital painting. I tried some new brushes out here so as far an experiment it was successful.

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...

chow

An illustraion I did for the weekly character contest at conceptart.org.

My imaging of the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland.

Adobe Illustrator

So I have long been using photoshop and Painter to make pictures but I never tried out Illustrator. Maybe it was because I didn't know what graphic design was until about half way through college or maybe I just never needed to use any vector drawing. Well anyway this is my first attempt at using Illustrator.

I really struggled with the user interface and the controls. I guess I went into it expecting Photoshop and its definitely not the same. It is kind of neat the way you have a workspace around the active picture area. It felt a lot like making a collage in real life. The eagle is from a photo I took of a lamp post at Union Station in DC.

Some Sketches

Some prep sketches. I needed a drawing of a girl sleeping for a larger drawing I was working on but it can be hard to get models. So I photographed myself and then did sketches from the pictures and eventually settled on one. That one I re-drew and changed the gender. and voila! Here are two of the many self portraits and the sketch I did of the girl.