Graphic Design and Illustration.

Posts from the ‘Illustration’ category

November Image of the Month

Every once in a while I like to try my hand at landscape painting. Usually with mixed results. I’m more of a portrait or figure drawing guy, not a landscape guy. And I usually like to stick with graphite, conté, or pastels (either chalk or oil will do). But a guy can dream can’t he?

Anyways, this one turned out not too badly. I think my main influences would be the Group of Seven and Impressionism. And while this one is okay, I think I’m still a few paintings away from a personal style gelling. Over the years I’ve amassed quite a few small, cheapie canvases, so you’ll probably see a few other experiments gracing the posts of this blog from time to time.

This painting was done in acrylic. I try to stay away from oils because, when painting a house, a deck, or a canvas, I seem collect paint all over me. It’s just easier with water based paints. Trust me. Or just ask my wife, who is always amazed at how much paint winds up on me rather than the surface I’m painting.

I think next time, I’ll try for a simpler subject matter. I’ve always done better with a simple, iconic sort of image. And I think less planning and more spontaneity with the use of colour and form. And I may need to mute some of the background colours as well. I tend to hype up the colour in my portrait work, and while it has been very successful in that genre, it may not quite be the best for landscape work.

I’ve also included a few closeups for those who may be interested in the brush strokes.

3D Dino Test

Quite a while ago I was playing around with a free 3D program called Blender. So last winter I was learning how to use the program. It turned out pretty good, so I’ve finally gotten the nerve to post it. There’s quite a few things I think I’d do differently if I ever had to do that again (and I might at some point!) but otherwise I think he’s good to go. He’s a moveable, mostly fully rigged model, though not really animate-able as I am not an animator, and that stuff seems quite complicated. It’s one thing to make the model, quite another to get the damn thing to move!

Image Of The Month – October

While technically, this is my second post this month under this category, I think it’s safe to assume the first one I posted at the beginning of the month is for September and this one will be for October. While not a seasonal image, strictly speaking, I did resurrect this image from a job that died an untimely death quite a few years ago. So I guess there’s a strangled tie-in to Halloween…

I did a bunch of pencil roughs of a whole series of people. A real cross-section of North Americans. They were all punted in favour of a mod/hipster type drawings similar to this guy here. (that were ultimately rejected in favour of just not doing the project at all). I always thought it was a shame the drawings never made it past a very early conceptual stage. So I set about to change that. This is the first one. I’ll maybe do a few more later on.

This one was my favourite of the bunch. My wife thinks he looks a lot like Billy Blanks of Tae Bo fame. I have to admit, there is a resemblance, but he was the furthest thing from my mind when I was originally sketching out the images.

The image started off as a scan of the pencil drawing and then I went to town dropping in colour. Starting out with flat tones of colour and then built up the highlights and shadows. Pretty straightforward. The only really crazy thing I did was essentially re-do all the linework directly in Photoshop. Lots of fun with the Paths tool and a custom Photoshop brush. Resulted in some nice a slick lines.

Enjoy.

 

Torus Knot

This is a rendering of my first (but not last) 3D printed object. I created the object in Blender and then output an STL file that was uploaded to the Shapeways website, where it was printed out using a stainless steel material. I’ll have a picture of the actual printed piece posted as well once I have one available.

The image was rendered using an HDRI image for the light source.

Star Wars Poster

A Christmas present for my wife (who just happens to be a big Star Wars fan). Basically, all I wanted to do was see how far I could take a digital painting. I tried to keep in style with the Star Wars movie poster while introducing some of my own elements.

Rust

I first drew the design of the armour when I was in high school. Years later, I redrew the design on the computer using Macromedia Freehand and then Adobe Photoshop for all the textures. This drawing took almost eight years to complete from conception to final drawing!

Enjoy!