Feeding the Forest Guardian

Felt like painting on a whim, without the help of lines. Also had the pleasure of watching/listening to the soothing voice of Anthony Jones after purchasing his helpful tutorial on illustration basics. You can get it on Gumroad (https://gumroad.com/robotpencil). Definitely picked up a few nifty tricks as I painted along with his video.

Made a process GIF, below. I might have lost one screenshot, so pardon the jump from straight trees to warped ones. Hah!

This will probably be the last piece of work that's coming out of my old Dell Vostro. It has valiantly struggled with me for almost 4 years, but I guess it's really showing its age lately. Thanks for the many keyboard-hammering days, old friend. You've been a great workhorse..

But now, it's time for a much needed upgrade :)

Merfolk Sketches

I think I'm beginning to realize that my approach to art is a little uptight and stifling, partly because I do not have enough confidence in my painting abilities. This makes my process very rigid and slow. I do want to learn to be free, using confident strokes to define form and in turn generate more ideas.

I need to do more sketches like those found above. Pardon the rather immature designs, I was having a bit of fun.

Bridge Troll Face

I rarely do faces, so I thought I'd give it a shot. With the help of some textures, I guess this didn't take too much time. I was hoping it would be easier to do a monster/creature face so that I could play with proportions.

I really envy how some people can go hyper-realistic on these things. Happy New Year!

Attempting ZBrush

Not too long ago, I had the pleasure of attending a workshop featuring Ben Mauro and Neville Page at my alma mater. It was a great and insightful weekend, listening to their interesting stories and watching them sculpt.

Like many others, I went home and decided to give ZBrush a try. I have to say, they made it look too easy. After some nights of struggling with the not-so-friendly user-interface and haphazardly using the tools to create something almost recognizable, I retreated to Photoshop.

Apparently if my sculpt was untidy (that's pretty much an understatement), I had a lot of painting to do to cover up the sloppiness. I guess this alien-helmet guy was pretty much a disaster.

Take a look at the sculpt below.

Stone Golem

Yet another stylized attempt. A rather generic stone golem, but he was definitely fun to draw and paint. I think bits of rock might fall out of his mouth when he talks.

Dragonkin Guardian

When it comes to art style, I think I'm still trying to patiently find my own skin. I'm easily impressed by the legions of great artists out there and I find myself wanting to try a little bit of everything. Perhaps it will prove useful for me as a commercial artist at this stage.

This was sparked off when my colleagues bought and played Torchlight II recently. I've always wanted to try the stylized approached, leaving my lines in and using bright colours that pop. However, I found myself struggling midway and I think I might have underestimated it quite a bit.

My marine iguana study did come in handy. Here's a look at my haphazard process:

Alien Suit

Something light for the weekend. I was really intrigued by the organic-looking suits the Engineers wore in Prometheus so I kinda doodled my own for fun.

Without line, I'm still a lost cause, I'm afraid.

Undead Samurai Archer

Here's another undead samurai, taking aim with his bone bow. I quite enjoy just doing lines for now. After all, I can always paint these guys up later.

Undead Samurai Cavalry

I'm not quite sure why, but there seems to be an undead theme going on here. Damn you, Diablo!

Anyway, I've always been harping about my terrible lines and yet I spend my time painting instead. Inspired by the master's latest demo, I have decided to double my efforts in improving my strokes, starting from now.

Zombie Shaman

After all those bots, I really felt like doing something fun and non-committal, like a zombie. Here's a speedy, despite my lack of understanding of the human anatomy.

I definitely need to work on material indication, to bring all the gooey and fleshy parts to life.

Garuda

So I caught the flu bug and it caused some serious downtime. Painted this bit by bit in between naps, till I got pretty sick of it too and decided to wrap it up.

Now I can start working on something else over the long weekend. Whee!

Were-bat Sketch

A bat-like creature/monster of sorts. It was also a good anatomy practice for me. I might paint this up, if I don't get too distracted by other drawings that is.

Orc Grunt

I tried my hand at doing this whole speedpainting thing but I found I lacked both the speed and the required painting skills. Initially a lunch sketch, this soon turned into something that stretched across almost 3 lunch breaks in total.

I'm definitely not ready for this. Back to the lines for me.

The Siege Beast

Production paintings of a siege beast being dragged to the target castle. He’s gonna wreak havoc! One of my attempts at doing fantasy.

Crustacean Soldiers

This assignment was highly enjoyable and I learnt quite a number of things about painting from doing it. Also, I studied quite a number of crabs for this!