Bizzaro revisited

It's been a while but I'm still here trying. I posted a painting of Bizzaro Superman some time back but felt my skillset wasn't sufficient for the image I had in mind. So it just sat there on my Lacie for like 2 years. Well 2 years of practice made the difference between hating it and like it a little bit. I just may finish this one yet.

The Hulkster!

Detail work...
Here's a caricature I did for a facebook caricature challenge page. Very talented artists there and it's fun to see artists from all over the world contribute. This was done all in Photoshop.

International Self Portrait Day

Caricatured Self Portrait along with my process. I lost 2 steps tho...I'll do better next time with saving my steps.

Dwarf sketch Painting

Sketch of a dwarf in my sketchbook that I added some color to in Photoshop.

Alien revisited

Here's a revisit of an alien that I sketched some time ago. Still trying to work only in photoshop...I still love painter but I'm drawn to the stability of Photoshop. I'm never afraid to have10+ layers if I choose to...tho I rarely have more than 3.

Using Photoshop more than Painter...

Here's a dump of a few images that I painted with Photoshop. I am still working on the ins and outs of the program in order to render well with it. These are a few attempts. I am not saying that Painter is not as good as Photoshop, but I will say that there are things that I like to use in each program.

Environment study

Painting what I have trouble with...Environments! Though I should use reference I decided to struggle through this speed painting. I worked on this for about 20-30 minutes.

Elfien...

Sketch of an Elf turned into an alien along the way. Grayscale study in Corel Painter X.

Self Portrait

I was outside getting some shadow reference and I liked one of the pictures I took so I painted it. I tried to stay away from "rendering" like mad and kept it relatively loose. I even found a satisfying use for the impasto of Corel Painter...something that I normally shy away from. This took roughly 3 hours.

Noseforatoof [WIP]

Early grayscale of an image I am working on. Done mostly in Corel Painter X.

Schoolism final assignment.

I should've had this up a long time ago. This is the final assignment for Bobby Chui's digital painting class. Bobby gave us a sketch and we had to paint it using all of the knowledge from the past assignments. When I was in art school, Photoshop was literally 1.0. and wasn't thought of as a method of illustration.

I kept the image as is when Bobby critiqued it. I learned quite a bit from Bobby on "basic" photoshop techniques that I still use on everything I work on.

Mech?...

I realized that I suck at "vehicle" type images. So here's an attempt at some of that. Took longer that I should've but I learned a lot along the way. Made some more brushes for the "hard" edges needed for this type of object. I almost gave up on Painter for Photoshop on this one. The opacity and hard edges make Photoshop very nice for these sort of objects. Making paths then turning them to selections was a common technique for this. The design is rather a joke but the execution is what I focused on.

Apple

Here is a painting of an apple on my desk. I worked Ala Prima as much as possible. Painter's Mixer pad is really a great tool.

Buddy.

This is a portrait of my one of my best friends Justin "Buddy" Calvin. I had to use multiple references for this image and pieced them together. A picture of Justin, a tuxedo on a rack, a picture of Brad Pitt, and a planar head were used to make up the shadows for his face. 100% Corel Painter X.

Skull on my desk.

Here's a monochromatic technique that I use when I paint traditionally. Trying to make it work with Corel Painter doesn't translate 100% but it's pretty close. I recently worked on blocking out the glare from my monitor. I found that Painting digitally during the day time was a lot tougher than painting at night time. So I purchased some foamcore board and cut it to the size of my windows. Now its nightime all day in my studio.

Wizard

It's been a while since I posted. This was painted from a sketch I made about 2 years ago. Great thing about digital art is the ability go back in time like that. Value study for the most part. I'm still working out a few things but it's getting easier and faster. I was going to add color before posting but I wanted to get started on my next project.

I really like the artist oils in Painter. Feels pretty much like real oils especially with the 6d stylus pen. The real world color paint swatches are really helpful when you have the same names as real tube paint. 100% Corel Painter x.

Blademaster

My favorite hero from Warcraft 3 (ROC). This was a comic book ink drawing I created about 6 years ago and I decided to paint it...well part of it. The original drawing was a full body but I didn't want to get too deeply committed into a painting that would never get finished. This was a lot of discovery for me. Basically just trying out as many brushes as I can find in Corel Painter X and trying to work with them. Oils, Artists' Oils, Chalk, Glow, Airbrush ,and a Blender pretty much makes up the entire painting.

Self Caricature

This was a pretty tough painting for me. It was hard for me to keep it exaggerated. I wanted to keep hacking away at the shapes early and it started to look too much like a portrait. I watch Joe Bluhm's Tom Cruise at work and got inspired to do this. This one I did all in Corel PainterX.

I ordered Don Seegmiller's new Painter book last week and I'm pretty excited about it. There's so much about Painter that I really don't "tap" into much. The pattern chalks is my new step I think. Watching Andrew Jones work them has me in the mood to add it to my list of tools.

Lord Death

Back when I was about 13 years old I used to play a roleplaying game called "Champions". Basically it was a superhero version of dungeons and dragons. My cousin Kevin and I were pretty much the only ones in this exclusive "club" and this image is a redesign of his character named "Lord Death". This started out as just the helmet that was sitting on my computer for about a year. I then just drew the body under it. All the painting was done in Corel painter with texturing done in Photoshop. Roughly 7 hours up to this point.

Sketch painting

Black and white painting done for practice. 100% Corel Painter. I really enjoy the 6d pen with Painter brushes, especially the palette knives. Though I had to use a European wacom driver in order to get it to work.