I Smell Chocolate [Process]
dunkel as Artz
Mar|21|2009
I read Aquasixio’s Tutorial yesterday, and wanted to try out some of the stuff he said. Namely, the stippling and the cross-hatching (you’ll see that I end up ditching the cross-hatching).
Also, I haven’t drawn on PSP for a long while, and I’ve completely ditched its tools (no ‘upping the contrast’, no eyedropper tool, nothing. everything was done by eye, and if the colours were wrong, I’d paint over it). Here, I allowed myself to use them again.
Tools used: PSP9, tablet, ~2hrs
The original idea I had in mind was a girl looking
into a box, or at a small animal, something glowing
in her hands.
As I coloured in the background using the cross-
hatching technique, I realized I sucked at it, and
the lines I made instead looked like grass. My
stippling attempt made the background look more
like a pond. So I went with it.
I wanted to draw a glow-y fish swirling under the
water, and then thought about doing a fish
glowing because it jumped out of the water and
was illuminated by the moon. But both those ideas
were very tried and old, so I drew an Elasmosaurus…
Then upped the contrast, as the teal I chose for
my dinosaur was causing a funky colour-clash
effect. I added the purple flying dots to remind
me where the light will sort of come from.
I shaded in the dinosaur, but he was looking
quite beat up,
So I cleaned him up a bit, and added highlights
(his head got lost in the grass).
I worked some more on the pond’s edge, so that
the stippling would blend a bit more into the ‘grass’.
I tried to add clouds, but gave up on it since it
made the picture seem too complicated (for a quick
test-out-what-Sixio-said piece).
Added the highlights to the purple flying things,
and to the Elasmosaurus’ nose.
Gave him an eye.
Upped the contrast again, done!
Caelum [Process]
dunkel as Artz
Jul|27|2008
Background: I was part of some club at dA, because a friend asked me to join. Ended up not participating in anything at all (as I tend to do in all clubs I join), so decided to participate this once. The contest theme was Roman Gods. I chose Caelum, the God of the Sky (the God of Death, I predicted correctly, would be too popular).
Further, the last time I drew a city scene was close to 3 years ago, so thought I’d try again, to see if I’ve improved any.
Tools: ArtWeaver 0.5, tablet, 2 layers total (sketch + piece), PSP
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Sketch; trying to get some proportions right. Seeing if the composition works; wanted all lines to lead back to the subject. Actually, I wasn’t aware of that at the time of making, but it’s a good habit to have. Never lead the eye out of the canvas. |
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Something I picked up recently, after your sketch, always put in the general tone of colour before starting on anything else. This is so that the colours you use later on will be relative to whatever you slop down in this step (ie if you started with a white background, your finished piece may not look unified). |
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Lowered opacity of the sketch even more, to block in colours. Worked on the face too, which was a mistake, as seen in the next step.
Colour theme of piece determined to be a dull orange/yellow + grayish-blue. Blue, to reflect Caelum’s eyes (so it will fit the description that goes with the piece). Dull orange/yellow, pretty self-explanatory. |
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Put in way too much detail in Caelum’s suit at this stage of the painting. I still have to practice working equally around the piece, and not concentrating on one spot too early. :\
The head in the last stage was not placed correctly, and seemed too big to me. So I blocked it out and corrected it. Began putting in windows on the buildings. I hate architecture. Became so dissatisfied with them that I was quite ready to give up, finish up his head, and submit as is. But, decided to keep going, as I’d been meaning to draw this for a couple of weeks now. So, looked up a reference Still felt somewhat unmotivated to keep going; I have to paint those friggen buildings /again/?! |
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Started painting over the buildings on the left. Realized that every time I painted cities (including this one), I had always gotten lazy with buildings and ended up with boring rectangular, kiddy-type skyscrapers. So, using the same reference as before (can you see some parallels?), I tried to make my buildings distinct from each other, and at least somewhat interesting to look at. Also because at that moment, Caelum didn’t fit into the painting because he was so detailed, and the buildings were so plain. Realized that if all the buildings were yellow, Caelum will again not fit into the painting because he was blue. So, still inspired by my reference, I decided to put in bill-boards and ads, with blue content. Buildings aren’t actually /right/ beside the sidewalk, so I added a road and more cement before a building actually started. The road was also to help stick Caelum into the painting, thus it is blue. |
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Painted over the other side of buildings. My painting has been flipped twice to check for mistakes. I can’t stop mentioning that. It has been the most useful tip I picked up.The bill-board was fun to do. : D
Also discovered this tool called “Artist Brush”, which basically tries to imitate Seurat, Van-Gogh, etc. I found it nice as a texture sort of brush. Tried it first on the top-left building to make it not so plain (as I was starting to get lazy again), then used it on the sidewalk. |
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Painted his face, defined the clouds more. |
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The sun was looking quite rectangular, so I rounded it off. Added a jet plane to balance out the sun… and to enforce the pollution. 8D
Darkened/Browned the entrance to the building at the bottom left, since the blue wasn’t really fitting and was too eye-catching. Finally, altered the contrast a bit in Paint Shop Pro, put on a border, done. :D |
It used to be that the colour of the sky matched the colour
of Caelum’s eyes. As time passes, the God of the Heavens
finds that gradually, the sky he loves is drifting away from
him, slowly engulfed by a murky brown haze. He and the
sky are not together anymore, he has lost his territory, his
home, himself.
City of Giraffes [Process]
dunkel as Artz
Jul|3|2008
This should be short; it was a speedpaint.
Blocked in general background colour; I wanted green to go with XP’s green theme (I was a little off though :\).
Drew in the shapes of buildings.
Added windows to random buildings, fixed up others.
Put in a sun (was too lazy to make some of the rays perfectly straight, though I should have), darkened the bottom and top corners to create more contrast.
Added more short buildings in the ‘foreground’, a crane in the distance, and a giraffe.
Increased the contrast with Paint Shop Pro, added bottom border; wallpaper ready for use. : D
Tack - hmfPet [Process]
dunkel as Artz
Mar|6|2008
I use PSP7 to make hmfPets, but it’s fully possible to do this all on Paint. Just a bit… more time consuming. ‘Sides, I really only use PSP features once I get to the white border.. I’ll tell you when. Otherwise, I’m basically working on Paint.
I often work zoomed in, for more detail. Remember to zoom out regularly, and flip your picture to catch mistakes.
Brush: 1px, completely opaque.
Sketch
Sketch it out, doesn’t matter if it’s ugly.
Clean it up, make sure there’s no unnecessary blocks of black:
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Fix up the outline to your liking.
Colouring
Apply base colour.
Now to shade, all you need to do is pick colours
that are slightly darker/lighter than your base.
See how it works, below:
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So just shade it in, keeping your light source in mind.
Done shading, with a bit of adjustment to the top
part of the tack. I found it too bright.
The little tack on the top left is what it looks like zoomed out.
‘Cutting it Out’
This is where I actually use PSP’s… err ‘features’…. But again, you can do this on Paint manually, just make sure you make the white outline evenly.
Select the white space around the object with the “Magic Wand Tool”, then go to Selections > Invert
Afterwards, go to Selections > Modify > Expand > Enter “2 pixels”
You should have something like the above. Ctrl C + Ctrl V to.. well, literally cut it out.
Slap on a copyright, save as a .png file with transparency, upload to photobucket, done.
Where’s She Now? [Process]
dunkel as Artz
Oct|30|2007
*posts it here for easy linkage*
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Tools used: tablet, OpenCanvas1.1 (or, the free, stripped-down-to-bare-minimum one), 6 hours, 1 layer (though layers were duplicated as a way to ’save’))To start off, you’ll need an idea! 8D Some of my thought processes: [as looking at others' speed paints:] These have always looked spiffy. I should try my own. I haven’t done one before.. [some other day:]..That girl was so cool. Unfortunate how she started to get all messed up. She never used to swear or anything. Wonder what happened to her?….. Remember that cool-assed [photo] with the green and yellows? It looked really nice.. ….And somehow those merged into my idea. So anyway, sketch out what you want to draw.<——————— Check for proportions and all that. I never sketch out the face right from the start, but I forgot to save my sketch before I used it later on, and it would’ve been boring anyway, so here it is. Also, the only colour on my sketch was supposed to be the red indicating the light source, but as I was colouring, I forgot to switch layers. >> |
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Thar background. Just trying to paste down the colours I see in me head. I had the sketch up, on low opacity, so I knew where to throw on my blues. |
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Putting down base colours. |
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General shadows. |
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Adding light, shading the dress. Realizing the blue in the back is a bit dull, so beginning to brighten that a bit. Made the hair darker. Shaped her hand a bit. Turned off the sketch layer.Deciding I wanted blue to surround her, I started to put blue behind her, on the right. |
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Decided her middle finger was was too straight and boring, so bent it a bit. Continued to shape the rest of her hand, lightening up the blue in the back. |
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Did the face (creepy, huh? :D), continued working on her hand. |
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Gave her a fingernail, darkened her eyes, defined her nose and face-shape a bit. |
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Here’s where I had a lot of trouble. I can’t do lips for beans. This is probably where most of my hours were used out of the six. I tried to look for refs, but found nothing in the particular angle I wanted. Oh wells. I left it at that.Added a bit of shine to her dress, highlighted the knuckles a bit. |
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Oh yeah. Always flip your work while you’re drawing. All the bad stuff jumps out at you when you do. If you’re not drawing on the computer, use a mirror.Her fingernail was really awkward, so I changed it.I wanted brighter colours, so I put a more saturated green on her dress. It matches the shine I put earlier. 8D
Gave her a collar bone. |
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Darkened the hair a lot, gave it some green highlights. Realized I should show an end to her head so I coloured the top right corner light blue.Notice the blue in the back is much brighter? :DFor the hair, what I basically did was use a fat blunt brush (as I did for most of the painting) for the larger strands, then gradually use thinner ones to give it detail. |
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Shaded her ‘bangs’ from black to light green. I used a brush of one pixel for the hair by now, to pick out individual….’strings’ of hair. |
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After many attempts to fix her mouth again, I decided to leave it. -_- Igave her eyebrows though. :3 |