End-of-Year AP Showcase!!

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  What's up everyone?  Sorry for no update yesterday; I was still sorta beat coming from my sis's graduation the day before (w/ a splitting sinus pressure headache trying to overcome me when the ceremony began commencing), and was also just somewhat lazy then.  Oops x3.

   Either way, here are a few more alla-primas I did the past week.  This batch as a whole probably isn't as diverse as the previous, but I guess sometimes that happens.  Still some decent ones in there tho, so uhm, let's start...

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     This one is merely a very random loose sketch.  I still had paint left on the palette and like w/ food, I really hate leaving stuff go to waste unless it's just *that* nasty.   Even in that case, I'd rather just sit it outside somewhere for a stray animal to eat..but we all know stray animals have no taste for acrylic paint (can't blame 'em).

    There was no sunset outside when I painted this.  We don't get sunsets like this around my way.  It's a little barren tho; seeing that not much would come of it, I hurried to move on to another piece.  

     Tried another semi-still life, this time of a potato.  By this point I aughta consider doing some light glazing w/ these, altho I'm not sure if glazing is a very suitable practice for an alla-prima.  I'm sure someone out there does it from time to time.

      Also, aughta try some different palettes by this point, sheesh!

 

    This young gent seems to be contemplating a serious issue on his mind.  I didn't think the palette I mixed up would work w/ something like this, but it kinda did.  Don't ever be afraid of risks kids ;)

 

     This one's probably my second-favorite.  I don't think I technically mixed a dark green for the deepest colors on the tree, but the palette was small enough to allow for some blending and harmony if quick enough strokes were done.  Although, I hate the detail up to the top-left.  That didn't work out at all :S.

     My favorite of the group and probably the first real alla-prima "painting" I've done, since it took about as  long as the other five put together (anywhere btwn 50-80 minutes of mixing and painting).  Had to create three (or was it four?) palettes for it, and had absolutely no idea where it was going.  But in the end it all worked out.

      I'll certainly return to do more of these sorts of alla-primas more continuously ;)

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   And that's almost it for the year ya 'll.  I have a suspicion that I'll neglect uploading anymore progress of my Alita picture...

    Until early next year, when it'll be finished up (it'll make for a solid opening statement for 2012 tho).  So far it's going swell, but obviously there's plenty left to get done.  Sadly most of the bulk work won't get done until after the holidays past.  I'll finish up my uploads for this year w/ a request over on dA and uploading a couple more fanart sketches on that site, while I'll pop a festive alla-prima here as a way of saying 'thanks' for all those who've been keeping up w/ me blog and just to celebrate the holidays.  All that'll be tidied up about before Thursday.

     So there we go, another update down.  I'll be spending the rest of the day either gaming or reading.  Oh, and if you get the chance go see Rampart.  Harrelson's always a treat to see, and it's a pretty good movie to boot.  And...that's it x3.  Until l8r in the week everyone, I'll see you around.  Bye.

   

Back To Traditional-SatAftUpdate

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  Good Saturday evening people; I'm going to be playing a lot of Zelda:LTTP over this weekend, and just generally relax down.  It's been a busy week.  Thankfully this past Thursday I got an urge to once again pick up my acrylics, b/c quite honestly I've been getting a bit tired of being on the computer all the time for my artwork purposes.  In fact, this could be a turning point in how I carry my art out forward for the foreseeable future.

  Truly, I'd rather not talk much about it, but let's just say I'm nowhere near done w/ my traditional painting yet.  Never said I was, and I really love the sense of 'freeness' it provides.  So, here's a few paintings (alla-primas) I did over the past few days, w/ a very small title and description for them.  The constants in these paintings are, quite simply:

   -Galeria paint:  Crimson, Ultramarine, Cadmium Yellow Medium Hue, Burnt Umber, Mixing White, Titanium White, Ivory Black.  That's it.
   -Paper:  Forget the specific name, but it's Canson brand, likely 200/250gsm, linen sort mainly for watercolor, but obviously I wasn't doing watercolor techs here.
   -Brushes:  Mainly my flat 5, sometimes my short and the fan brush for parts of one picture.

  My goal in doing these was to rediscover my interest w/ traditional painting and my acrylics, which sorta died down a good deal over the summer.  In retrospect it's probably b/c they were a bit beyond me and I was too methodological w/ them.  Maybe I'm too methodological w/ painting in general, so it was a very pleasant break to just grab the brush and lay the strokes where they may.  Each picture follows a basic idea of small palettes, and I did most of the mixing directly on the support.  If I could learn a bit more about how these colors interacted w/ each other and which ones could form good palettes together, I was set.  And that's what's happening.

  The Boy:  The first one done.  Used a three-color palette of Earth hues.  Wasn't focusing on peak retention or strokes as indication of movement and energy.  Reminds me of Ed off Cowboy Bebop x3.

   StaringMan:  3rd one done; flesh tones are always a bitch, but in this case (and for the others) I had a general idea of what colors to pick up on the brush and in how much a load.  Also, since there was no attempt at precision it went pretty well x3.

   Icy World:  2nd done; worked a lot w/ Ivory Black.  Black's usually shunned w/ traditional painting but I'm not stupid and latch onto common myths for the hell of it.  If used sensibly it can work very well for mood.  I'd love to have some Mars Black around to see how these two differ.  Also worked w/ what I would Consider Payne's Grey, and a sort of purple; can't remember exactly which purple I mixed up tho.

   FruitSet:  One of the last done yesterday, really just wanted an excuse to use up the rest of the paint on the palette.  This and the rest below more or less shared the same palette set-up, but that will probably be obvious even w/o me mentioning it. 

   ThatGirl:  I guess these are the same women, different hairstyle notwithstanding.  I like the bottom one much more, just wished I gave her more of a damn face!

   TheBird:  Out of the alla primas here this one's my favorite.  Got to do a lot of neat peak retention tests and use brushstrokes to indicate energy and composition in most details.  That was always an issue w/ me before; using brushes ill-suited for their job, and not playing enough w/ depth.  I'm over that problem now ;).

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  So as you can guess, I have plenty more of these to get around to doing.  If things pan out soon I'll be buying back up more paint supplies, b/c now it's really dawned on me, I can't go w/o traditional.  Blessed as I am for what I have been learning digitally and continue to learn there, I'd feel a bit cheap w/o my brushes and tubes of paint.  Of course, each of the two have their own merits and use, so I'll continue doing fanart digitally (in terms of painting it) but will be taking a much greater initiative now to do original pieces traditionally. 

   Speaking of fanart, I have a new post for my Alita pic, and some sketches of Cerula (aka Daymn She's Fine!):

   After a little more clean-up and inking I'll finally get to painting her on Monday.  Eager to try a few new things w/ her, mainly dealing w/ transparency.  I'd also like to attempt not using the lines so heavily (I started the process of that w/ Bilstein), since a lot of lines is starting to be counter-productive to my process.  As for when it'll be finished,...welp, before the holidays sounds about nice (there a couple other pictures to work on too, but I might skip coloring them in favor of just inking).

   Cerula is one of my favorite BAA characters; she's powerful, has heart, cunning skill and intelligence, and most importantly, a nice pair of bosoms ;).  Oh, and she's a vampire, but not of the lame Twilight variety.  Playing up on sex appeal aside, I dunno if I'll proceed w/ finishing these ones out, or just proceed to other renditions of the girl.  The "sketch" mentality is taking over my whole process, and I'm not making it a mandatory note to finish up every picture I draw out anymore, just do what I feel like (but of course having some sense of direction along the way).  Seeing as how I do like how the one on the left looks tho, I will most likely finish her up, before maybe drawing her in proper canon outfit or w/e.

   Okay, that's it for my update.  I'm off to cook lunch and watch Eatman and ATVOTOMS.  Stay warm, awesome, and edged.  Until next time, l8r out.

SatEve Update

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    What's up people?  I'm gonna try things a bit differently than usual now.  Before I was uploading work both here and to my dA on the same day, but now I think it might be a better fit to save blog updates until the weekend.  Particular pieces-mainly fanart-I'll probably be uploading to dA first when they're complete (I'll be aiming to do at least one a week now, whether digitally or by hand, MOTL), and tbh I do get *slightly* more traffic there vs here.  Maybe when I become more prolific, people would take care to search out me blog more often x3.

    But yes, while I will be updating finished fanart pieces to dA first now, I'll be cutting out all the WIP posts there, and I've already stopped uploading non-fanart pieces to the site as I said I would.  And given I won't be doing anything w/ CA.org until next year, that gives me plenty of time to work on getting as much content as I can to this blog and working on my Pro-Spec site (which I'll actually be doing l8r today).

    Okay, so this is a bit of a big update; let's just get to it then shall we?

    First, a new venture.  I've always been particularly interested in wanting to make my own video game, and a while ago I got a lot of inspiration for an idea I'm now working on moderately btwn pictures.  That's all I'm saying of it now, but suffice to say it'd be neat to get it into playable form.  Only problem is, I don't really have any programming experience and my artwork is only now beginning to get to a point I think could work well in main projects such as a video game.  I could just as well get a group of experienced programmers to do the hard work for me, but not only is lack of money an issue there, that's also a bit of a cop-out.  This is my project, my first project, and I'd like to devote as much of myself to it as possible.  It'll take a little while to learn how to do the technical stuff, but I know I have the capability to do it.

    Rather than using a programming language or a proprietary software like Flash, I'm going to attempt coding the game in HTML, particularly using the multimedia tags and <canvas> element.  It seems like the W3C group has paid solid enough attention to the innovations of the net since Adobe bought Flash on-board, and I've seen some very neat examples of what the technology can do in capable hands.  There's also the fact that the opportunities the new HTML5 standard can bring may-if the pieces fall into place as they should-remove the need for heavy-proprietary plug-in software like Flash which, good as it is, is also a bit expensive.  There's also plenty of other potential benefits to HTML5, but long story short, I'm gonna give it a try and using such a standard will allow me to keep most of the money spending to game assets and marketing, while still getting to the largest possible web audience (most browsers support many HTML5 standards, the exception being the newer Internet Explorers :P). 

    At the moment I'm *just* learning HTML (well, again...I spent some time a few years ago at a technical college where it was one of the course material) and it's going pretty well.  Just basic stuff, and I'm hoping by the time I get to the game-relevant stuff I have a solid base of how the technology works and can be implemented.  In fact I'm going to attempt putting together pseudo-sites as I learn and maybe even create a website out of all of this l8r down the road next year, but for now I'll just keep things modest.

    This is the first picture update I have, it being the base to the background for my Pro-Spec site.  Haven't had much time over the week to work on this actually, but that should be less an issue now.  I'm not sure just how much detail I'll explicitally draw and ink, as I won't be using the lineart in the finished piece anyway (it's a background!), but at least I know what to do w/ the scenery's mood.  It's set in late evening, about shortly after sunset.  I want it to be very neon-intense w/ a slight cyberpunk complex in there for good measure, while still keeping it grounded to what you'd expect of a modern-day metropolis.  I'll have updates as it gets attended to.

    Some more work on my Alita fanart piece; got around to doing the inking and starting some clean-up now.  Although I was considering NOT doing any inking this time, I also think my initial reasons for wanting to stop that were ill-informed.  The Bilstein picture had some really chunking work on it which I wasn't happy w, but I only have myself to blame for that.  And it's not like I don't know how to moderate my pressure (although it's a bit difficult to do so when you're outdoors and it's feeling like 40 degrees).

   So this time, I've taken more precautions, mainly to only ink in room-temperature conditions and to not be so lazy w/ 'reading' the pencil work.  This'll be one of the next pictures to get painted, altho I'll have to do this in addition to two other fan-art pieces I'll post some roughs of next week.

    Finally, the Bilstein picture.  It turned out pretty well; I learned a lot more about lighting and NOT working too much w/ the underpainting base layer this time, and definitely got a stronger handling on contrasting values.  Even managed to tone down most of the lines where appropriate.  I still wish I could've drawn him a bit more 'badass' like, but there's always next time (which will itself benefit w/ me now being familiar w/ his design much more). This picture also solidified my color palette approach and has taught me in balancing the palette.  In truth I think differently than most others in deciding what colors to put on the palette, but at least I know now that way of thinking-which I might elaborate on some day when I'm on my deathbed xD-has been paying off. 

    I'll also take this time to make a vow to begin doing more traditional painting again.  Even tho oils would be preferable, I still like the acrylics and doing some traditional work should help balance out the monotony that eventually sets in when doing so many pieces digitally in a row.  That's really all I care to say of that right now; as usual, letting the actual work do most of the talking when it's ready to present itself.

    Oh and, if you can, check out the South Park episodes 200 and 201 again.  I don't think CC is ever going to re-air them, but I have a couple of links to them here- http://akirathedon.com/blobblog/watch-south-park-14x05-200-stream/ -, and here- http://www.watchsouthparkonline.net/season-14/episode-6-201/ -.  Very much worth watching, probably the most fun I've had w/ the series since their 13th season reached the halfway point. 

    'Kay; that's all for now.  Be back soon, so try and have fun even when the frost is locking up your joints (particularly for those of us on the East Coast, it's always like that this time of year) and turning you into an ice statue Sub-Zero would be proud to demolish.  L8r!

Update This Saturday

  Hey peeps; there might be a slight curiosity as to why I have yet to update my blog this week, when that usually gets done every Wednesday.  Well, the truth is that I'm holding out until I have a definitively finished version of a picture before doing so, something which should take place probably today tbh, but even so I wouldn't have the time to post that and a few other planned pieces until the weekend.

   And yes, the picture I'm referencing is my Bilstein project entry for FGE.  I uploaded the image there yesterday and you can visit it via this link http://fngrscr8dstroui.deviantart.com/#/d4hsi9j. I'm very happy of the image so far but it isn't finished in my eyes.  The deadline for entry was yesterday so I kinda went w/ what I had, which was "finished enough", but isn't the optimal version of the image.  For that I'm going to work more w/ the floor lighting, further contrast and a few more effects while toning down some of the lineart more.  So like I said, it should be definitely finished today, and that just means sooner to jump into new art.

   Speaking of which, I'll have a good bundle of that to show off as well when the weekend comes, so please look forward to it.  Until then, just do you and..um...watch Victoria's Secret (I know I do ;)?  L8r.