My Final Semester of Painting without Paint

This is what happens to a man after two semesters of Dogonification.  Being under Omar Dogan's watchful eye and swift hand has left me in a great and painful place.  Great because I can honestly say that I've come a long way from using Open Canvas 3 to using Photoshop.  Painful because I realise how much of my time I could have spent learning about colour and the elements of drawing.  Either way, I have a long and rough road ahead of me, and I am proud to say that I am on my way as a graduate of Omar's First Flock.

Here are the works that I've produced this semester.  Though looking back at them I do have regrets, I must move on!  Four steps of evolution for y'all.  Thanks for looking!

Beast concept sketching

Chosen design with flats and rough tails

Digitally blended line art and tinted flats

Adjusted skin and jewelry tints and rough tails

The beast lives!

The Beast of Aakronn:  My favourite piece of the semester.  What can I say.  It was supposed to be a money shot, and damn brotha', it paid!  What I learned: Drawing chains in perspective is one hell of a battle.  Don't mess around when doing it man, it can make you look like a fool real fast!

Sketch

Flats

67% done

Completed Dragon Fish

The Real Dragon Fish: I messed around with its design.  What I learned: Don't go to dark or light with values.

Line art

Shadow plotting

More refinement

Finshed room

\Black and white tonal study:  Line art done by Omar Dogan.  I think of all our assignments this year, this one seriously drilled in the principles of plotting shadows in accordance to types of light.  Though my effect on the wall and ceiling didn't go as planned, I am happy with this.  What I learned: Make sure to reference how different light sources interact with their surroundings indoors.

Concept sketch

Digital line art and flats

Blended flats and tinted skin tone

Wataaaaaa!

Bruce Lee the Chosen:  Among my greatest heroes, of course.  For a study of heads and hands, I picked none other than the Dragon himself.  What I learned: Heavy contrast in skin tones can make a piece muddy very easily.   Stay sharp, and stay clean.  When things get out of control, make a new layer, clip it, and paint over.

Shelby sketch up

Reworked perspective on computer during clean up + flats

Base colour for the GT500

Stark Industries' new bad boy

Unicorn, 1974 Shelby GT500:  Gone in 60 Seconds, anyone?  Definitely a cleaner peice for me.  Though I relied heavily on my linework, I am pleased with the results.  What I learned: Drawing vehicles aren't AS bad as people make them out to be.  Block it out, and  find your perspective points, and things should slowly fall into place.  (No, it is no trace over in any way).

Concept sketch for the Zaa temple

Cleaned up line work and light source

Background elements complete

Foreground Bodhisattva painted and moss-ed

Temple of Zaa:  We were to do one layout.  Anything we could imagine.  I, being a calm fellow, picked a surreal atmosphere where people have long since visited.  The Bodhisattva erode more and more as the sun always sets behind the tree of might (hah).  What I learned: Always make sure that details stay relative to your depth of field.  Too much detail is bad in some cases. 

Concept sketching (no she is not slapping her boobs!)

Chosen pose

Chosen fielding with some rough lighting and texture

Refinement

Colour tinting

Cell shading

Glove Slap, Baby!  What can I say?  I wanted to do a chick dressed in TRON gear.  And who could even ignore the fact that a motorcycle helmet looks just like an Ironman mask, if you actually put the face on it.  So voila, Iron-babe slaps the Casshern, Mopad-riding, wanna be for her helmet back.  This was the toughest project I did all semester.  What I learned: Warped perspective is neat, but needs to be appropriate.  Think about it, you usually see it in comics for 'epic' scenes.  This isn't all that 'epic', and the perspective gets so distorted that I loose myself in it.  Though I do like the buildings on the right side, this peice definitely needs some real fine tuning.  I liked the characters though.

And thus, my final semester of painting is over.  It's sad, really.  The work was taxing, but all good work is.  I won't really miss the work, because work never stops in my life.  But I shall miss the guidance and rough nudges in the right directions.