Journey to Monte Seageol

So this one is my latest. However, it is a paint over an old landcape I did a while ago. The reason being for this paintover, was to apply some corrections advised by some professional concept artists I met during the 2013 London conceptart.org workshop.

 Unfortunately I didn't save the whole process as I went along so I decided instead to explain the problems encountered in my former painting and the decisions I made in my new one (either it is in the composition, rendering, design or story telling...).

I placed both paintings next to each other to facilitate the comparision. At first glance they both have attractive color palettes, conserve the the same theme and placement for the main focal points.

The comments I received towards my former painting were the following ones: the city on top of the mountain wasn't reading enough as it did not contrast enough with the the rocks surrounding it. The very conal shape of the mountain on the right handside of the image had something very amatorish despite the realsitic rendering applied to it. Lastly, my foreground had nothing to offer and the overall illustration was lacking of significant storytelling. (well...after these coments that I couldn't think it was my best landscape painting any more!....)

Above, I illustrated with some red arrows, the flow of my compisition, how the viewer eyes should normally read the painting. In the first one, all arrows seem to point towards one single focal point. However, there should have been two and the main one intended should have been the city. Also since the biggest shape (the mountain) is positioned at the centre of the image (supposedly not ideal for a good composed image, see rule of thirds) , our eyes tend to rest in this area for a little while but the absence of  additional elements of interest is leaving the viewer with a slight feeling of lassitude.

The new version is showing instead a circular flow of red arrows across the whole painting, making the viewer eyes travelling all around the four corners and center of the image. The introduction of new point of interests subordinate to the main focal ones promote this continuous movement almost like check points to the next  focus of attention. A very strong component which made it easy to create the circular flow, was by blocking the right hand-side of the image with the cliff pointing at the city towards its left.

And finally, the story telling. I think that it is the most noticeable changes and improvements made between the two paintings. Story telling is bringing a purpose to the whole design and is the key for the viewer to become immersed in the painting. In my image, I could count five elements which contributed to the narrative of this illustration:

1. The city. Chosen for obvious reasons,  is the most important point of the story as every other components relate to it. A city is a symbol of life, civilization and intelligence. Its location, size and architecture is raising curiosity towards the type of cvilization and beings living out there...

2. The traveller. Almost equally as important as the city, however, he is serving different purposes in the painting. One, He is the hero, the actor of the story. He is the meaning for the painting as it illustrates his "journey to monte Seagoel". Two,he serves the notion of scale: Since the viewer of the painting is (hopefully!) a human too, by seeing the figure in the bottom right corner, the viewer can relate to the size and distance between the details present in the environment. 

3. The broken bridge and waterfalls. These little details were added to explain that the path which was leading to the short cut to the city cannot be used anymore. Unfortunately,  the next access is across the bridge, several miles away. Waterfalls have been placed, in this case, to create movement and danger which adds to the epic scale of the piece.

4. The avatar statue. This is a symbol of civilization, a cult, a tribute, but to whom? (also repeated in element #3)

5. More waterfalls seemingly falling into infinite depth. causing more menace to the travel of our hero and supplementing more mysteries about this world. 

Fu's caricature

Here is another personal project I made for a good friend of mine. I have added the full process for informative purpose and to demonstrate how I go about creating my caricatures.

Prelim work:

I start to gather photo references of my friend which are of a decent quality with a good form lighting, high resolution and not too grainy to the point that I lose some important elements of realism from the picture. I then look for photos which I believe is showing the most of his personality, body language and physical caracteristics.

My friend tends to be of a very enthusiastic and jovial nature and demonstates a lot of gestual while he talks. His mouth is one of his physical traits which accentuates his animated and warm character.  As I couldn't find the right gestual, I decided to take some shots of myself with the body expression which would convey my vision for this caricature and which would fit the photo I pre-selected...

The Sketch:

I quickly work on a draft in Photoshop which combines the photos I selected for this project. At this point, I am trying to nail my proportion, values and above all, exaggeration of some of his facial features by preserving the likeness of the subject. When satisfied with the result, I then set up my layer to a Multiply layer mode. This will allow me to introduce color later on, without affecting my line work... 

Color palette:

I, then, create a new layer beneath my sketch and begin by introducing a wash of color which will determine my basic skin tone for this painting. I ,therefore, selected a moderate orange for this purpose and compose my palette by varying its color temperatures and lightness. I also choose to contrast my background with a slightly desaturated cyan. Both colors seem to work perfectly as they are split complementary colors...

Painting:

I continue painting, but this time, on a layer which has been created over my sketch, covering my line work. Here, my task is to maintain my forms by painting with color, remembering to add some color satuartion in my shadows and not to fall within a monochromatic painting by paying attention to my color temperatures...

Refining:

Here, I am refining the details with attention to my hard and softedges contrasting between detailed areas of focus and areas of lesser interest, guiding and resting the eyes of the viewer to facilitate a better flow of information within the image. This has to apply to whatever images, either there is one subject in it or it is an illustration with a ton of them...

Last touches and adjustments:

I am approaching the end of the painting's rendering. I notice that the right arm's position is a bit off so I make a quick selection around it and place it to what I feel is more anatomically correct (that's the magic of photo editing software!). I create a new layer on top of my existing ones where there is some random photo texture and change its mode to soft light and play around its opacity. This is adding some surface texture and is getting rid of the very smooth feel that the entire painting had previously. I make some color and brightness adjustement as I intend to print it and remove the excess of brightness in the borders of my painting in order to create some vignetting which again is guiding the eyes of the viewer to the focal area of the painting. 

And that's it ...it is printed, framed and mounted on the wall "taking pride of place on my friend's landing".

People of Gu-Huaan character ideations

PROJECT: PEOPLE OF GU-HUAAN

Before talking about what this project entails, I’d like to evoke how a series of circumstances brought it to life.

In March 2013, I decided to break from my lonely wolf digital artist habit which consists of interacting mostly with other artist homologue via my computer device. And for that, I looked for local aspiring concept artists/ illustrators alike me with whom I could sketch, exchange ideas, challenge and motivate each other with the sole purpose to make our art skills greater. And, after several weeks of searching for potential interest in web base art community and email exchanges, I was leading a group of 5 motivated artists. We all agreed that between our meet ups, we should work on common assignments which would be art directed by one of us on a rota basis.

The assignment “People of Gu-Huann” was my idea and under my art direction. However, it was in fact more than a study task that I was offering but purely and simply a vision on the manner we could not only develop our skill set, but also ensure that the flow of creativity would keep flowing. I understand that the key for a unique and exceptional design isn't only about how good are your art skills but equally, how much knowledge you've got on your subject matter. Throwing a random assignment, fort weekly, for study sake may have its results for a short while. However, the idea here was to create an assignment with a fictional narrative which would relate to the previous assignment(s) – A story. This would have for consequences to force us to invent or reinvent objects, life, situations, places, pushing our imagination further by opening infinite possibilities into an imaginary world which only “us” had the power to model through our designs.

Another very positive aspect of it, was the great source of knowledge we would gain from it because building a fantasy world still needs to relate to the understanding of the real world we're living in and therefore our general knowledge on the subject matter will highly benefit from it, as much in design than in the creation of the brief. 

Sadly, the group study dissolved too early and my vision for those assignments didn’t see the light amongst us. However I’ve been continuing working on it and the following posts are some of the work I made so far which is connected to that project, including the supporting docs I created at the time and submitted to the group, making the assignment more purposeful and interactive.

The night Crawler

...I will call it finished

Here is a sample of pencil sketches from my moleskine. 

Anna's caricature