Thursday, September 10, 2009

Glowing cave and Mountain bridge


This small color sketch is special for me because I did not use the color picker at all when painting it in Photoshop. I think I'm getting lazy when I always sample the color from the art, and not create my colors manually, as in painting traditionally. I wanted to paint in a strong sunlight shining into the cave and reflecting a strong bounce light onto the ceiling of the cave.

This is another color sketch, this time it's outside of a cave. Lots of pine trees outside the cave. In painting this, it's fun and tricky at the same time for me because I did not use any references but just kinda imagined how it would be. Its not so realistic, but what the heck...lots of room for improvement.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

An early morning drink

Today I am quite happy to have painted a small painting of a Spinosaurus taking a drink from a lake, in the morning. The idea came from a quick sketch below, drawn while wating for the MRT. Done using photoshop, of course.

In my mind, I wanted an early morning look with a cool atmosphere without the sun shining too harshly. So I laid down some colors beneath the sketch layer (which was in Multiply mode). I immediately felt that the perspective in the sketch was a little off, because the horizon would be too high to be seen in that angle which I've drawn the dino drinking in the lake. So, I decided to omit the horizon and background landscape, and replace them with some water plants to maintain some visual interest at the top area of the painting.

After awhile, I was not satisfied with the colors because the water looked too green, and it didn't imply sunlight coming in at all. As if the whole scene was on a cloudy day. However, I liked the colors on the dino as it has a nice contrast of Blue and yellow, like a crocodile.

So, I decided to scrap the whole painting and start anew, while googling at some reference images along the way. My new colors are much less colorful, and retains a large white-ish area for the water, which works pretty well to allow me to paint some reflection of the blue sky and imaginary foliage somewhere nearby. I detailed out some areas near the dino with some rocks and pebbles that can be seen through the water beneath the dino's shadow. Happy!