Rough Sketch - Sojourner and the dragons

First sketch pass, going to redraw this: The more I redraw the better it'll get. The challenge is to get it right at broad strokes stage.

The Dark

With this illustration I'd like to quote Ed Young, illustrator of one of my all time favorite children's books:

“To all the wolves of the world for lending their good name as a tangible symbol for our darkness.” 

― Ed Young, Lon Po Po

Wolves are amongst one of the most noble and beautiful creatures on our world.

The Dark - painting process and editing

It's amazing. Comparing the Value version with the beginnings of painting over in color, a kind of digital grisaille method I decided to apply to this picture as a means to sharpen some skills, it has become painfully obvious how color changes everything. I had to go in and make adjustments to the image that were fine in the greyscale version but with beginning to place color over and painting over elements the image shifted as it were. Some of the areas effected were proportional relationships and space related areas.

This brings home what Donald W. Graham writes "The importance of color as an independent force in painting developed in the nineteenth century. Methods of relating drawing to color had to be developed, for they had not been exploited by the renaissance painters or, for that matter, by most painters before Cezanne." His point is very insightful, he mentions earlier that color for most renaissance painters was not as important as linear perspective. Actually color had to be subject and bound to the laws of scientific perspective, so one ended up coloring in a grayscale drawing as opposed to painting in color. Now I know that this small little point can potentially open up a debate that could rage on for a while - let me state my intention plainly. I am not a proponent of one school of thought as a opposed to another. Rather I believe in integrating ideas to perfect skills and find truth to work by. Here is how this is relevant to us now. Our approach to a painting, if painting in a representational style of any form is effected by this underlying presupposition whether we understand it or not. As we learn to move from drawing to painting we encounter this problem. Color must be treated as an independent force, we need to be able to adjust color to meet our aims as artists. Even if we go against our 'logic' or what we expect to see in nature. After all, the artist's world is independent from reality in nature even if we are painting representational images.

I wanted a feral like quality to the girl. I'm painting over the image, initially with glaze like layers and increasingly more opaque in others. It has been interesting so far.

Since then... (updated at 11:26)

(updated -having found some time- 10:56 pm)

The Dark - working on color version

The Final sketch and value study  for the painting:

 

Here I'm working on a color version, doing minor alterations as I go. In sorting out the colors for the final I'm also trying not deaden it. I'll adjust things as I go to try and keep it fresh. Not sure if I'm :) or :( about it at this point and have to push on through.

'The Dark' - WIP 2

Had some time to post this up. It is the second work in progress post for 'The Dark'. I'm working on compositional elements and maintaining the value range I set for the image. Working on anatomy and such as I go, the basics are okay so fixes are pretty easy.

WIP2

WIP1

Screen capture of some of the workflow below:

Jungle war concept

Another concept submission, rough in painting style. Last year's work.

It begins... developing a visual language for...

Some early rough sketches for conceptual work on 'The Piano'. Will be posting more into this post as time goes past. This is for 'The Piano Hall'. Coming up, details, props, and characters.

Below: describing the objects in the hall

 Please be reminded that ALL ARTWORK AND TEXT COPYRIGHT © CIRO CORREIA, UNLESS OTHERWISE ATTRIBUTED TO THE RESPECTIVE COPYRIGHT OWNER - IT IS ILLEGAL TO PUBLISH OR PRINT ANY SUCH ARTWORK OR TEXT WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION BY THE ARTIST. I guess I'm saying just ask me.

Speedpaint - alien environment

Experimenting and playing around with different techniques and approaches:

Work in progress - The Dark

I'm very informative in a lot of the work I do, and this sometimes takes preference over the dynamic. I decided to work on something that favored the dynamic for a change. Initially I took 'catgirl' and decided to do a 2.0 version. I decided to veer away from that and ended up with this rough sketch for 'The Dark'.

I'm going to take this and Iron out things I'm not happy with before painting it. this iteration of the sketching process started with the following images:

Watch the blog for updates.

Character concept - action

This was another one of the pieces I submitted, the pose is in a state of movement. Now that I have some extra time coming up, I succumbed to the temptation to do some work on this. So, this post will carry a few updates as work progresses. I'll leave you with a low res of the original for now. It was done in a rough in style. I decided to hint at villainy in the character. I imagined him standing in from of some peasants house while it burnt down. (que-in evil laughter)

Speedpainting - today's photostudy

Just a technical exercise. Focusing on seeing selectively, especially when there are lots of smaller details and shapes in play. Setting an uncomfortable time deadline for what the task actually needs to be done decently pressures one to look at bigger shapes first and then to simplify smaller details. The aim was  to see how much I could try and convey as I went along within a limited time span.