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Energetic Possibilities

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      TaDaaaaa! I’m done with all my client based art, so onto the fun stuff!  Just in time too, because I was beginning to feel a little exposed. On the plus side, my art got better, so no complaints.

      My furnace broke down weeks ago and since I live in the mid Atlantic area, that’s a big deal. It hasn’t stopped me from pretending that I’m a starving artist at the turn of the 20th century, working on commission. Only you know, without the hassles of walking EVERYWHERE.

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       I have a couple of ideas for images that I jotted down when I was too busy with the work of others to do them. Looking forward to conquering the riddle of hair (hint:my digital skills need serious work). But hey, if all pork chops were perfect, we wouldn’t have hotdogs, right?

Catastrophic Success

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    First off, if you can, please check out the newest edition of ImagineFX! There’s a lot of cool art in it, plus a tutorial from Stanley Lau(Artgerm).
  
    Second, I’m starting to get really good at creating digital fx and graphics. How good? I am being asked to do a LOT of it! Since I’m a contractor and it’s not part of my job description, I shouldn’t have opened that Pandoras box, but it’s too late for take backs. Plus, I’m being asked to travel more. As a result, my art has slowed to a crawl.

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Damn my talented brain!

      My clients, who are mostly bodybuilders,  are also getting kinda cagey.  They want the artwork, but more of them don’t want to be seen in unfinished states, not to mention two of them gave me photos that had been published by a guy on a paysite.I don’t want to get into any copyright infringement issues, so I rescheduled something more private. The upshot of which is that I’ve drawn about 23 images and still need to do several cosplay pieces!

   Didn’t I ask for this?

Switch Throw

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          I’ll never understand why some people are constantly being abject dirtbags. After all, what reward can there truly be in such behavior? I guess it’s a crime of consent; if you’re too “nice” to stop them, that’s your flaw not theirs…
         This little rant is due to a potential customer that I should have seen coming a mile away. The request seemed innocuous enough; a favor that was needed by someone who considered themselves a friend. My usual response is “what’s the favor? ” in which case I can freely refuse.

        I didn’t heed my own advice.

        So in the end I had to cancel all of it. Every bit. Of course the person is angry at me, but since they had NO INTENTION TO PAY,  I felt justified in my refusal. You heard right. They wanted an entire wall size painting of a 13 member family by Christmas as a favor.

      Parasites. You never know where you’ll find them.

Mobile

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         Took a break from the craziness of competitor art to do a piece for a facebook friend. A lot of people seem to like it, so it’s something that I’m glad to have completed.

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         To keep from losing interest or burning out,  I decided to do something with the prismacolor markers that came with my college tools. To be honest, I never understood the big craze for using them; digital art was new to me and more exciting. However, now that everyone and their mother are extolling the copic markers, I decided to try them.

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      Right away there was a different feel to the technique of using them. It felt more…digital. It was as though the layering of colors that I used in Photoshop applied! After that, I was into it.

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        While I wouldn’t want to draw this way all the time,  it could easily find it’s place among my skill sets.  I was drawing on Bristol board paper, but I’ll check to see if something better is out there. In the meantime, it’s back to my regularly scheduled projects…

Butcher

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        I have a list of images as long as my arm and even if I could do one a day, it would take me two months!  I should be excited but that’s not the word for it. Overwhelmed is.

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       Not only that, most of these are getting a background. I can do it,  but it requires a little more thought and planning. You look at certain people and ideas come to mind. For instance this guy had a very primal theme; Atlas.

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        He’s not a massive person. Still the image gave me a good starting point. I ran with it from there.

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       So this is as far as I got before I had to leave for work. Promised piece is coming up!  In the meantime, enjoy your day.

Everything Needed

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    Last week, I showed you how far I’d gotten but not the steps before. Yeah a lot of things change when you’re working on a picture. For example…

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         In the earlier versions, something kept bothering me. Once I began shading it came to me; her left I seemed wonky! Now, I could have went back to the beginning and redress it on that layer, but instead I simply erased it.
         Using the magic lasso(W), I drew a selection around the other eye, then copy merged the area. Make sure you choose copy merged from the edit menu, otherwise it will only copy the selected layer of art!
         After you paste a new copy, move it to the area. While still highlighted, go into your transform set and choose ‘flip horizontally’. This will create a mirror image of the other eye. Of course, it can’t look exactly the same, so I recommend using your skew and rotate functions to align it properly and scale it correctly. In my case, I had to select the pupil, move it to create the illusion of looking forward and then shade the area.

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She looked a little like Popeye before I fixed her eye...

     Remember, the most important part of your image is the linework proceeding the actual coloring. However, if you make a mistake, you can always fix it.  That’s all for me, I gotta get back to drawing!

Centrifugal emo

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      My life is starting to settle down finally. A little art seemed to be in order, so I kicked out a political piece. Because I’d definitely vote for Cap!
     All of my paying work is out the door. I’m so happy! Weels have gone by. I am going to have to change my contracts though.  Most people don’t want me to display the art anywhere because it’s private. That’s cool, but I think I’m going to get out of the business of hiding my best pieces. I need to, at the very least, be able to display them in my portfolio!
   

TGIM

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         Ok, deep breath.

        Hey guys!  It’s going to be an awesome week for me. I took up the challenge of creating a color image with multiple themes. Since I haven’t done this before, I figured, “why not?”. Yes I’m a dumbass. Oh well…

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         The themes were a servant, night lights,  reflection, perspective and a landscape. So the kid in me figured Silver Surfer on his board looking down on the nightside of earth, staring at our cities. Bam! Combo!

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         So far, I’d gotten most of the way when I was reminded (well, told) that I needed to finish the digital piece I’d started. Makes sense.

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For an added bonus, the hand of Galactus!

       After a little more work,  it turned out pretty nice.  Of course, the talent is the real arbiter of it’s value, but sense I almost never draw background stuff,  I was pleasantly surprised. All this while listening to enough Evanescence to kill almost anyone. I worked harder at playing this weekend than my actual job!

        Man, I miss work.

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TaDaaaaa!