# Off-Topic Discussion > Artists' Corner >  >  Darkmatters' Art Gallery

## Darkmatters

Hey all - it's been a while since I posted any art - there was crappy thread detailing my first attempts at learning to use a tablet way back, but I sort of gave up and the tablet sat untouched for about a year, until one day I decided to pick it up and get back to work on digital painting. Meanwhile I had gained some skills at retouching photographs using mostly Lightroom and a little photoshop, and suddenly it occurred to me - since one of my biggest problems with my paintings (both digital and traditional) was color, I ought to be able to use the same technology I had learned and apply it to my paintings - I mean durr! Big forehead slap moment. 

So I busted out the 2 most promising of my old paintings and went to work on them:


You might remember this one from an earlier incarnation:


Crick by Darkmatters, on Flickr
As I said, I was having issues with color - basically my colors were way too saturated and brilliant and they clashed rather badly - no color harmony to be found. I *THOUGHT* I was doing pretty well, but then I looked at a bunch of paintings by Frank Frazetta (who I'm studying as a master of classical figurative art and who I'm attempting to sort of emulate for a while - to stand on the shoulders of the giant of all giants and get a better view of the territory from up there) and his paintings weren't actually anywhere near as intense color-wise as I remembered them being!! And they're often considered to be quite vivid and colorful ~ !!  ::?: 

But I quickly realized his strategy is to use very desaturated earth tone colors for most of a painting (which looks very Renaissance) and then just use one well-chosen color at greater intensity so it stands out - that way no clashing color disharmony! Brilliant (pun intended)!! 

So that's where I started - I used photoshop to desaturate and bring my stuff down to earth (_tones_ that is - nyuk nyuk!) and get those outrageous colors under control. In fact many painters throughout history are known to start with a monochromatic underpainting in browns in order to work out the value plan - get the lights and darks in the right places first, and then start working in the colors - turns out Master Frazetta does that one too, so who am I to second guess it? This one was already in color, so I just detoxified it a ways and then reworked the background and did a bit of fixing up on the figure - that pose is seriously lame though (it's actually the first thing I drew in a massive impatient rush as soon as I got ahold of my tablet and have been developing it ever since). 

Then there's this one:


Longbow-Evolution-2 by Darkmatters, on Flickr
This is the one where I'm reeeaaallly stretching my wings!! As you can see in the montage below, it started from an oil painting I did many years ago that was bad not only in terms of color but also the anatomy was awful!! I'm ashamed now when I look at it - and I'm not entirely sure how I got the proportioning/anatomy so screwed up - even then I actually knew better. I believe I was pretty well flabbergasted by the actually quite difficult pose with all its extreme foreshortening and the upraised arm and strongly compressed elbow joint. These are all high difficulty items - especially for an amateur like me! 


Longbow-Evolution by Darkmatters, on Flickr
But as you can see from the evolution progression, he shaped up rather nicely. Though there were some pretty weird stages along the way - I only picked a few highlights to show here. Suffice to say - along the way I've learned hella lot about how to use photoshop to reshape and splice things together and do all kinds of plastic surgery! I've literally moved that upraised arm dozens of times, distorted it and stretched it out and pushed parts of it this way and that... in fact it became a lot like working a clay sculpture. I've put a lot of hours into this over the last 3 weeks, and I'm amazed at the progression, in both the painting and in myself as an artist. As Onieronaut mentioned on his art thread the other day, once you really figure out how to use it, photoshop allows you to do far better than you can in traditional media!!

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## Linkzelda

Glad you set up an Art Gallery, looking forward to future submissions from you Darkmatters, and yes, Photoshop definitely helps with the quality  :smiley:  . 

With your other forms of art (the stopmotion animation and such), it's going to be very interesting. 

*bows down*

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## dutchraptor

> As Onieronaut mentioned on his art thread the other day, once you really figure out how to use it, photoshop allows you to do far better than you can in traditional media!!



Great work man, It's obvious that you're getting the knack for it. Gotta disagree with the traditional art thing though, maybe in terms of speed photoshop is more powerful, but they are pretty equal for a skilled artist in terms of quality of work. On top of this working on a physical medium is much more gratifying (If you are trying things like hyper-realism or concept art) and you can actually fit a phenomenal amount of detail into your work which is almost impossible to do on an average 300dpi image. I really like both, in terms of learning curve, photoshop blows real life out of the wind but this really means nothing to someone who really cares about progressing their ability as an artist.

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## Darkmatters

Hey Link! Thanks for the encouragement, and for being the first visitor to my gallery!! (And stand up man - nobody bows in here!)

Dutch - thank you very much!! And don't worry, I'm not giving up on traditional media - I love it too much to do that. I've actually made a pretty substantial breakthrough with oil painting a while back too (just a couple of small sketches, nothing worth posting yet, but I'm getting color and value under control there as well). One thing I plan to do is work out sketches and color comps digitally and then maybe project them onto a canvas and sketch in with charcoal then paint it up in oil. Best of both worlds!

Hey, do you have any of your work online anywhere? I didn't realize you're an artist.

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## Darkmatters

Progress from today:


Bemused by Darkmatters, on Flickr

I'm definitely getting better and faster. This is really getting fun!

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## Leanbb

Duuuuude! You're getting really good at this! I started learning the same thing about 5 years ago but I stopped because I started playing music and I had no time left to spare... I'm sad I did though. I never got as far as you but I managed to make a couple simple illustrations.
This one's based on an Edgar Allan Poe poem called "Ulalume":

Ulalume_by_Leanbb.jpg

The only advice I could give you is to work on details so the image doesn't look too digital.

Big props on anatomy and all that stuff I never learned!!  ::banana::

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## Darkmatters

Thank you! Very good job on that illo - you picked a difficult lighting situation and handled it quite well. 

Most artists seem to find several different avenues for the creative energy - I plink around a little in music as well (my latest toy is a native american flute - nice and simple to play, just the way I like it!). So I have no doubt at some point you'll get back to the painting - you're off to a great start already. 

I'll definitely be smoothing things out and blending more and adding some details as I near completion, but I'm not a detail-oriented artist - I'm mostly about simple composition and form and lighting. To me it's important to get those things right first, and then you can move into details etc. Heh, in fact, I'll be adding some fun details a little later today...

And about anatomy - I'm making my big push to try to finally learn it. In fact that's why I'm doing the 70's style fantasy stuff (partially-clothed muscular figures - what better way to learn anatomy?!) - to me it's classical figure painting that follows an unbroken lineage from the Renaissance and ancient Greece. Figurative art didn't die when modern art hit the scene as everybody said it did - it just moved over to illustration at the hands of artists like Howard Pyle and NC Wyeth (in fact I'd argue that the _Fine Art World_ became a bit mentally disturbed and lost sight of its own core themes). 

Pretty soon I want to do some posts about the importance of practicing the basics and about my secret for anatomy - alongside photoshop and my tablet this has revolutionized my work and finally let me break through that wall that confined me from painting well for so long.

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## Leanbb

I had never been really aware of the "70's fantasy style" until a Bulgarian friend of mine showed me an art book by an artist called Boris Vallejo. Mind blowing. He has an amazing ability to paint impossibly attractive women.

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## dutchraptor

> Dutch - thank you very much!! And don't worry, I'm not giving up on traditional media - I love it too much to do that. I've actually made a pretty substantial breakthrough with oil painting a while back too (just a couple of small sketches, nothing worth posting yet, but I'm getting color and value under control there as well). One thing I plan to do is work out sketches and color comps digitally and then maybe project them onto a canvas and sketch in with charcoal then paint it up in oil. Best of both worlds!
> 
> Hey, do you have any of your work online anywhere? I didn't realize you're an artist.



yup, working with digital and traditional together works really well. I haven't uploaded any art work on here, I might one of these days. I'm getting quite good at shading and I've been working with a lot of darker shades like 6b and 8b. I do a bit on the computer but it takes quite a lot of time which i don't have. 
I love going through deviant art and seeing what some people have created with photoshop, it's really inspiring. I need to get better because I am currently in a course for game design ( mainly programming) and the art will help me get a job. Concept art is like the second closest thing to lucid dreaming for me  :tongue2:

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## Darkmatters

> I had never been really aware of the "70's fantasy style" until a Bulgarian friend of mine showed me an art book by an artist called Boris Vallejo. Mind blowing. He has an amazing ability to paint impossibly attractive women.



Boris, yeah! Quite a talented artist, as is his wife/model Julie Bell. Personally my favorites are Frank Frazetta (the artist who single-handedly created what I call the 70's fantasy art scene, way back in the 60's actually) and Jeffrey Jones. Their work has more of what I consider a 'painterly' quality to it, less photo-realistic. One thing I dislike about Boris is he puts so much polish into his work - the skin often looks like shiny plastic. Not knocking his skills at all though - he's obviously a master, just placing him according to my own personal likes and dislikes. 





> yup, working with digital and traditional together works really well. I haven't uploaded any art work on here, I might one of these days. I'm getting quite good at shading and I've been working with a lot of darker shades like 6b and 8b. I do a bit on the computer but it takes quite a lot of time which i don't have. 
> I love going through deviant art and seeing what some people have created with photoshop, it's really inspiring. I need to get better because I am currently in a course for game design ( mainly programming) and the art will help me get a job. Concept art is like the second closest thing to lucid dreaming for me



Heh, I became a soft pencil junkie for quite a while! Sometimes delving all the way down to the 9b. Pencil is definitely my best medium, though I do believe photoshop is finally allowing me to work as well in full color. Have you seen Conceptart.org? As far as I'm concerned it's the best online art site with lots of tutorials and workshops as well as portfolios/sketchbooks by some amazing talents as well as beginners and intermediates. I love just going in there and browsing people's sketchbooks or finished works.

And I totally agree about art being like lucid dreaming - in fact I was going to say the same thing! Normally we _see_ paintings, movies etc - or hear music - but when we actually create art ourselves it's like exerting control and creating a part of a world with characters and a bit of a story. Very much like lucid dreaming, but much slower.

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## Darkmatters

Bemused-New by Darkmatters, on Flickr

I didn't get to the details I mentioned yesterday - got caught up in that damn fish mostly, and now I don't really like it. Aside from looking cut and pasted in thanks to the ragged hard outline, it just doesn't go with the rest of the painting - it looks slick and shiny whereas the rest has a more soft pastel sort of look. I think I might completely re-do the fish. 

But I'm extremely happy with the way I managed to integrate the figure and background. Previously I noticed the figure was brightly lit by a strong sun, while the rest of the picture looks like a dimly lit overcast day with soft diffused lighting coming from the entire sky rather than a single strong source like the sun. I noticed when I would look at the figure my eyes had to re-adjust, and I couldn't see him and the background properly at the same time. But now I've got him, the fish, the spear, and the background all on their own layers and have adjusted lighting levels etc until it all looks much more integrated to me. 

It's probably 3/4 of the way done now. Just got to add a couple of details in the background and work on the creek banks a bit and then start on final cleanup and finishing touches. I must say overall I'm really happy with this one (got to do something about that fish though).

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## Darkmatters

Developed it some more. Wow, what's with me and expanding canvases all the time? They start all simple and keep growing...

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## Darkmatters

Wait wat!!? 

I just noticed a lot of similarities between my painting and my signature pic, starting with the red fish, in the same placement and basic position as the red-robed man. Then my barbarian fisherman is in the same spot basically as the tree. There's going to be a small fire burning cheerily just inside the grotto, pretty much where the sun is. And a blue wedge of sky showing beyond a strong diagonal edge in almost the same spot in both. Mine is a dirt bluff as opposed to the dome of the heavens, but compositionally they're essentially the same. Weird - was I subconsciously influenced by that image? Expanding the canvas even makes it more similar in shape...   ::?: 

** Edit

And his head and one hand are emerging through that diagonal... 

oh crap!  ::shock::

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## SnowyCat

> Wait wat!!? 
> 
> I just noticed a lot of similarities between my painting and my signature pic, starting with the red fish, in the same placement and basic position as the red-robed man. Then my barbarian fisherman is in the same spot basically as the tree. There's going to be a small fire burning cheerily just inside the grotto, pretty much where the sun is. And a blue wedge of sky showing beyond a strong diagonal edge in almost the same spot in both. Mine is a dirt bluff as opposed to the dome of the heavens, but compositionally they're essentially the same. Weird - was I subconsciously influenced by that image? Expanding the canvas even makes it more similar in shape...  
> 
> ** Edit
> 
> And his head and one hand are emerging through that diagonal... 
> 
> oh crap!



dat shit cray

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## Darkmatters

I'm finding it very difficult to paint dirt. Left to my own devices I'll just scribble randomly all over and hope it starts to look good. It took a real effort to stop and make some hard decisions about forms and planes and light. Even then I started out rather randomly - I find I tend to make a lot of very similar shapes repeating all over without realizing it, but when I see it I change a few of them and pretty soon it's starting to look fairly decent. I'm finally getting it to a stage where I've eliminated most of the weird marks that look totally wrong and I'm starting to be able to see some forms there that actually react properly to the lighting. 

This is an excellent education in major and minor forms and planes facing the light versus planes facing away from it. And this is pretty much all defining form is after all - pretty simple stuff really. Why is it so hard to make myself do it this way?  ::lol::  Why do old habits from a time before I understood the depiction of form want to take over on stuff like dirt? Ah well - I do seem to be replacing those old bad art habits with some better ones.

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## Oneironaut Zero

Looking great, man! I'm going to enjoy watching you progress through your digital art. 

Also, I REALLY like the archer! Just such a great pose and color scheme. Can't wait to see what it looks like when you finish!

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## Darkmatters

Thanks O! It really means a lot knowing you're watching over my shoulder. It's cool that we both seem to be advancing rapidly thanks to tablets and photoshop. 

Decided to _reeeally_ simplify the major planes. I'm liking the new look - more like smooth packed clay rather than loose crumbly clods. I suspect painting this bluff is developing my skills considerably for visualizing and rendering form.

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## SnowyCat

Weird, it seems that dirt is the _only_ thing I'm able to draw well.

Or maybe it's just that everything I draw resembles dirt.

...huh.

Anyway, I'm also really enjoying watching your progress. My older brother has artistic inclinations, so it kinda reminds me of when I used to sit in the basement and watch him draw / run little errands for him back when we were kids... Dem feels

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## bro

It's nice to see this progress. Rare that I can look at a work of art and feel as though I'm there. Looking at this makes me feel like its a dream you had, and I'm sharing it. I like that it's not overcomplicated but is impressionistic.

Really solid

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## Darkmatters

Wow SnowyCat and bro, I honestly think those are the coolest things anybody has said about my art!! Many thanks guys - I feel like I have a couple of new bros! 

Little progress:

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## Darkmatters

Spent all day re-working the pose and proportions:



Lookin all like a swashbuckler an shit..  :Shades wink:

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## Oneironaut Zero

_Very_ nice!

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## Darkmatters

This one's for the other art students to geek out to and see how I approach the process:



Now I knew where I wanted to put him and decided he'd be crouching rather than sitting - I want him to look active and athletic. So I deleted the colorforms layer and roughed in a sketch. It's still tentative at this point - I'm trying it out and seeing what needs changing.



Here I had flattened the sketch and the grey blob layer and just started painting right onto it. That's necessary before you can start cutting it up and moving parts around.







Wow, that white was hurting my eyes! A neutral color is so much nicer to work over. It's a separate layer that'll be deleted once it's served it's purpose. 







Most of the re-adjustments were done using photoshop's Free Transform and Distort tools.

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## Darkmatters

It took me a long time to decide what I wanted his face and hair to look like. I went through a lot of people that might serve as inspiration, and strangely enough, I ended up with a young Roman Polanski. Surprised the hell out of me, but somehow it works. Using a simple 3 tone system, mid, light, and dark to define the big forms of the head and face. And yeah, now that I've posted it I can see the nose is a bit too long, it's crowding the mouth down onto his chin..

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## Darkmatters

Here's a few from the 90's and early 2000's --

Tori Amos:



And a bunch of Fiona Apple:









Randomness:

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## Darkmatters

Bunch of sketchbook scans mostly from the mid 90's again - a very good period for me:


(This one was early 2000's)













Man, it's good to go back and look at this old stuff from a time when I was really kicking ass! After this I pretty much stopped drawing for like a dozen years until just recently, and now I'm trying to work the rust off the old skills. Seeing this stuff makes me feel like I can start drawing like this again.

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## Darkmatters

A few more dug out of the old boxes:

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## Oneironaut Zero

Love the first one, in the last post! Great work!

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## Darkmatters

Thanks O - that's definitely one of my best. I wish I could work in color as well as in pencil. 

Oh, and I just realized people might have missed the big dump of color drawings I made at the end of page one (because immediately after that I did the sketchbook scans dump that started page 2). That includes some of my best color work to date in case anyone's interested. 

Man, I love going back through all these old drawings! It really brings back the time when I did them, and I had completely forgotten about a bunch of them. My goal for right now is to try to bring my drawing skills back up to where they used to be, then I get serious about working with color. So far this little burst of drawing and digi-painting is just to get me back into it, because the best artists are the ones who work every day and have been for years - when you stop you really get rusty.

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## Darkmatters

Ah crap!! I think I killed the thread! Like an idiot I went and moved all my pics on Photobucket into a new folder, so people cn just browse through it if they want without all my other pics being in it as well, and I forgot that was gonna make all the pics disappear here in the thread. Derp!! I think I'll re-create the thread or at least an abbreviated version of it, but meanwhile here's a link to the whole folder: Art Dump. (hope that works, I've never tried this before)

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## SnowyCat

> Ah crap!! I think I killed the thread! Like an idiot I went and moved all my pics on Photobucket into a new folder, so people cn just browse through it if they want without all my other pics being in it as well, and I forgot that was gonna make all the pics disappear here in the thread. Derp!! I think I'll re-create the thread or at least an abbreviated version of it, but meanwhile here's a link to the whole folder: Art Dump. (hope that works, I've never tried this before)



You could probably just edit your posts and re-link the pictures, but that might take a little time.

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## Darkmatters

Lol I just tried that, but it won't let me edit the posts after a certain amount of time - I think it was 144 minutes or something. 

It's actually 1440 - which is like over 100 hours I think. Thank you for _LYING_ pop-up message!!  :Mad:  :Bang head:

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## Darkmatters

They're *BAAAAAAA--AAAAAAAAACK!!*  ::banana::  ::banana::  ::banana:: 

It was simple - I just moved all the pics back to the folder they were originally in - didn't occur to me that would work, but that's all it took. 

Anywho - a couple more that I scanned and did a little digital work on:


Pencil and oil pastel on paper, finished digitally


Pencil and oil paint on paper, finished digitally

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## Linkzelda

Is it me, or does the second one look like Zhaylin (her avatar)??  :paranoid:   :Shades wink: 

The headgear and facial composition (at least the forehead) looks similar. Anyway, glad those pics are up again!  :smiley: 


Also, I noticed you used some violet colors and blues, etc. to really pop out the skin color and make it stand out. I'm currently trying to get used to coloring digitally (since I usually do grayscale first and then do color). However, it seems that the tutorials I read on several forums and websites that talked about skin led to that same conclusion that you did really well on.  ::D: 

I like both of their facial expressions! Nice stuff as always Darkmatters!


Oil pastel? It almost looks like watercolor to me, but it's been a while since I knew the difference from my Art class in high school.  :tongue2:

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## Darkmatters

It _does_ look a lot like Zhaylin, doesn't it? Weird thing is, I drew it before I was ever on DV. It's actually a still of Julia Stiles from Save the Last Dance. 

I love oil pastels - I have a huge wooden box of Cray Pas Specialist, little square oil pastels. It was a way of transitioning into color for me, it's easy to look in the box and see what color you need whereas it's a lot harder to just imagine it out of nothing. There are so many ways to use oil pastel - I like to start by doing a pencil drawing and sealing it with three or four coats of Krylon Matte Finish so it won't smear (needs to be at least three coats, but if you go too thick it gets a frosted look that screws up the drawing), then just lightly scribble some colors in and use a paper towel with some Turpenoid on it to rub it all around - it gives it a nice watercolor wash look  and is very transparent, you can still see the drawing clearly. Then you can start to build up more opaque layers of oil pastel over that (or scan it and take it to photoshop). Both oil pastels and oil paint are great to use on paper because oil doesn't make paper buckle and wrinkle the way water does - you can do this on regular sketchbook paper. The only problem is the drawings will self destruct in like 40 or 50 years - the oil slowly destroys the fibers and makes it turn yellow and fall apart. But I did some oil paint on paper work 20 years ago that still looks perfect - so far anyway. I guess it'll outlast me.

Oh, and another exciting thing about using oil pastels with pencil - even after you've got the oil pastel on pretty thick you can come in with a really soft dark pencil (like a 6B or 9B) and do your darkest (black) shading - it blends into the oil pastel. A pencil point allows you to get good sharp edges and pinpoint accuracy, which otherwise is almost impossible in oil pastels. Oh man, now you've got me wanting to do a demo on how I work like this..

And yeah, you really do need to cool off your fleshtones with some blue colors, ranging into greens and purples. Otherwise the flesh colors are too 'hot', and end up looking too pink. I still need to do more cooling off on the Julia Stiles one. I'm still struggling with putting blues and purples into my fleshtones - it just feels so wrong! Like it's going to mess everything up. Though I don't have much trouble using purples in shadows - I like to use what's called spectral shift - if you look at the colors in a spectrum the light colors start with yellow (or white if you want to get really technical) and then orange, red and into purple and then blue. That's how I grade the light and shadow colors in my flesh tones.

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## Darkmatters

Just made up an alternate version. It's Cornflower blue..   :Hiding:

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## JoannaB

I like the cornflower blue one even better, though I did like the original one.

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## Darkmatters

Thanks Joanna - I actually like it better too - even though in the movie she was wearing a sort of orange-ish brown. It's too close to her skin colors and makes it all look pretty bland - the blue helps to balance out the colors a bit.

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## Darkmatters

Ok, I did that just playing around at first, but I really do like the way it looks, so now I'm getting serious with it. 



It can be super tempting to go too far with adjusting contrast and saturation etc - it makes certain parts of the painting look great, but meanwhile it's screwing up other parts. I think I was looking mostly at the background before while adjusting contrast etc, and didn't notice how it had overcranked the darks on the skin tones and a few other things. Now it looks much better - but I'm a bit bothered by the dark outlines.

Is the background too much now, and did I crop off too much? I think so (on both) - it's weird, it can take a while to really _see_ what you've done and how well it's working. But fear not - I have the power of the mighty *Undo* button!

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## Oneironaut Zero

I think it looks great.  :smiley: 

(Big fan of Julia Stiles, too. What a cutie.)

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## WiseEggHead

Did you take art classes? If not you should consider it, since you have strong potential and theres also a very unique style shining through your artwork, which is so goddarn important for artists! I really loved them all, and it looks like your stronger in character design? I would love to see some more scenery though, like that one with the four chairs and that balloon lamp  :smiley:  That pic had such an intense atmosphere to it. 

I just can repeat myself here: "Please do more"  :smiley:

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## Darkmatters

Probably one of the most useless things I've done is take art classes at the local community college - like most schools since around WW2 they refuse to teach technique - in fact quite literally the instructors will just walk around the room with hands clasped studiously behind their backs repeating "you learn to draw by drawing" or "you learn to paint by painting" (depending on which class you're in). I was already too advanced for those classes when I enrolled, and my teacher even said as much - to get really good instruction you need to be in a very expensive school. Or just buy a lot of books and watch a lot of tutorials. In the end what I paid for was just a place to sit with other people and make art, but the critique sessions and a few random things I picked up from different people were valuable. But I think I literally learned more in the school's library after class than in it. 

Heh - the one with the four chairs and the balloon lamp (actually a Japanese paper lantern) was my mom's dining room. I tried to take pictures of it from that perspective, but most of it was hidden behind the wall (the vertical line I drew) and a lot of huge plants behind the sliding glass door, so I had to stand outside on the deck and draw it, stepping from side to side to see what's there and then correcting for perspective error in the drawing. I'm really glad I draw a lot of stuff from my actual life, because they bring the memories back in some ways better than photographs, which capture the brute physical facts but often not the feeling or the memory very well. A drawing or painting captures the artist's experience. 

"Please do more" - you got it!! And thank you.

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## Darkmatters

I *think* its done! Which would make it my first successfully completed painting. Although technically it's more of a drawing/painting hybrid, because I worked hard to keep the pencil drawing fully visible and to retain its characteristics. But still I'm calling it my first finished painting. Though I can almost guarantee there will be tweaking and fiddling over the next few days.

** And _already_ I'm seeing things I need to work on a bit more..  ::lol::

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## Darkmatters

This one's done - a much looser sketchier piece than the last:



Sorry for posting so many in-progress images with only slight changes each time - I really need to stop doing that!

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## Darkmatters

I said a few posts back that I wanted to do a demo on my technique for doing an oil pastel wash drawing, and it just so happens I got in a couple of new drawing pads and wanted to try one of them out, so I decided to go ahead and do it last night. Here's a drawing I cranked out - I did this loose and modern-style partly because it's quicker but also I like working like this sometimes:



This one and the 2 at the end were done on the scanner, the rest I just shot on a digital camera, that's why the quality of them is pretty poor. But it's good enough to demonstrate the steps. 



Here I've sealed the pencil drawing with 3 good heavy coats of Krylon Matte Finish spray. It also helps to use a fairly hard pencil - otherwise the next step can really smear up the graphite and make a big mess of it. 

I picked 2 oil pastels, both pretty unsaturated earth tones - one a light brown and the other a darkish yellow - this creates the overall tone for the drawing. This technique is actually very similar to techniques used by artists from at least the Renaissance if not earlier - though usually they'd do the initial drawing on paper that was already toned in a light flesh color or some light neutral color like grey or green. Not having any such toned paper I decided to tone it myself. 

It's been a long time since I did this, and I had forgotten you really need to keep your scribbly lines pretty close together to avoid what you can see below - the lines didn't completely 'melt' and you can still see some of them in places. 



All I did here was to fold over a paper towel 3 or 4 times, hold it tightly over the opening of my turpenoid can, and tip it. Then I took the moistened paper towel and scrubbed rather vigorously all over, going against the grain of the lines and trying to make them disappear. Turpenoid is an oil painting medium and bush cleaner - it's essentially a far less toxic version of turpentine with almost no odor.



Here I picked a darker brown and laid in the hair color. This one was burnt umber, a classic earth tone, and it melts into the turpenoid a lot easier than the other colors I've used so far. 



When you scrub it down it creates a really soft beautiful effect. Wish all the colors would do that! 



Used some more burnt umber to scrub shading into the background in places and also certain parts of the face/hand. It gives it all a nice look and starts to create some shading. I also decided to lighten up the hair a bit and let more of the paper's texture show through. 



Now it's almost finished. Did some more shading on the skin with a sort of orange color, then some highlights with white and a few little touches of color here and there. It's a slight variation on the three-tone drawing system used by the old masters, only I deviated from the strict three color rule and used a little more color. But I did most of the work only with a dark and a white on the toned ground, which is a great way to learn abut the basics of painting or realistic fully-shaded drawing technique. In case your wondering, at this point I didn't like the pale pencil lines so I took a softer pencil (a 2B) and drew right over them. Once you've got some wax on the surface of the drawing (oil pastels are in a wax base - they're really just like extra-soft crayons) the pencil really glides smoothy and makes very dark marks very easily. I couldn't believe I was able to go over all the lines with almost no screw-ups! Got lucky on that one. Oh, and for this kind of line quality you have to hold the pencil 'underhand' - not the way you would when writing, and use big arcing motions of the entire arm to draw. 



Finished up with some pale green. The window behind her is a classic example of overpainting - where you have the drawing on a toned ground and then come in at the end with a new color representing bright glaring light and paint opaquely right over the darker colors. It would look a lot better if the drawing was overall darker and if the green was brighter. 

It was hard to learn to stop 'coloring inside the lines' - it actually looks a lot better if you leave gaps to show the underlying colors so people can see the technique and the simplicity of it. Some people may prefer the step before the last one - when it still looked pretty realistic. The green in the shadows gives it a much more modern look.

The original looks much better than the reproduction does - a transparent art medium (like an oil pastel wash) has a nice glow to it and the colors blend beautifully in a way that can't be captured by a photograph or scanner. In the reproductions colors look harsh and dark and gritty - whites and other colors seem to have hard outlines around them. None of this is there when you look at the original. It makes it frustrating - I can't really show what my work looks like online or in any way unless people want to come over and see the originals..

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## Darkmatters

*Green Window* - pencil, charcoal and oil pastel on paper - 11 x 14

It's done (tentatively, as always). I decided I really didn't like the green on her face, and I always have the pic of it from above, so I scraped it off as well as I could. That's one of the fun techniques with oil pastels, especially in the later stages when you're putting it on thick over top of the wash drawing. I have a nifty little tool called a burnisher (seen below) that I keep in the box with the cray-pas because its so amazingly useful when working with them. 



These things are sold through the MicroMark website as a burnisher, for burnishing down the edges of masking tape and similar type stuff - they also make great sculpting tools and excellent oil pastel tools. The end that's close to the camera, with the red wax on it, is a little spoon shape - the back side of it is for burnishing and smoothing things down, but turned up like this it's good for scraping off some color from a stick of oil pastel. Once you've got a little glob of colored wax you can sort of place it oh so carefully right where you need an accent and then burnish it down to make it permanent - it becomes like a thick little glob of paint there, totally opaque. I used this trick to put the highlights in her eyes and a few other things. The other end of the burnisher is a little blade (not sharp really) that I use to scrape off unwanted wax, like the green on her face. 

I discovered charcoal is excellent for making dark parts (the wall behind her). Just be sure to always blow off any loose charcoal dust carefully before it gets stuck in the wax anywhere and makes a nuisance of itself. Then you need to rub over it to sort of blend it down into the wax. 

You can manipulate the wax in all sorts of ways - to finish this one up I was rubbing with my fingers, scrubbing with paper towels, using the point or edge of the scraper to remove tiny little dots of wax that just didn't look right (it's easy to get those when working with something as messy as cray-pas). 

Ok, well that about covers it, now to go see what the hell my dog is barking at outside...  ::?:

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## Raswalt

these are good man, hope you're still drawing. are these from references?
i looked through your puppet theatre too- nice, and wow some of the links of masterworks you posted were hypnotically dark and great.. happy to be exposed to more stop frame art.

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## Darkmatters

Thank ya kindly!! Really appreciate it coming form an artist whose work I admire. 

Most of these were from reference, except for the ones back at the beginning - the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser ones. I did sort of use references for their faces, but only very loosely - as in, look at picture and get it in my head, then put it away and start working. Everything else on those paintings was done without. But yeah, other than that, the rest of these were from reference. 

Haven't done any more since my last post here - I tend to go through phases where I'm intensely into something, and then suddenly can't stand it anymore and need to get away from it for a while. Lol, in fact that's why I started doing the digital painting - because I needed to get away from the animation for a while.

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## Raswalt

:]
very energetic lines for references and it should be, no good to get over swamped with the details if you're capturing movement and depth and so on. that disregard blows the stress to achieve perfection wide open, as much as the technical bones do to the human body.
agree'd, sometimes you've got to step away from what you're doing for a while so later you can see the bigger picture. the whole process is worth it in the end.. even if within you feel like bashing your brains out the whole way through ha ha ha ha- damn.

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## Oneironaut Zero

Loving it, man. Great work on the new piece.  ::thumbup::

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## LucasPotter

Wow, this thread is amazing!  ::o:  I especially love seeing your in-progress work, it makes me appreciate every step of it so much more!

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## Darkmatters

Wow - nice flurry of activity on this thread!! Thank you everybody! I dusted off the painting tentatively called Bemused and brought it a good ways closer to its finished state:


Been a while since I've posted the whole thing in here, hasn't it?

There's a lot about it I don't care for - obviously the composition itself is pretty bad, and I'm not going to rework that. But the main point of this one is to get a lot of experience at working in digital paint and to lay the groundwork on which to keep improving - somewhere down the road Ill be a lot better because I pushed myself through all this work. And let me tell you, this one is a LOT of work!! Such a big canvas, with so much depth visible in the landscape. It's not a very heroic fantasy looking landscape, but I'm mostly just learning how to render landscape since I've hardly done any before - you first have to just learn how to do it period before you can push for learning how to do it well. 

But it's starting to transform into a much better piece - I've been firming up Fafhrd's anatomy in the midsection area and I like the way it's looking - that big pool of shadow is starting to define form much better now that I'm defining the edges of it where needed. Also starting to do a little detailing in the background - man, that's rough!! Bushes are much different from human bodies - I've never studied the anatomy of vegetation!! One thing that's bugging me that I need to work on (probably in future paintings) is the lack of strongly defined light and shade in the landscape. Its there on Fafhrd, not so much yet on his little buddy the Grey Mouser. I'm also not very happy yet with the Mouser's face - his head looks too generic, basically a simple egg shape with some features slapped on. Fafhrd's face has character - his head has strong bony forms. I need to do a lot of sketches to figure out how the Mouser's head needs to be shaped. 

But damn! It's good to be back at it again after too long of a break!! Thanks again everybody for the ego boost!

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## Darkmatters

Working out the little guy's look, as well as working out a way of drawing in PS.

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## Darkmatters

Beginning to convert it to color - this is actually going incredibly well (and fast!)

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## Darkmatters

Using big hard-edged brushes, painting opaquely.


Switching to thin, soft-edged brushes to soften the transitions.


finally going semi-transparent, and covering the lines.

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## Darkmatters



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## Oneironaut Zero

'Bemused' is looking gorgeous, man! I love the storybook feel to it. And screw the composition; I think it looks rather natural.  ::wink:: 

Keep going! You're definitely getting the hang of it all!  ::thumbup::

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## dutchraptor

Incredible work man, honestly the composition is fine for now. Your piece has quite a low colour spectrum and the positioning is quite unusual so no surprise that the composition isn't perfect. It's probably been a great learning piece for you, I hop we get to see some new stuff soon  ::D:

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## Darkmatters

Thanks guys!

OZ - Yeah, composition wasn't really quite what I meant, it's not so bad really. I was referring more to the odd pose of the main character and the weird narrative... the fish was supposed to be horribly ugly like some kind of mutant, and they're wondering if it's safe to even eat. But it didn't come out that way lol! If I do get back to it I'll probably do a new creature on the end of the stick (though if I do I'll save the red fish as a separate painting because I like it). 

Dutchraptor - good to hear from you! It has indeed been a great learning experience. What's emerged from it is the new techniques I'm using on the new piece, the portrait. And now that I have these techniques I look back at Bemused and it looks all splotchy and scribbly all over, with no hard edges anywhere. Everything on it took so ridiculously long to do because I had to keep matching that scribbly splotchy look (well, that was because of the random scribbly techniques I was using). The way I feel about it right now, I probably won't finish it any farther than it is, and let it sit as a learning experience, an early piece. Because now I'm excited about the much more sensible and precise techniques I've developed, and it would look weird to finish it that way, and I don't think I can go back to the earlier way I worked. Even if I could, working that way would take forever! It's so nice that this last one, which I just tentatively finished, only took - what? 3 days? Need to check on when I posted the first images. 

Here's the latest (possibly final?) version of the Mouser portrait, showcasing the new techniques:



Wow, I started this one _yesterday_ actually! Well, a little before midnight so technically 2 days ago, but did the majority of the work on it all in one long session yesterday, then today I just fixed the eyes (I know, they're still pretty weird). The whole thing took less than 24 hours, and that includes 6 or 7 hours of sleep!

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## TheSilverWolf

> There's a lot about it I don't care for - obviously the composition itself is pretty bad, and I'm not going to rework that. But the main point of this one is to get a lot of experience at working in digital paint and to lay the groundwork on which to keep improving - somewhere down the road Ill be a lot better because I pushed myself through all this work



WOW, when I first saw this I thought it was hand-drawn/painted; this was DIGITAL? Very nice, Darkmatters! If that's what you can do w/little practice, I look forward to seeing what you can manage once you get the hang of the program your working with.

~SilverWolf~

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## Darkmatters

Thank you!! I have been trying to avoid the clean, 'airbrushy' digital look, so I really appreciate your comment! And I also look forward to seeing what my work will look like when I get through this awkward learning stage. I suspect it's not so much a matter of just getting the hang of Photoshop as actually learning to paint better. And hopefully that knowledge (if I can develop it) will translate over to oil painting as well.

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## TheSilverWolf

Wow, you are doing this via Photoshop? I've never messed around with the painting parts of the program, mostly the photo-manipulation. Huh, just shows me I have a lot to learn about this wonderful program and what it's capable of.

Then again, when you pay 500+ dollars for something, it had _better_ perform admirably!

So you paint IRL too? Not just digitally I mean, but with brush/canvas? Maybe you can post some pictures  :smiley:

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## LucasPotter

Wow, that's really good!!!  ::D:

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## Darkmatters

> Wow, you are doing this via Photoshop? I've never messed around with the painting parts of the program, mostly the photo-manipulation. Huh, just shows me I have a lot to learn about this wonderful program and what it's capable of.
> 
> Then again, when you pay 500+ dollars for something, it had _better_ perform admirably!
> 
> So you paint IRL too? Not just digitally I mean, but with brush/canvas? Maybe you can post some pictures



I do work with some traditional media, in fact most of what's posted on this thread was done with oil pastels using the wash techniques I demo'd on the last page. And I have tried my hand at painting, but I wouldn't say I've done anything successful. I always felt like I was floundering around, mostly because I couldn't get used to handling a brush or mixing paints. So I started using aquarelle pencils and then oil pastels as a sort of transition, they're drawing media that can end up looking like painting media. The few oil paintings I have done suffered from some really weird oversaturated colors and various other problems. I found that photoshop lets me work just like drawing but in full color, and thankfully it has an Undo button!! So, after developing my skills at just making full color pictures this way then I'll try my hand at painting again. Oh, and I just have PS Elements, so well under $500, and I also started out using it for photos. Then one day I realized I could import my paintings and rework them the same way I was doing for photos, and thus I began digital painting. In fact the painting a couple pages back called Longbow started life as an oil painting. 





> Wow, that's really good!!!



Thank you kind sir!

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## Darkmatters

> Wow, you are doing this via Photoshop? I've never messed around with the painting parts of the program, mostly the photo-manipulation. Huh, just shows me I have a lot to learn about this wonderful program and what it's capable of.
> 
> Then again, when you pay 500+ dollars for something, it had _better_ perform admirably!
> 
> So you paint IRL too? Not just digitally I mean, but with brush/canvas? Maybe you can post some pictures



I do work with some traditional media, in fact most of what's posted on this thread was done with oil pastels using the wash techniques I demo'd on the last page. And I have tried my hand at painting, but I wouldn't say I've done anything successful. I always felt like I was floundering around, mostly because I couldn't get used to handling a brush or mixing paints. So I started using aquarelle pencils and then oil pastels as a sort of transition, they're drawing media that can end up looking like painting media. The few oil paintings I have done suffered from some really weird oversaturated colors and various other problems. I found that photoshop lets me work just like drawing but in full color, and thankfully it has an Undo button!! So, after developing my skills at just making full color pictures this way then I'll try my hand at painting again. Oh, and I just have PS Elements, so well under $500, and I also started out using it for photos. Then one day I realized I could import my paintings and rework them the same way I was doing for photos, and thus I began digital painting. In fact the painting on page 1 called Longbow started life as an oil painting. 





> Wow, that's really good!!!



Thank you kind sir!

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## Darkmatters

Red Fish (formerly Bemused) is nearing completion rapidly now. Still have a lot to do mostly in the right half, but I like the way the big shadows draw everything together.

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## Darkmatters

Got him a personal trainer and a fashion coordinator. 

I'm really learning how important it is to create a strong pattern of lights and darks - the interplay between them is what creates a sense of solid form. I was too afraid to put any real darks in before. Once you do it makes all the difference in the world. Obviously still got a lot of cleanup to do after the surgery.

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## Spenner

I'm really loving that fish above all else. I think you have a knack for it, and think you should elaborate on some more organic "creature" studies. I picture a concoction of snails, more fish, coral, and jellyfish, as well as abstract concepts driven from the elements of those things.

Just something I really see shining in your work, it's all really nice to see. There's emotion, story, and a surreal sense of place, slightly mythical, in your style. It's really nice to see  :smiley:

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## Darkmatters

^Lol!! I can see it now that you've made the suggestion - it already looks a bit like the bottom of the ocean. I could add lots of seaweed, shoals of fish everywhere, maybe an octopus or 2, and paint scuba gear on the 2 guys, or just eliminate them altogether...  ::lol:: 

I _do_ like the way the fish looks, but this is about learning some techniques that I understand and can repeat, and I really have no idea what made the fish work. The way it's painted is what I call illusionistic, no visible brushmarks, and the emphasis is on the surface treatment, the spots and markings that give it a polished sleek surface. In comparison the rest of the painting is rough and unfinished-looking. Though I really like the vigorous, more robust techniques I'm starting to develop, which give a lot of life to the surfaces. Of course right now it's _too_ rough, and like I said needs a lot of cleaning up. 

Thank you especially for the second paragraph!! Very much appreciated!

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## Darkmatters

The Fafhrd saga continues

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## Oneironaut Zero

Those textures are really coming along, man. (Especially with the fish, as was stated.) Excellent work, and massive, massive improvement!  ::cooler::

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## Darkmatters

Made some big overall changes especially to the terrain, as well as figuring out how to paint on the Mouser so he starts to look more 3 dimensional and solid rather than like a flat drawing. 

I decided I had too much contrast going on, the light areas were too bright and the darks too dark, and that made it hard to see it properly. It's like when you're looking at the light areas your eyes get adjusted to the brightness and you can't really see the darks anymore, then when you look at the darks they need to re-adjust and you can't see the lights anymore. Fafhrd was the main problem for this, too much contrast between his lighted planes and the shadows. I've been working the contrast down but now looking back at the last version of him I see in some ways he looked batter before. Ah well, that's the nature of art - as you keep working you're screwing some things up while (hopefully) fixing others.

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## JoannaB

Nooo, not the fish! I want the fish back, please. It's such a nice fish, and I like fish.

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## Darkmatters

^^ Lol - like I'm a lounge singer, and I take requests!  ::lol:: 

Ok, here's a nice closeup of the fish for my fish fans:

It does look really nice, but it was becoming a case of "which of these things is not like the others, which of these things just doesn't belong.."


I'll be replacing sad droopy red fish with something that actually fulfills its narrative function (which this one did not), looks more like it belongs in the same painting, and has some verve and action to it. Hey look at it this way Joanna - now there'll be _another_ fish!!  ::banana::

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## JoannaB

Couldn't you do an homage to Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory, and instead of the melted clocks all over the landscape, add a few more droopy fish?

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## Darkmatters

^ No. No, I couldn't..  ::lol:: 

Meanwhile, the Mouser takes form:

Man, it's great practice working on these little background figures! You don't have all the detail to do, so you just concentrate on form. I'm getting used to working with larger brushes and carefully selected values to define the planes, rather than drawing lines and then just 'filling in'.

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## Darkmatters

Soooo much work. Especially today - I honestly think I spent at least 8 solid hours working on it. 

The new mini-dragon is of course only a roughed-in placeholder, as everything is when I first add it. Something to look at and formulate ideas.

Mostly I've been wrestling with color saturation and how dark to make shadows. Man, drawing in pencil was never this hard!

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## Xaqaria

I think the contrast of the fish is a major plus to the over all image. If you are going to replace it, you should replace it with something that similarly doesn't seem to fit. Its brightness is a big part of why I think it works so well.

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## Darkmatters

Agreed - the brightness and active shape is necessary to activate that otherwise very dark and oppressive area. I think the head needs to stretch forward a bit more and cross the border into the grey mountain/hill shape, so it isn't totally contained in the dark area. That was one of the problems with the original fish (or rather the red fish, which was like the 4th one I tried) - it remained completely isolated in that dark stream bank so it didn't seem to relate well to the rest of the image.

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## Darkmatters

Wow, I didn't even realize the creature's shape was completely mimicking the s-curve of grass the Mouser is on. Bizarre - guess I did that subconsciously. The pose has changed, and now he's mimicking Mouser's stance. And yeah, flaming scarlet is definitely his color. Lol, I love that he's not even impaled now, it looks like he jumped up on Faf's spear and started lecturing him! He was SUPPOSED to be snapping and clawing at him, but the image has spoken (and so has the mini-dragon guy). The only fantasy element in an otherwise very naturalistic painting. I need to work a little more red into the painting elsewhere now.

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## Xaqaria

little bit of red sunset over the mountains.

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## Darkmatters

Nice suggestion, thanks! Got something a little different going. I probably won't update until it's finished, which should be soon (I'm determined to finish it this month, after to the best of my calculations about 6 months of work).

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## Darkmatters

I just want to drop this here to help anybody who might benefit from it - this is a brief guide to what you need to learn if you want to be *able to draw/paint figures entirely from the imagination* or be able to modify your reference freely as you go.

My interest is in classical art, which simply means realistic. There are 2 distinctly different classical traditions - one sometimes called the _Atelier system_ which teaches you to copy exactly what you see before you - essentially making the artist a camera and therefore a slave to the model or reference. The other (I'm not aware of any name for it) teaches you how to render form believably in terms of light and shadow, and also teaches you the forms of the human body (the standard and measure of all classical art). In other words it gives you the power to _invent the figure entirely from imagination_. 

Obviously it's the second one I'm interested in. This is the way comic book artists draw, and many illustrators paint. It's the method Frazetta used, and that's all I need to know! He worked without models (he did occasionally snap photos of himself or his wife, but did not need reference and was ale to freely make changes as he saw fit). 

Ok, straight to it then - as I said, there are only 2 simple things you need to learn (simple, but not easy):


*1) How to render form realistically in terms of light and shadow
	2) The forms of the human body and how they relate to each other*

For the first, *rendering form realistically in terms of light and shadow*, it's very straightforward. Look up web pages for terms like _'form drawing exercise'_ or _'core shadow exercise'_. Yes, it's the familiar old cubes, spheres and pyramids - you've seen them dozens of times already. But you might not fully understand the importance of the exercises. I'll do a few followup posts to explain things like this in greater detail - but I just want this post to be simple and to the point. 

For *learning the forms of the body* I'm talking about a very specific type of understanding - not simply learning the names and placement of all the muscles and bones. That's just anatomy, or part of it. Actually to be _artistic_ anatomy it requires an understanding of the actual 3-dimensional shapes of the various parts and how they relate to each other spatially, which doesn't come from a standard _atlas of anatomy_ (those only serve as a reference or map of the parts of the body - but you should definitely have a good anatomical atlas in your library if not also an _ecorche_ figure standing on your shelf). Besides anatomy it's also necessary to learn _figure drawing_ principles, which deals not with the individual parts but with the overall form and gesture of the body, and especially with techniques for _conceptualizing_ it. Conceptualizing is the most important part - it's what Robert Beverly Hale is referring to when he says _'A drawing is an idea with lines around it'_. Getting better at drawing isn't about making prettier lines, it's about improving the sets of ideas underlying those lines. 

Here are the books I've personally found to be essential in this pursuit:

*• How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way*
A perfect starting point. Get this one, whether you intend to go farther or not. It gives you pretty much the whole approach in a nutshell - but the other books fill in your knowledge much more thoroughly - this one is really only an overview, albeit a great one. It's a classic for a reason people.


from Burne Hogarth's Dynamic series:

*• Dynamic Figure Drawing
	• Dynamic Anatomy
        • Dynamic Light and Shade*


from Robert Beverly Hale's Master series:

*• Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters
	• Anatomy Lessons from the Great Masters
	• Master Class in Figure Drawing*

I've got a lot of books on anatomy and figure drawing, and these do something most of them don't - they present as I said _a unified system that allows you to draw and paint realistically without needing a model or reference_. This system has been taught to art students from the Renaissance on - up until sometime in the mid to late 20th century when art education in most schools switched to _"just draw what you feeeel"_.

I should mention right up front - these books, aside from How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, are advanced material meant for the serious art student who already has some understanding of figure drawing at a basic level, and intends to go all the way. This stuff isn't for the casual doodler. 

Ok, stay tuned folks - followup posts to come.

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## Darkmatters

This is the easiest part, but it will still take some time to learn to do really well. I used to groan when I'd see these - I mean come on - this is simple stuff, right? We all know how to do it. Right? Well, if you really do then you're well on your way already. But most art students actually don't know it nearly as well as they assume they do. 

Here's one of the tricky things about learning art - it's like learning a language. What I mean is, first you learn to _understand_ it, and at that point many students think they're done - but the real work is learning to _speak_ it, and to speak it fluently. Have you ever heard a foreigner stumbling through your native language and struggling to make any sense using the wrong words and terrible pronunciation? That's what it's like when beginning artists try to render form. 

Students think that just because they've seen the basic form shading exercises many times and read about how it's done that they already know how to do it. They're usually wrong. Understanding how to do it is only the first step - *You don't actually know it until you can draw it - and draw it well*. You should do these exercises every so often to gauge your progress. When your drawings look like this you're getting it:

￼

Here are some decent online tutorials:

Direct Light | Stan Prokopenko's Blog

Drawing Lesson - A Theory of Light and Shade

Starting to Draw: Light and Shadow

Start off by copying exercises you find online. But the goal is to eventually be able to draw it entirely from the imagination and be able to place the light source anywhere. The cast shadows are important too - they help to define where the forms are in relation to each other and to the environment. A cast shadow grounds an object solidly.

An important concept you'll encounter when doing these is the *core shadow* - the core of a shadow, or the darkest part of the shadow, which lies between the lighted plane and a dark plane. You can really see it here in Tintoretto's drawing: 


This perfectly illustrates the real importance of learning to light basic forms - when you understand it then you can light more complex forms and make them look solid and real. If you look back at the latest version of my painting you can clearly see I'm using these principles (after struggling for a good long time.. ). There are a few other things he's doing here that I'll be discussing in the next followup too, that help to make the drawing clearly understandable. And after a couple more posts you'll really see how all this stuff ties together into an amazing system.

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## Darkmatters

No, I'm not talking about a person - I'm talking about _shadows_ - or more properly _the shapes of shadows_. Beginners often fill their figures with lots of little disconnected patches of shadow, all pretty much the same value (relative darkness level). They do this because that's what they see on the model or in the reference. Skilled artists see it differently, or if they do see little confusing patches of shadow then they fix it. Note - let me state right here that when I say things like this, I group myself among students - somewhat intermediate level, and not at all a highly skilled artist! Though hopefully well on my way. So please, when I talk about beginners and skilled artists, don't take it as if I place myself above anybody here! We're all students, and I present this as valuable and hard-won information that has helped me immensely and I believe it will help anyone else in the same situation. 

*The difference between skilled artists and beginners is training.* Artists are trained to see in terms of form and to use the elements of drawing to maximize the sense of form. This training consists of various strategies that emphasize form and the depiction of it.

A strategy is what helps you win a game or a war, or organize your time well. _Good strategizing makes all the difference_ - it's a plan of action, a way to organize your efforts and unify them. Without good strategy you're lost, just wandering around aimlessly and often one thing you try actually works against others resulting in poor performance. Look back at the form drawing exercise I posted last time - the cone, cube, cylinder and sphere. You don't see lots of confusing little shadows all over, you see big carefully gradated shadows, all of which work together to do their job perfectly - they _define form clearly_. 

Drawing is a process - it's not simply recording exactly what you actually see. *The job of the artist is to make things clear and easily understandable*, and often due to poor lighting conditions or a bad viewing angle or confusing shadows cast by objects surrounding the model or any number of other problems, what you actually see can be very confusing and not at all pleasing to the eye. This doesn't create a problem for the trained artist. Or I should say he has *strategies to help overcome these problems* and many more. He can remove confusing shadows or even invent a completely different light source coming from a totally different angle, to clarify the figure. This is because _he has learned to understand light, how it works, and how to imitate its various effects on forms, and he also understands the principles of art, which include clarity and simplicity_. 

_He has learned to keep shadows big and simple, because that defines form very clearly and understandably._ He has learned to be consistent with which side of the form the shadows are on, even though in reality lighting situations often fail to conform to these rules. He has learned to use contrast, even if it isn't there in reality. 

I want to talk some more about that Tintoretto drawing in the last post. 

He was an absolute master. I love the drawings of the old masters, even though often their paintings leave me cold. This kind of drawing, done on a toned ground (colored paper) using 3 or 4 values is an ideal way to practice all of these principles, because it helps you to keep things simple. *One value for midtones, one for dark shadows, one for lighter shadows, and a highlight added with white chalk* (or pink, as it looks like Tintoretto used here). These values conform perfectly to the values demonstrated in the core shadow exercises presented above. Using white paper, which is mostly a modern thing, forces you to either tone most of the image manually or you end up with way too much highlight tone everywhere and your drawing ends up too high keyed. Using chalk or a lighter tone to add highlights assures that you don't overdo them, they should be pretty minimal in most situations. Working on tinted paper like this also helps to understand lighting in color, because the dominant lighting color of the environment will be reflected onto any forms in that environment. If the room is painted blue, or if the sky is blue, then that color will be cast onto everything. But I really want to keep this about drawing rather than painting. The illustrations in Robert Beverly Hale's Master series books are all drawings by the great masters (makes sense, don't it?). So the books are beautiful works of art in their own right, as well as being invaluable artistic guides. 

One of the strategies of the great masters is to unify your shadow shapes - keep them big and simple, and run them together like pools of water. In fact *shadows are pools* - as the light moves or the model moves they flow around it - into the hollows and crevices and gradually change their shape, and they do seem to want to run together whenever possible. 

*Notice Tintoretto joined almost all the shadows into one big one that remains entirely on one side of the form and defines only those planes facing away from the light*. The majority of the drawing is midtone (the blue paper itself), with just little touches of highlight where they effectively push the form out toward the viewer. In the next post I'll discuss _planes_ in more detail - they're a fascinating concept and a great strategy to help organize your drawings. And that's when these posts will really start to come together into a unified system. 

Another strategy artists use is to *outline the shadows*. Map them out. Often they'll start by lightly penciling in the outlines before adding any tone. This allows them to *think of the shadows as shapes and to think about the borders of them*. If you just start shading without first defining the outlines you can get lost and end up going  all over the place, rather than creating *a simple and clear map of shadows that defines the form*. 

Another strategy - *divide your values into two distinctly different ranges - one for light and one for shadows*. Tintoretto used the paper itself plus pink chalk for light, and 2 values of charcoal for shadow. The lightest value in the shadows should be visibly darker than the darkest value in the light. This helps to avoid confusion and create a visually pleasing map that's easy for the viewer to understand. And as you know if you've ever tried to follow someone's written directions to a place you've never been before - a clear and easily understood map is far better than a confusing one! 

All of these strategies are simply _ways of thinking about light and shadows_ - in other words they're ideas.  It's what Robert Beverly Hale was talking about when he said _drawings are ideas with lines around them_. 

Ok, that's it for this followup post - next up, we visit the planes!  ::banana::

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## Darkmatters

No, not a collector's action figure still in the original box - though in a sense action figures are close. I'm referring to *the figure drawn as a series of boxes and cylinders* (or what I like to call _tubes and cubes_). And again, like the basic form exercises I started this with, we've all seen it a million times. And you probably well understand the main purpose of it - *to help solve problems of perspective and foreshortening in figure drawing*, so you can draw an arm pointing toward you rather than just held straight down at the figure's side like a soldier standing at attention. Beginners tend to shy away from active poses and foreshortening and instead draw the figure like a flat paper doll, with every part of the body parallel to the picture plane. It's a lot easier. (It's also how I drew Fafhrd, aside from that one arm..  ::roll:: )

Ok, I'll skip over how valuable boxing the figure can be for foreshortening and action poses - I think that's already well understood. Instead I want to discuss some of the more subtle and less well-known reasons for doing it. 



Here's a page from *Hogarth's Dynamic Figure Drawing*. You can clearly see how he's *conceived of the rib cage and pelvis as block shapes*, though not just simple rectangular ones. But notice something else - the way *the shadows remain contained in the planes of the boxes*. The usefulness of 'boxing up the figure' goes well beyond its most obvious virtues. It's another strategy to help you place shadows, to help keep them under control for maximum simplicity and clarity. There are light planes and dark planes. And the fact that there's already a definite line showing where those planes meet is immensely helpful for placing shadows. 

Because *the human body does consist of planes* - many of its parts do anyway (all of them if you want to slightly labor the point). They're not perfectly flat planes that meet at sharp, straight corners like a block of wood - *they're gently curved* - more so in some places than others, *and the corners are rounded*. Like a slightly used bar of soap, or like a wooden block that's been taken to the belt sander. Or like the body panels of cars. 

*Like a wood carver, an artist begins with simple blocks.* To carve a puppet head for instance, Pappa Gepetto might select a piece of 4x4 and pencil in outlines on the front, the side and the top, showing him where to carve wood away to get a really rough blocky pseudo-head shape, which is very close to the actual finished shape of the head, but is _defined entirely at this point by planes_, which he will then file and sand down to make smooth curves where appropriate.  


Here you see Hogarth's version of a head as a block shape, somewhat carved down and smoothed on the metaphorical belt sander to round off the corners nicely. And again, see how easy it is to figure out where the big shadows go. 

One of the great strategies artists use to simplify drawing is to *shade the big forms first*. The big forms of the body are the rib cage, the pelvis, the head and neck, the cylinders of the arms and the legs, and the blocks of the hands (drawn as mitten shapes at first) and feet (wedge blocks). *Start to figure out your shadows early, in this blocking stage, and it's pretty easy to get a sense of strong solid form.* And this way you don't get confused by lots of little shadows all over, which happens if you think about little details before the big forms. This is another strategy I used in my most recent painting that you can clearly see, and that Tintoretto used as well. All the masters use it. 

See, here's the beauty of this, and *what really ties it all together into a unified system* - you're reducing the body to a few basic forms, and *you already know how to shade basic forms*, right? We covered that in the first post. *BAM!!* Full circle. Draw the figure as basic forms, shade them according to the core shadow system (or another one - that's only one approach of many described in great detail in Dynamic Light and Shade) and your figures now have an amazing solidity and sense of _realness_ to them. 

In the last post I mentioned that shadows are pools of darkness, and when the figure moves or the light source moves they flow around it and into the valleys and hollows. *Knowing where the major plane breaks of the body are really helps you to understand exactly were to place these valleys and hollows*. Hogarth and Hale both go into great detail about these plane breaks, and their importance to artists. I'm only presenting a quick overview here, in hopes that it will spur some of you to get the books and start to fill your head will these amazing ideas, which will transform your art. 

As I already mentioned, these books (aside from How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way) are advanced instruction manuals for the serious art student, and as such they can be pretty dense and take some real slogging to get through. What worked for me was to do an initial read-through of each of them, in which many of the ideas went way over my head. But now I had seen the words and the concepts, was somewhat introduced to them anyway,  and a few months later I went back and started going through again, taking it slower this time, going a chapter at a time, and this time I found it making a lot more sense. A lot of the ideas that were brand new and completely alien to me the first time were somewhat familiar now because I had read them before. I've re-read all of them several times now and done many drawings to practice the concepts (not nearly as many as I should - more in the arena of dozens rather than hundreds, but still it has greatly improved my work). 

Well, I think I've covered pretty much all I wanted to with these posts. One more thing I want to mention, and this is for the really serious art students (and those who can afford it) - some of the most useful artistic aids I own are _a skeleton, a skull, and an ecorche figure_ (a statue of the body with no skin on it, showing the muscles clearly). *The skeleton is the body, and the body is the skeleton*, at least in structural terms. Remove the bones, and all you've got is a pile of shapeless muscles in a sack of skin. Learning the forms of the bones is actually more important than the muscles. In fact, Hale describes the life of a young art apprentice in Renaissance days - one of the first things the master would do is throw him a bone and tell him to draw it. Literally, every artist had a collection of bones and would draw them from every angle, learning all the surfaces and forms - they all give shape to the surface of the body - the muscles follow he curvature of bones. Today we can buy somewhat inexpensive plastic replica skeletons and skulls - there are even specialty bone houses you can find online that sell castings of individual bones if you want to get really serious about it. 

I got the *ecorche* (or simply _anatomy statue_) from the *Anatomy Tools* website - it's not cheap, but they also have smaller ones I believe that are more affordable. I've found it to be invaluable for checking exactly how muscles overlap in certain parts of the body like the underarm area, and for checking details like which rib the base of the pectoral muscles sits along, etc. You can remove the arms and the head and hold them at whatever angle you need to see how various parts of the body look at unusual angles or with specific lighting. It really supercharges the process. The ecorche (_eh-core-shay_) is an extravagance that I have wanted for a long time - it was Hale who really made me want that and the skeleton and the skull, and it took me many years before I could afford to get one (the skeleton and skull weren't so bad). 

Ok, guess I'll wrap this up here then. Oh, though I should mention, there's now a more modern alternative to the ecorche in the form of software like *Poser*. It actually lets you define things like how big and muscular you want the figure, and where the lighting is. If you check the Anatomy Tools website they may have their own program for this, I'm not sure. 

Alrighty then, DM out!

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## L4xord

Damn...you have some nice art! Good to see another artist on here!

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## Karloky

Bravooo maestro!!!!  :smiley:

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## Darkmatters

Hey thanks guys! It's great to hear from you!

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## Darkmatters

Still one day left on my self-imposed deadline, but I think it's done:

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## Darkmatters

Spearpoint Diplomacy Adjusted by Darkmatters, on Flickr

A slight revision of the previous version - all I did was lighten it up a bit and boost the color slightly plus a few little touches here and there - all in the landscape. Photoshop really likes to darken things up when you export an image! Through this link you can see it full sized* - I think that's how it really shines. Ya gotta see the brushstrokes to get the full effect.


* Once on Flickr page, click on the three little dots down in the right hand corner, then on View All Sizes. You can download the original size if you want.

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## Darkmatters

It's so good to finally be done with that massive project that took up 7 months of my life!! Now I intend to do a bunch of quick exercises. This was totally freeform, starting from a really loose rough tablet sketch. An important thing I learned (too late) on the last project - the color picker will only give you pure colors (plus greyed versions of them). So I started the painting by picking a bunch of pure colors and blending them at around 50% opacity right on the canvas, then I picked from the mixtures. Worked mostly with really big hard brushes at near 100% opacity.

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## Darkmatters



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## Darkmatters



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## Darkmatters

Not completely happy with it (especially the shadow under the head across the shoulder), but that's enough time on this one. I learned a LOT - mostly about painting flesh and using colors. This was done primarily with a burnt sienna for shadows and a pale green for light, to maintain the warm/cool bias.

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## Darkmatters

It's been a long time since I drew directly from a photo -- I was super stressed at first, but decided to quarter off the image and just block in. Amazed how well it worked..









.. And next I must draw the face. From slightly underneath even.. the stress is back and twice as bad!   :Oh noes:

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## Darkmatters



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## Darkmatters

Notes --

I love this way of working from reference - block in roughly and then keep carefully measuring and refining as you go. I used dividers right up against the monitor for comparative measurements, and also held a pencil to get the angles of lines, then slid it over keeping it as close as possible to the same angle.

I'm also finding that highlights look much better painted on ver a midtone rather than left - they end up looking vigorous and energetic rather than flat.

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## Darkmatters



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## Darkmatters

I've been using the stylus so much I can actually draw with it now! Didn't think it would ever happen.

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## Darkmatters



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## Darkmatters

Cyborg by Darkmatters, on Flickr

Now that it's done I've posted it on Flickr so you can see it full size if you want. Click on the pic or the link under it, then once there, click on the three little white dots down in the right corner and then on View All Sizes. Peace.  :Happy:

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## Darkmatters

New one started:



I feel kinda bad about how nice and sweet I made Cris Cyborg look above (my excuse is I had no idea who she was when I found that pic, and she actually looks kinda cute in it  ::shock:: ). But now that I know better, I felt it necessary to do one showing her in her natural element - brutal and fierce. Started this in pencil then worked it on the tablet.

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## Darkmatters



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## Darkmatters

Getting some color into it

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## Darkmatters

A couple new ones:

 
Undaunted by Darkmatters, on Flickr


Ronda by Darkmatters, on Flickr

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## Darkmatters

Charmaine by Darkmatters, on Flickr

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## Oneironaut Zero

That Ronda Rousey is freaking great, man.  :smiley:

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## Darkmatters

Thanks O - it really did come out nice, didn't it?

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## Darkmatters

Catching up - haven't uploaded any art here in a long time..


Silva by Darkmatters, on Flickr


Beckett by Darkmatters, on Flickr


Julia_Stiles02 by Darkmatters, on Flickr


TonyK by Darkmatters, on Flickr


KeriBrite04 by Darkmatters, on Flickr


DoubleTrouble by Darkmatters, on Flickr


RussiaGurl by Darkmatters, on Flickr

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## Oneironaut Zero

Fantastic work, dude. All of them. Top notch stuff.  ::cooler::  ::thumbup::

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## Darkmatters

Thanks O! Here's my latest:


BloodStudy by Darkmatters, on Flickr
(Just an extremely rough Frazetta copy)


Lee6.2.0LG by Darkmatters, on Flickr

And oops! I moved a couple from the last post, forgot I had them linked here and it would break the links. Here they are again:


DubbleTrubble by Darkmatters, on Flickr


Yelena by Darkmatters, on Flickr

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## Darkmatters

JohnnyG by Darkmatters, on Flickr

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## Darkmatters

Haven't updated this thread in a long time!! Better get on it:


Diver by Darkmatters, on Flickr


Conan by Darkmatters, on Flickr


KnockoutFinal01 by Darkmatters, on Flickr


TheGreyMouserDefinitiveEdition3.0-1024 by Darkmatters, on Flickr


MugShot4.1 by Darkmatters, on Flickr


Asaro Head Planes Study by Darkmatters, on Flickr


Skull Study by Darkmatters, on Flickr


Milady 6.1 by Darkmatters, on Flickr


Meisha5.5 by Darkmatters, on Flickr


faf-study5.7 by Darkmatters, on Flickr

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## Oneironaut Zero

Excellent work, man. Milady 6.1 is fantastic.  :smiley:

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## Darkmatters

Thanks OZ! That's from a screen shot of Faye Dunaway in The 3 Musketeers - the 70's version with Michael York and Raquel Welch in it. I took forever on it, and it was where I really started to figure out how to do the lighting and shading thing with some subtlety and finesse.

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## slash112

Dude your work is amazing. I really enjoyed looking through all that. Your style is just awesome.

Also thanks for the amazing art advices! I'll be coming back here when I decide to get back into art.  ::D:

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## Darkmatters

Thanks Slash! Wow - I thought there was some kind of glitch on the board - suddenly I had 52 new Likes!!   ::holycrap::  ::huh2::  :Uhm: 

Then I saw that you had gone through and liked all my posts on this thread.  ::chuckle::

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