Painting on a hot, humid afternoon

a repaint of an old raytrace... second life.

also a repaint: coming back to the original,
it looks dull and boring. Now look at it!

At the end of summer, time seems to slow down. You're hanging on, waiting for the hot weather to end, desperate for rain, and everything ... slows ... down ... as if you're in the grip of some deadly time dilation. Falling into a gravity well where something you can't even see is going to roll you flat. Wellll, that's what it feels like when it's hot and humid and you're fed up of the season! 

Not much is going on, artistically (or any other way, come to that). Most of what I'm doing at the moment is editing, though I'm about to collaborate on a story project -- a true collaboration for the first time. Can't recall ever having done this before, but my writing partner and I have developed a very easy, almost symbiotic relationship, and it should be rewarding. Even easy. We'll see.

So I spent the afternoon editing and painting to pass away the time. Only the landscapes are truly new today; the others are repaints of old projects -- the barbarian on the horse really needed it. Coming back to it in 2024, I found it pretty dull and boring, though the idea was fine. Photoshop to the rescue. In fact, I like this one enough to recut and remount it. I'll leave you with this:

It also is a raytrace ... those are not shaders, which we use in Iray. In raytracing, you're responsible for all your own textures -- and I'm just remembering how much I used to enjoy doing that. Shaders can make the work easier, but it's nowhere near as rewarding as designing a whole suite of textures yourself -- some of them, hand painted. Soon as the weather breaks, I must start up Studio (for the first time in two years!) and ... play. 

Spending a hot afternoon painting...

Spending another hot afternoon painting (also unpacking a lot of photographs from (!) November. Shows you how far behind I am!). Here's another touch-up on Chino -- a character I love, and a story I'd like to go back to eventually. It has been professionally published, incidentally, but it as a "hard sell," because it's what's termed a "frame story." In other words, a story told by a raconteur.  Every single Sherlock Holmes story barring one is told in the words of John Watson ... that's a frame story. Well, the format might have been popular in Sir Arthur's day, but -- not today. Which made The Gates of Petheris a very, very hard sell indeed. Still, it sold in the end, and I do believe there's enough meat and potatoes in it to make a short novel, which can happen in the fullness of time --

Or perhaps it would make a better graphic novel than a text-driven piece? Now, there's a thought. And it's a thought I'd been playing with more and more lately, which is why I've been running experiment after experiment, trying to find a way to produce the sheer volume of art required to publish an 80 - 100pp graphic novel. It could easily take 250 pieces of art, and since I don't expect to make much, if any, money out of it, I can't afford to spend a year working on it! 

Bottom line: I have indeed found a way to churn out a lot of art in a short enough time. It comes down to taking insanely fast renders, plus some photo montages that are largely based on my own images, shoving them through a bundle of complex Facebook processes, then painting the result by hand. The end product is pretty decent. Good enough, I think. And since Chino is already finished (and a dang good story, to boot), it would make better sense to run with this than to try to finish a looooong story like The Forgotten songs, and then illustrate it, all for no income. Ha.

So here's the fruit of a hot afternoon's messing about. The SF render is a twelve-year-old raytrace which has just had a fresh rebalance and tweak, and looks the better for it. That's Neil Travers in the cockpit of the Capricorn ... reminding me of how much I love the Hellgate novels. I could live in that universe. Must go back and read the whole thing again, total immersion, and will probably end up doing a load of new artwork for it! I was utterly immersed in this universe in 2011-2014, and a lot of the work I did back then was Neil Travers and Curtis Marin, Mark Sherrat, Mick Vidal, Richard Vaurien ... oooooh, I miss them! I feel a Hellgate binge coming on! (If you're even vaguely interested...)

Too hot to think, so -- let's play in Photoshop

Photoshop filtering and colorization, from an Iray plate

Photoshop filtering and colorization, from an Bryce plate

Photoshop filtering and colorization, from a composite of various AI elements

Photoshop filtering and colorization, from a composite of various AI elements

It's waaaay too hot to do much today ... including think ... so I'm just playing in Photoshop. Experimenting, not just with filters but with filters added on top of filers. What happens when you overlay them? 

Start with a sketch, rough-color it by zapping in a lot of  pigment, then start piling on filters. How you get the sketch is another question entirely. Speaking for myself, I can't draw for beans, never could. I work from photos, or DAZ Studio (Iray and raytrace) plates, and I don't mind starting out with a bunch of AI plates, which are mined for the elements which the human artist will combine to create something new and unique. It's either that, or I lay down thousands of bucks for 3D props (yeah, right), or I trace over people's photos ... and they'd be thrilled about that. So, for me, it's a bundle of AI plates, and then digital tracing, LOL. Whatever works. 

As you like it ... digital painting or 3D render???

I put it to you -- what's your preference? Pure digital painting, or 3D render, or a composite of both? I have to admit that lately I've begun to drift towards a preference for painting. I think ... I think ... I might have seen too much AI and CG in the last couple of years, and I'm starting to value the gift of an actual living, breathing, flesh and blood human being...

This one is a composite of two images, plus the sky from a third, plus Photoshop brushes, plus a lot, and I mean a LOT of painting. You see that hair? Painted. 

But I will admit to doing the sky the sneaky way:

Yeeees, that's a photo I took at the end of the driveway, almost in the street, about six years ago. And you can actually recognize it in the finished painting here:

The final version is the result of re-re-reapplied filters and a couple of blend modes, which turn a photo into a painting. Photoshop jiggery-pokery. From time to time, I might have to cut corner and save a bit of work ... a) I don't have much time to invest in painting these days; b) I have problems with my hands and spine. I actually don't see anything wrong with using my own resources ... it's my photo, when all's said and done! And the background is a reworking of a landscape I did last year --

-- you can also recognise that in the finished work. Soooo ... digital painting or rendering? 

Now, the CG work goes back to a render from about 2021: Tomas and the dragon called Trouble, who is now mostly grown up and desperately needs to be home, on the other side of those mountains, where the big dragons live (also elves and trolls -- delicious, isn't it?). I'd very much like to produce an illustrated story, and I've been asking myself in recent months which would look best -- a CG rendered world, or a world that is painted? For comparison --

I actually find the painting more compelling! If you have an opinion, you can find me on Facebook, and I wouldn't mind having some feedback on this.

More pretty things ... why is it always the day from hell?!

 

Why is it always the day from hell? Always! Things were fine till evening, and I thought, "Hey, we're going to get a good day." Then you hold your breath, because you're just "waiting for it to happen." And it did -- something always does; you can count on it. Argh.

So ... indulging myself in a little art, working on this blog some more, to take my mind off the sheer aggravation. Sigh. I wish I could tell you these are new renders, but they're not. I still don't have the time to invest in fresh art -- a quick sketch here and there is the best I can do lately, and to be honest, I'm too tired even for that, most of the time! These are old ones, but they've been touched up in subtle ways to make more, and better, of them. 

Still working on this blog! I though I had it in good shape, then I looked back at it, spot checking here and there. Nope. Lots of missing images, dead links, obsolete stuff ... lots more work to do, to get it right! Bear with me. I also haven't yet had the chance to finish my new gallery site. Life just keeps getting in the way. And there's soooo much to do in the next few days, it would be futile to say, "Tomorrow's another day, we'll start again," because that would be utterly impossible. 

We soldier on! 

Just a few pretty things to close out the official Day From Hell

 

Nothing much to talk about today. Am working to hard ... the whole body is telling me it's time to stop and rest, and I'll get the chance in a few days' time. Not yet. I have a dep longing to paint, but it's not going to happen any time soon! Well, not before Thursday, at least. These images haven't seen light of day in years, and they've just been spruced up, polished, given a new spin. The end result is about 50/50, rendering and painting. I think, maybe, there's actually a story hiding away in these images. Hmmm ... let me think ... 

Old favourites, new techniques ... nice!

 

Old favourite characters from soooo long ago, I'd actually forgotten about them. This was a nice little romantic fantasy back in 2010 (!) ... and I decided to use some old, old renders to test out some new theories. I've wanted to paint for a long time now. Not render. Paint. What you see here is 50% ancient raytrace, 50% painting -- and when you upscale an old, old render, boy, do you have to do some painting. They pixelize badly ... which gives you a project, and opens the door to a whole lot of painting. This was all done in Photoshop, for the sheer convenience of it. Not saying it couldn't have been done in Krita, but the truth is, it's rather a long time since I've played in Krita: the interface isn't as familiar as it used to be, and I'm way too tired to faff about. But -- yay -- everything worked! Now I can't wait to do more! Oh, yes. And speaking of painting --

That was an interesting project, and I'll leave it to you to figure out what was painted, what began as a transparent .png, which bit started life as a photograph, etc.. It's a combination of all three, and/but nothing was used in its original form -- which is why it looks seamless when it puzzled together.

This one, though, is a painting, pure and simple. From scratch. Started with a photo, which I took at Lyndoch Hill a couple of years ago ... did a sketch from it ... painted. Musk Lorikeet ... nice ... and this is the first time I have managed to hand-paint feathers that actually look like feathers! Every time I've tried, previously, I've got fur, not feathers, LOL. I knew I'd figure it out but -- dang, it took about five goes to get it. Ha!

So -- all experiments turned up positive results, and now I can't wait to paint!