Krita painting: Into the Flux ... not bad. Hmm.

This one is not bad ... a painting I call Into the Flux -- make of it what you will! It doesn't illustrate any existing story, but it actually inspires story ideas ...

It uses a DAZ 3D render for the pose, then it was colored from a sketch, and it's not bad at all. I'm just starting to get the hang of Krita, and I confess, I did "run home to Photoshop" to finish, because I had to get it done quickly: dinner time. Also, a lot of this was hand drawn in the paint program, which is something I'm not yet good at. My hands are a bit too shaky to do really fine pen work, but I'm getting better. Quite pleased with this one, actually.

The cat and the Christmas tree

It's that time of year. Christmas tree goes up, Zolie decides it's just the greatest thing in the world to play with: ooooh, shiny! Which inspired a poem. But who could stay may with such a little cutie-pie?

Settling down to paint this afternoon. Or at least to doodle in color, in Krita. If something nice comes of it, I'll share later! Meanwhile, my good friend Aricia has been uploading a few of my pieces to Pinterest! This is so cool. She has a glorious collection of "boards" on Pinterest. If you want eye candy, spend five minutes and check this out: https://www.pinterest.com.au/ariciagavriel/ ... I haven't done anything with Pinterest yet, and I must. I'm actually very impressed.

Oh, if anyone is wondering: the graphic above was done in Serif, not Photoshop. Far easier that way. Photoshop will do it for you, but Serif Page Plus makes is faster, simpler. Easier to work on the fly.

Okay -- painting now.

Exotics in pen and ink ... and more Amberlight

(click to see this at 800x1000)

Playing happily in Krita, learning its interface with a (digital) pen and ink project. This is actually an old, old work which -- back in the day, something like 2010 -- couldn't even be raytraced, because my then-computer used to crash to the desktop if I asked it to do that! So this old piece was only ever done with the deep shadow map, but I always liked it a lot for its dynamism.

So... I thought, "If I'm ever going to learn the Krita interface, PAINT something. Paint what? Of course, you immediately go blank. Then it occurred to me to look back through my old, old, old portfolio and pick something that a great character design, good pose, not-so-good render. Work with that...

I have a LOT to learn, but I think I'm starting to get there. The truth is, I can only learn anything hands-on. I just start the thing up and ... doodle in color! With this project, I've basically doodled in color on top of a sketch derived from the low-quality old render. Not bad, and we'll get getter as we go. Also ...

...same sort of thing. Using this to learn the Krita interface. Today I haven't done one thing in Krita that you couldn't do in Photoshop (and I have done it many times), but leaning the new interface is a Very Big Thing, especially for this brain of mine! Krita is enormously complex, and just having the PDF manual, and/or the user wiki, open on the other computer, barely helps me, due to the way my brain works. It learns by doing, and almost refuses to learn any other way. *Sigh*

Let me finish out for today with a couple more Amberlight images:

More soon ... I have a project in mind that is dying to be painted. Exotic fellas and horses. It's in my mind, I just have to make it come out...

The Sentinel

How time flies! Here's a project I did four YEARS ago, and clean forgot to upload. Sure, you've seen the 3D render of this character, but I turned this one into an actual digital painting. And in fact, I like the digital painting much better than the renders... I was just sorting through old files and came across this. Sometimes I wonder where my brain is (or even if I have one...)

I've called this character "Raven," because of the black wings. The story is, he's a Guardian of the city ... nocturnal ... the last of his kind. I'd love to do something with this character, and this story; he's appeared in several other renders across the years. I've rendered him in Lux and Iray, but in fact -- I have to tell you the truth, I prefer the artistic "feel" of the raytraces, such as this one, which is the 2023 repaint of the 2019 version ... Photoshop magic:

...and while I was mucking about in Photoshop, I couldn't resist putting this one through the same process...! 

I must do more! In order to "bootstrap" this blog up into shape for 2024, I'm doing a lot of work ... getting rid of dead links and deadwood, and I just can't resist making the old images ... better!