Wahay's Dailies

wahay

Check out that sweet belly button placement….

Cddobbsjr

Wow! Very inspiring artwork! I loved the Orc Shaman. The textures and details there are amazing. Same with the Prometheus studies. I just can't get enough!

wahay

More furry redesigns.
Suckers!

m3nace

Have I told you how much you paint like Boldini? That's awesome.

wahay

m3nace wrote: »

Have I told you how much you paint like Boldini? That's awesome.

Oh well that seems alright.

* Googles Boldini*

OH MY ®çÚ˘∏®†?!! I don't think I should be compared to such an art badass, but that's flattering all the same. Thank you!

Halen

Your style is... EXTRAORDINARY. It's beautiful. Mindblowing. It actually tears at my heart. I love it so so much.

Do you do prints?

My question: how do you know when to stop? Your paintings are beautifully unrefined - the brushstrokes are perfect - there's no detail, but they're so detailed! How do you know when to stop?

Please tell me you make a living doing this!

Kochikens

oh wow
love this latest lion

wahay

Halen wrote: »

Your style is... EXTRAORDINARY. It's beautiful. Mindblowing. It actually tears at my heart. I love it so so much.

Do you do prints?

Eeeeeeyes? I can travel to my alma mater (three hours away from my house) and get some nice giclée prints. I'll be there in two weeks, so let me know if you want to purchase something. (Eventually I'll have a printer of my own and can do cool limited edition stuff!)

My question: how do you know when to stop? Your paintings are beautifully unrefined - the brushstrokes are perfect - there's no detail, but they're so detailed! How do you know when to stop?

I squint, and if the image reads well, has a good visual hierarchy, and has reasonable composition, I try not to overdo it.

Super-detailed fantasy art is cool and all, but it usually bores me to tears. I'm of the persuasion that holding back details gives the viewer more to enjoy. This means that my art looks unique, but it's also an often commercially unusable combination between illustration, concept, and fine art.

Please tell me you make a living doing this!

My plan is to attend a bunch of [furry] conventions to keep my queue up, but other than that I have a part-time web job from home, and I also a baby's-first-art-director for an MMORPG startup. But no, my life and art needs are too weird to have anything concrete beyond freelance.

Thank you for the love, @Kochikens.

wahay

Hadn't done Zelda fanart in years. Here's a brainfart:

wahay

I'm tired of Rare not doing anything cool with Banjo Kazooie and Jet Force Gemini. Rare, please let me resurrect those titles.

Prospicience

Really like how the banjo/kazooi painting looks like oils. Definitely wish they did more with the series, RARE is all but gone now though. A large group of the ex rare staff are working on this http://nyamyam.com/games which looks pretty awesome, and they are also talking about a spiritual successor to BK since rare is gone now and they can't use that name/characters.

wahay

Two unrelated sketches:

Honk

Hello,

You have a lot of talent!

Byeee

joshgotro

Looks like Man-Bat.

Approve

wahay

Current commission, in progress. More mythology.

Poundfool

Really diggin' the color pallet/range on this one! The detail on the face/ears are especially good.

kevindee

Yup. I still really, really love your stuff. Do you have any streams or recorded work out? It'd be awesome to see your process, especially how you move from a value painting into colour!

Iruka

So this is largely opinion on my part, because the nature of your style is much more wild than mine, but I feel like you miss the opportunity to touch up your work in very small places that will help round it out and give the viewer something to focus on. A touch of higher contrast around/in the eyes, for instance, can do a lot. Contrast in general is sort of strange in your work, its there, but at seemingly unimportant places.

For example:


All thats happening here, is that I put some black back into the eyes, and into the mouth, stealing the focus away from his hair flourishes, and back to his face. Its not really in your hand, so it looks a little weird, but I think you get my point. Boldini is a great example, actually. The wild portraits tend to sure up around the face.

wahay

kevindee wrote: »

Yup. I still really, really love your stuff. Do you have any streams or recorded work out? It'd be awesome to see your process, especially how you move from a value painting into colour!

Thank you! My laptop is dying, and I have no money or job, BUT when I have both I'll buy a good computer that can handle streaming my work, and back when I was able I always updated my Twitter and Facebook pages to share my stream times.

Iruka wrote: »

So this is largely opinion on my part, because the nature of your style is much more wild than mine, but I feel like you miss the opportunity to touch up your work in very small places that will help round it out and give the viewer something to focus on. A touch of higher contrast around/in the eyes, for instance, can do a lot. Contrast in general is sort of strange in your work, its there, but at seemingly unimportant places.

Thanks for the crit! I agree, there's always more I can do. It's hard for me to pick and choose exactly what it is I want, so it's not unusual for my pieces to leave you going, "Uh, what am I supposed to look at, again?" In this case, I went for exaggerating the glowing eyes over cleaning it up.

Iruka

Maybe some reflected light (as in, specific, and sharp blue highlights hitting the fur) in conjunction with, or replacing the washed out glow would serve it better.

I mean, if you recognize the problem you will find your own ways to solve it, but remember that your viewer tends to look at the face/eyes and the acting going on in the hands. So if you find yourself questioning what could maybe use just a few extra minutes of refinement or a nice key highlight, its often those areas which are telling the bulk of the narrative. I think you could also spend some time deciding if you are following a lighting scheme, and let that tell you where the contrast is.

the indecisions flattens out your work, which is a shame because it lends itself to being so energetic and volumetric.

Either way, I hope you laptop doesn't die, and I hope you keep pushing forward.

wahay

Iruka wrote: »

the indecisions flattens out your work, which is a shame because it lends itself to being so energetic and volumetric.

Either way, I hope you laptop doesn't die, and I hope you keep pushing forward.

Thanks! Nathan Fowkes seems to express the same sentiment about indecision. I try to be more critical of my hands and face now. It's a bit easier to care when I'm working beyond a warm-up sketch, but most of my work doesn't go beyond that. Still glad you're lighting a little fire under my butt! It's good to have a reminder. c:

Here're some more quickie sketch commissions:

whoreray

Dang sir, nice style. These are killing me. It's like a bunch of knives jumped into paint and then pleasure stabbed me in the face.

Halen

I know you're driven by what you're commissioned to do, but I really wish you'd more like the old lady painting you did. Still can't get over that.

wahay

Halen wrote: »

I know you're driven by what you're commissioned to do, but I really wish you'd more like the old lady painting you did. Still can't get over that.

Thanks! Those are pretty popular. I'd love it if my I could market commissions like that, but marketing portraits (outside of being a soccer mom at a county fair) blows my mind. Recently, my wedding invites are of a similar caliber:



I still do photo studies as warmups every now and then. I have a few on my plate to keep me busy, but definitely not as much as I used to.

whoreray wrote: »

Dang sir, nice style. These are killing me. It's like a bunch of knives jumped into paint and then pleasure stabbed me in the face.

New favourite compliment!

wahay

Good news, @Halen, I've done more like the old lady painting! Here's my warmup from today and yesterday:

Halen

And as expected, it's awesome. Great work man.

wahay

Detailing this character:




Doing colour comps to put him in this environment:

wahay

Sorry chumps, it's time for more furry art:

francium

Star fox.

Amazed.

F87

Really incredible paintings my friend. I personally don't like Furry things, but I can't help but like your art! Keep it up man, more more more!

McJohnstable

That last one is sooooo slick.

wahay

F87 wrote: »

Really incredible paintings my friend. I personally don't like Furry things, but I can't help but like your art! Keep it up man, more more more!

Just like any art subgenre, there are some amazing "furry" artists I know. I'll drop some names, if you want.

francium wrote: »

Star fox.

Amazed.

Star Fox is an expression now? Hahahah, thanks!

Esiotrot

love these last two, the one on the left reminds me of Phil Hale, really great atmosphere

Cr33g

God damn it. Your work is amazing, wahay. I love how broad your work is. You don't just paint one "thing", you paint multiple things in different styles. While these styles look different from one another, you can just, I dunno, tell it's "your" overall style. It's wicked.

I'm sorry if you've already answered these questions, as I spent my time in this thread looking and drooling at your artwork, but I was wondering:

-Are your paintings achieved by traditional or digital means? I'm guessing digital - if digital, what program(s) and hardware do you use?

-Do you plan any of your paintings beforehand? Like a pencil sketch or something?

Keep up the awesome work. God damn.

RushJet1

I'm not sure how you're doing it, but these are detailed without being detailed. Absolutely great to look at, this thread has been worth the time!

wahay

Thank you @Cr33g and @RushJet1! I'm glad my style is to your liking. It's not usually people's cup of tea.

Cr33g wrote: »

Are your paintings achieved by traditional or digital means? I'm guessing digital - if digital, what program(s) and hardware do you use?

Mostly digital: Photoshop, Alchemy, and occasionally Colors! on the Nintendo DS
It's pretty obvious when I start with pencil underneath, but that's usually it.

Do you plan any of your paintings beforehand? Like a pencil sketch or something?

They go from either zero planning to fifteen hours of planning, based on how involved the image is, and how much I'm getting paid.

I'd like to do a simple oil painting, so I am first drafting it on the iPad. This was using Sketchbook Pro:

squidbunny

These are the best furries.

wahay

Werewolf meets Metal Gear style. Oy!

wahay

Also, when I'm not draw furries, my illustrationy fantasy art-y tradition stuff starts off like this:

Pukio

God wahay, your style is sick as hell. I'd really love to see more of your traditional stuff.