I feel like the pilot should be way further behind the crash, possibly lower, even if he has been shot straight up via ejector seat. Moving him a little bit towards the bottom left would help a lot, which might allow you to do some cropping off to fix the weak composition. Love the water, kind of reminds me of ol' Bob Ross from the Joy of Painting whipping out the palette brush to add "happy little splashes".
Maybe by some horrible twist of fate he's about to fall on the airplane he ejected out of several minutes ago. In either case, yeah, the pilot's position in relation to the plane looks wierd.
I like this new stuff your making! Especially the Delorean looking car at the top.
This 4th page is incredibly gorgeous man. With others I agree the car is the only less than stellar one, lacking definition, especially in the highlighed road. The others however are simply too much fun to look at.
Great work!
P.S. the water in the planecrash is so awesome I think my pants exploded.
Hi Alduar,
nice jobs with the art stuff. It's really great.
It's very seldom to see someone post something like this type
of art in the forums.
Really cool to see the fighter plane in the brush format...
Anway, I'm still curious about the first picture..It looks like cloud
up the mountain...But it looks good.
Keep it up..
How exactly does one develop a sense for color and form this good, or are you some kind of superhuman, Alduar?
The jet scene has the potential to be the most breathtaking scene I've ever set eyes on. It looks like they're zooming toward an unbelievably huge cliff/mesa/mountain/reallybigrock. And the little spots you've got on the lower "hill" portion seem like dwellings which puts the picture into that grand scope.
EDIT: Wait, I saw the people. Now the cliff/mesa/mountain/reallybigrock looks like a giant tree- increasing its awesome factor by 1,000,000.
Alduar, can you actually paint on canvas as well as you do with.. whatever program you use? (photoshop, although Corell Painter seems more likely).
Paintings like these would be absolutely gorgeous to see up close. Anyone who's never been to an art museum with some really fine paintings doesn't know what they're missing. Slides and pictures don't do them justice, which is why I'm wondering if you could actually paint on canvas.
MufasaJoe: yeah.. I was trying to find a place for the pilot that would look good.. apparently I failed: glad you like, thanks
magictoaster: hehe there indeed was a horrible twist of fate
Shiboe: thanks man. yeah, I didn't spend much time on it. the car. glad you dig.
Kalynar: these are all digital, I use textured brushes, paint the textures, and use textures from paintings and photos
Jonis:
vrempire: thanks mate. you're right about the first picture, an abstraction of a mountain
Tam: i have taken college color theory, and I read everything I can on the subject, including but not limited to.. books.. online posts.. etc. glad you like the awesome factor, it is my goal
rye: I don't really know, I paint very differently on a canvas. (I use photoshop, mostly) The knowledge (color theory, proportion, working from imagination, abstraction, etc) is all the same... just different tools. I have painted some still lifes in oil that I will prolly post.. thanks for postin
a portrait.. of how i feel (not really me..) but how i feel after creating a piece that I like... which eventually I end up hating.. in two weeks
Oh man.. I'm not sure if I love the circle brush effect or hate it. At a quick glance it looks like poor photoshopping, but of course it isn't. Woulda been nice to see how it would have turned out if you used some brushes with a nice edge or texture to them.
Oh, and you are absolutely allowed to use photo reff'd things in a portfolio. Some people do even less abstraction (practically tracing) and get away with it in a portfolio.
If you are repainting it entirely and changing some colors yourself, it's a prime candidate for a portfolio. Put them near the back, though, I would suggest. Not because they are bad but because they aren't as impressive sitting next to some of the other amazing paintings I've seen.
Alduar you mention books and forum stuff on color theory. Could you possibly direct a person [such as myself] to said articles of interest?
By the way, your art is astounding. I really like the colors on that ejection painting. That water is fantastic. I also really like the colors on that car, dreary as they are.
for fun, gangster. He's sorry, but he must kill you now
first of a series of fencers (not finished, not sure if I want to bother finishing)
for blizzard contest: 2 Diablo and a starcraft:
melting_doll: thank you, hm, that's odd. How can you hate a piece while you work on it? I always feel like everythings going right, then I step back and everything is wrong... that feeling x100 after a few weeks.
ravenshadow: thanks mate!
rye: heh, poor photoshopping! The circle brush is pretty obvious... I'm really trying hard to simplify myself a bit.. limit my strokes. I never quite know what people generally consider to be the "right way" to do things. thanks for the heads up
aumni: books- search for color theory at your local library, there are tons of books, some are better than others, but they all have valuable information. really, if you want to learn color theory, at some point you should probably do value charts and crap in acrylic on little white squares of canvas paper... I did that in my color theory class... and well... it gives you hands on insight as to just how damned hard it is to mix colors.. THE RIGHT WAY. tints tones shades... not just words, big meaning behind them, and they effect huge things in painting. glad you dig mate, thanks for posting. (as for the forum posts, search for tutorials and color theory on conceptart.org and google... you need to be proactive if you ever expect to learn anything ever)
That last pic has a slight Space Odyessy feel to it, needless to say, it rocks. I would say that you have great potential as a storyboard artist, but that would be short-changing you big time. It seems your artistry knows no bounds.
Kudos on the character designs, cause those are great too.
Everything that makes a picture encaptivating is present and accounted for. My mind is creating all these summaries of just what kind of shit is gonna hit the fan in this picture.
Is he a hired hitman? How did he gets those tatooed lines on his face? What kind of world do they live in where the past and future meld together so flawlessly?
I hope i'm able to create this kind of stuff in fifteen years or so. I could die a happy man if I could just bust out something like this whenever I want.
1). the starcraft one isn't very starcrafty :P I wouldn't associate it with SC if you hadn't mentioned it, and even then I don't really see the resemblance.
2). the perspective on that last one is silly, particularly around the barrel and briefcase
Godfather: aye, its supposed to be very movielike. Thanks.. I love combining things that you don't really see together often, and hopefully doing it effectively. Color can hold things together, and make things work.. I'm glad to see you are asking yourself questions about the scene, if the viewer looks long enough for questions to be asked... I have done my job. I think I might do a series of the era/world established in this picture.. but first I really do need to do some vehicle studies!
Kazhiim: thanks. You're absolutely right.. my hopes of winning with that starcraft piece were crushed when i saw cicinomo's piece (www.artpad.org) But I am inspired.. to see my best effort disintegrate before my eyes.. You're right about the perspective... I will do better in the future I hope.
Alduar, you are my favorite digital artist now. I'm really sorry that I can't give you any crits, but I have a good reason: you are so far out of my league that I'd rather try to get to Alpha Centauri than wherever the hell you are right now.
Tam: thank you very much! I'm sorry but I don't have a site up... closest thing is my conceptart.org thread, It has some really old work... you can also visit the archive of my work, hosted by none other than pennyarcade!
How long have you been doing art in general Alduar? How old were you when you decided to pick up the pen/pencil/paintbrush/etc? Did you just wake up one day and decide to draw or has it always been your ambition?
rubberAC: unfortunately, I sized that image down, then continued to work on it... so it doesnt really have a high rez finished version.. well, I might be able to come up with something without too much pixellization(sp?)
Godfather: I have been doing art in general my entire life... For a long time I just copied other artists ideas (i have never used color picker/painted over/etc. on any images... no direct stealing anyhow) I used to do self portraits to try and mimic andrew jones' self portraits.. with a mouse and photoshop 7.. that was like.. sophmore year of highschool.. so.. 2003ish. I have painted ever since then.. as I have progressed, I have gone backwards. I would use something that I had seen other artists use, without learning any of the theory behind it.. and later on I would learn the theory (ESPECIALLY color theory) So, when I actually learned the theory I learned faster, because I already had things that I could relate the theory to in my mind. I've read a lot of books since then, got them from library, without spending any $ I still don't know what exactly I want to do with my life.. fine art, concept art for videogames, conceptart for movies, etc. I think that really I could do any of the above... but in the end my passion is for learning... I hope to never stop learning. /rant!
This reminds me of a guy that once went to my high school; it's really a rags-to-riches story.
Anyways, the guy didn't have much going for him; he was in special education classes, although the only thing wrong with him was that he was just an incredibly slow learner. However, he started taking art his Junior year in high school, and since he had such a simple mind set or something like that, was able to fully concentrate on art. This guy won awards all over Texas, whether it be photoshop, painting, sketchwork, you name it.
He spent half a year at community college before Harvard specifically asked him to accept a full scholarship for their art program. His art was so fantastic that President Bush (Senior) requested that he do some sort of art exibit for an upcoming event (I forget what it was unfortunately). After graduating Harvard, his first gig was creating set designs for a movie. Today he's a millionaire, regularly raking in a seven-figure income.
The point of this story? I think you have what it takes to duplicate what he has accomplished. Just keep learning all that you can and enjoy every minute of it. It's what I hope to achieve someday, but since you're on such a higher plateau than I at this point in time, i'll watch to see what happens in your case while doing all that I can to improve.
BuckwolfeStarts With Them, Ends With UsRegistered Userregular
edited September 2006
I know I haven't commented on any of these until now, but I have been keeping an eye on this thread. Its all excellent, excellent work. But theres just one thing about this new one that jumps out at me, that I'd like to bring up.
All of the figures (excluding the small silhouettes in the bg), and the important information is running across the middle of the image. Almost like its all on one plain, and the rest is just filler. Don't get me wrong, the detail work is fantastic, but you could almost crop off the top and bottom and have a more effective image, ya know what I mean? Because right now its like a hamburger without all the toppings. You've got a plain bun the top and bottom, and then the meat in the middle. But there's no lettuce, or ketchup, or pickles. Maybe that's not the best comparison in the world, but I think it works.
Looked into this thread for the first time. Stunning work oo
Most fascinating are these huge scale perspectives like the Massive Green for me.
How much time do/did you draw from life?
I really would like to see you doing a little comic in this painted style, taking place in an exotic environment, in a jungle or alien planet, for example ^^''
I really love all the stuff you've been doing lately. Honestly I look foward to everything you put out.
As for your last one, the only thing buggy is the perspective on the barrel and box not really matching the other stuff. Also, it's hillarous to me that there's a random guy in a supervillain costum just hangin' with the mobbies.
I'm detecting a very large amount of win emanating from this thread.
Like Buckwolfe said, I've been checking this topic since the beginning, and wow, just wow. I won't say anything else, because most of my thoughts have already been covered (great colouring etc etc). Keep it up dude, your stuff is a pleasure to look at.
Buckwolfe: thanks man! you're right... thank you for bringing that up, one more thing to think about when making compositions!
Ape2001: thanks mate... I draw from life... every week. I didn't at all this summer *frown* but yeah, I try to keep it up, but it's hard. I would indeed like to try some sequential work, there is so much to learn!
Shiboe: thansk! yeah, those boxes and whatnot kinda suck, I don't know what happened. glad you like the dude in the costume... I thought it would be funny too, and then i added the mustache, and i peed my pants, it was fun!
Tweaked_Bat_: thanks! always a pleasure to read and respond to posts..
are the figure drawings and pencil portrait towards the older end? i remember your other pencil stuff being really good, especially lately. i wouldnt even believe you had done these. thumbnails are good, though.
Excellent. :^: May I ask what 08low.jpg was comprised of? I'm guessing something like mixed media with charcoal and possibly acrylic? A bit of water? I'm kind of interested in that one. Good show here man, keep up that delectable work of yours. The wine bottles are all sorts of class man. Oil?
hunterb: they are not that old, i just really blow at life drawing... I can't wrap my head around it... I need to warm up or something, i don't know!
neoredxii: thanks mate! 08low is just vine charcoal on paper. It started out as a page of 2 minute gestures, and evolved into a crazy textured mess... I used paper towels to smear and erasers, but other than that I just rendered everything to hell.. it took me a good couple hours. the winebottles are oils.. peace!
need to learn more... get more information in brain... from reference::
Posts
I like this new stuff your making! Especially the Delorean looking car at the top.
Great work!
P.S. the water in the planecrash is so awesome I think my pants exploded.
nice jobs with the art stuff. It's really great.
It's very seldom to see someone post something like this type
of art in the forums.
Really cool to see the fighter plane in the brush format...
Anway, I'm still curious about the first picture..It looks like cloud
up the mountain...But it looks good.
Keep it up..
The jet scene has the potential to be the most breathtaking scene I've ever set eyes on. It looks like they're zooming toward an unbelievably huge cliff/mesa/mountain/reallybigrock. And the little spots you've got on the lower "hill" portion seem like dwellings which puts the picture into that grand scope.
EDIT: Wait, I saw the people. Now the cliff/mesa/mountain/reallybigrock looks like a giant tree- increasing its awesome factor by 1,000,000.
Paintings like these would be absolutely gorgeous to see up close. Anyone who's never been to an art museum with some really fine paintings doesn't know what they're missing. Slides and pictures don't do them justice, which is why I'm wondering if you could actually paint on canvas.
magictoaster: hehe there indeed was a horrible twist of fate
Shiboe: thanks man. yeah, I didn't spend much time on it. the car. glad you dig.
Kalynar: these are all digital, I use textured brushes, paint the textures, and use textures from paintings and photos
Jonis:
vrempire: thanks mate. you're right about the first picture, an abstraction of a mountain
Tam: i have taken college color theory, and I read everything I can on the subject, including but not limited to.. books.. online posts.. etc. glad you like the awesome factor, it is my goal
rye: I don't really know, I paint very differently on a canvas. (I use photoshop, mostly) The knowledge (color theory, proportion, working from imagination, abstraction, etc) is all the same... just different tools. I have painted some still lifes in oil that I will prolly post.. thanks for postin
a portrait.. of how i feel (not really me..) but how i feel after creating a piece that I like... which eventually I end up hating.. in two weeks
i'm usually just the opposite. i hate it, then i go back to look at it and like it. (:
Oh, and you are absolutely allowed to use photo reff'd things in a portfolio. Some people do even less abstraction (practically tracing) and get away with it in a portfolio.
If you are repainting it entirely and changing some colors yourself, it's a prime candidate for a portfolio. Put them near the back, though, I would suggest. Not because they are bad but because they aren't as impressive sitting next to some of the other amazing paintings I've seen.
By the way, your art is astounding. I really like the colors on that ejection painting. That water is fantastic. I also really like the colors on that car, dreary as they are.
first of a series of fencers (not finished, not sure if I want to bother finishing)
for blizzard contest: 2 Diablo and a starcraft:
melting_doll: thank you, hm, that's odd. How can you hate a piece while you work on it? I always feel like everythings going right, then I step back and everything is wrong... that feeling x100 after a few weeks.
ravenshadow: thanks mate!
rye: heh, poor photoshopping! The circle brush is pretty obvious... I'm really trying hard to simplify myself a bit.. limit my strokes. I never quite know what people generally consider to be the "right way" to do things. thanks for the heads up
aumni: books- search for color theory at your local library, there are tons of books, some are better than others, but they all have valuable information. really, if you want to learn color theory, at some point you should probably do value charts and crap in acrylic on little white squares of canvas paper... I did that in my color theory class... and well... it gives you hands on insight as to just how damned hard it is to mix colors.. THE RIGHT WAY. tints tones shades... not just words, big meaning behind them, and they effect huge things in painting. glad you dig mate, thanks for posting. (as for the forum posts, search for tutorials and color theory on conceptart.org and google... you need to be proactive if you ever expect to learn anything ever)
Kudos on the character designs, cause those are great too.
INSTAGRAM
man, I need to do some car studies.. quick!
earthwormadam: thanks mate.
i
sir peechizworth: thanks mate!
Good lord. It's like a scene in a movie.
Everything that makes a picture encaptivating is present and accounted for. My mind is creating all these summaries of just what kind of shit is gonna hit the fan in this picture.
Is he a hired hitman? How did he gets those tatooed lines on his face? What kind of world do they live in where the past and future meld together so flawlessly?
I hope i'm able to create this kind of stuff in fifteen years or so. I could die a happy man if I could just bust out something like this whenever I want.
2 things:
1). the starcraft one isn't very starcrafty :P I wouldn't associate it with SC if you hadn't mentioned it, and even then I don't really see the resemblance.
2). the perspective on that last one is silly, particularly around the barrel and briefcase
Godfather: aye, its supposed to be very movielike. Thanks.. I love combining things that you don't really see together often, and hopefully doing it effectively. Color can hold things together, and make things work.. I'm glad to see you are asking yourself questions about the scene, if the viewer looks long enough for questions to be asked... I have done my job. I think I might do a series of the era/world established in this picture.. but first I really do need to do some vehicle studies!
Kazhiim: thanks. You're absolutely right.. my hopes of winning with that starcraft piece were crushed when i saw cicinomo's piece (www.artpad.org) But I am inspired.. to see my best effort disintegrate before my eyes.. You're right about the perspective... I will do better in the future I hope.
did this today... 2.5 hours..? i think..
Do you have a site?
Also: Desktop size?
Godfather: I have been doing art in general my entire life... For a long time I just copied other artists ideas (i have never used color picker/painted over/etc. on any images... no direct stealing anyhow) I used to do self portraits to try and mimic andrew jones' self portraits.. with a mouse and photoshop 7.. that was like.. sophmore year of highschool.. so.. 2003ish. I have painted ever since then.. as I have progressed, I have gone backwards. I would use something that I had seen other artists use, without learning any of the theory behind it.. and later on I would learn the theory (ESPECIALLY color theory) So, when I actually learned the theory I learned faster, because I already had things that I could relate the theory to in my mind. I've read a lot of books since then, got them from library, without spending any $ I still don't know what exactly I want to do with my life.. fine art, concept art for videogames, conceptart for movies, etc. I think that really I could do any of the above... but in the end my passion is for learning... I hope to never stop learning. /rant!
Anyways, the guy didn't have much going for him; he was in special education classes, although the only thing wrong with him was that he was just an incredibly slow learner. However, he started taking art his Junior year in high school, and since he had such a simple mind set or something like that, was able to fully concentrate on art. This guy won awards all over Texas, whether it be photoshop, painting, sketchwork, you name it.
He spent half a year at community college before Harvard specifically asked him to accept a full scholarship for their art program. His art was so fantastic that President Bush (Senior) requested that he do some sort of art exibit for an upcoming event (I forget what it was unfortunately). After graduating Harvard, his first gig was creating set designs for a movie. Today he's a millionaire, regularly raking in a seven-figure income.
The point of this story? I think you have what it takes to duplicate what he has accomplished. Just keep learning all that you can and enjoy every minute of it. It's what I hope to achieve someday, but since you're on such a higher plateau than I at this point in time, i'll watch to see what happens in your case while doing all that I can to improve.
godfather. cool man.. thanks.. glad to hear
All of the figures (excluding the small silhouettes in the bg), and the important information is running across the middle of the image. Almost like its all on one plain, and the rest is just filler. Don't get me wrong, the detail work is fantastic, but you could almost crop off the top and bottom and have a more effective image, ya know what I mean? Because right now its like a hamburger without all the toppings. You've got a plain bun the top and bottom, and then the meat in the middle. But there's no lettuce, or ketchup, or pickles. Maybe that's not the best comparison in the world, but I think it works.
Steam handle: Buckwolfe
Most fascinating are these huge scale perspectives like the Massive Green for me.
How much time do/did you draw from life?
I really would like to see you doing a little comic in this painted style, taking place in an exotic environment, in a jungle or alien planet, for example ^^''
- great animation focused website http://www.catsuka.com
As for your last one, the only thing buggy is the perspective on the barrel and box not really matching the other stuff. Also, it's hillarous to me that there's a random guy in a supervillain costum just hangin' with the mobbies.
Like Buckwolfe said, I've been checking this topic since the beginning, and wow, just wow. I won't say anything else, because most of my thoughts have already been covered (great colouring etc etc). Keep it up dude, your stuff is a pleasure to look at.
responses in a moment
Ape2001: thanks mate... I draw from life... every week. I didn't at all this summer *frown* but yeah, I try to keep it up, but it's hard. I would indeed like to try some sequential work, there is so much to learn!
Shiboe: thansk! yeah, those boxes and whatnot kinda suck, I don't know what happened. glad you like the dude in the costume... I thought it would be funny too, and then i added the mustache, and i peed my pants, it was fun!
Tweaked_Bat_: thanks! always a pleasure to read and respond to posts..
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neoredxii: thanks mate! 08low is just vine charcoal on paper. It started out as a page of 2 minute gestures, and evolved into a crazy textured mess... I used paper towels to smear and erasers, but other than that I just rendered everything to hell.. it took me a good couple hours. the winebottles are oils.. peace!
need to learn more... get more information in brain... from reference::