S'bit of a lull for tonight!

Phew, a bit tired from work/volunteering, so here's just a small thing this time.

Maybe you've noticed or not, but several symbols repeat in my senior theme. The most obvious and common one are these two. The diamond shaped one is the King's insignia, though the shape of the crest belongs more to the General since the General's spells take that form. The other is a familiar one to some. It's commonly seen as a Celtic triad and, in this story, it is a symbol of the connection the three Primordials have with each other. So, yeah, the way these symbols are portrayed in each illustration signifies who is involved with that arc and how he/she/they is/are affecting it.

Above are some examples where exactly the symbols pop up in some that I've already posted and others that will be coming along in a couple of days.

Artistically-wise, I'm not too great on logo design for anything. I did have the original intent to make the triad symbol look more tribal and organic with smooth curves while the Neoteric one would be sharp edges and precise control. Honestly, I'm not so happy with the design, but I'm glad that they came out with the intent I wanted to have from the beginning.

The Second Part of the Senior Theme-Thing

Continuing on from the last entry yesterday and on the same storyline, here's the second pair of characters that are also contrasting Primordial and Neoteric beings.

So, alrighty, wall text time!

Senior Theme

So my senior project rules were to have a common theme for the four out of the seven illustrations required at the end of the semester. Unfortunately, I didn't expect this entry to be so huge so if you want a more in-depth detail of the background story and the details for this illustration, check under the cut!

Edit: for some reason, it desaturated this. I think it's the png settings. Doh.

Senior project postings

So now the school year is over and my senior project is (more or less) done. Today I'll be posting the first in the seven.

This illustration actually took a while because I was experimenting with a new coloring technique and I was trying my hardest with it by starting out with an actual color sketch. I really did not want to vomit a rainbow again (though, as you can see, it happened anyway). I also encountered some issues that I didn't realize could happen with the lineart until later as I'll mention below.

The topic was "epilogue" and I had an idea to do an image of a heroine settling after finishing her quest and what the aftermath of the ending of a story would have looked like. I wanted to convey a certain nonchalance or boredom with the heroine as if she didn't have any other path in her life now. I also drew the dragon as a huge beast of a thing in contrast to show the heroine's impressive feat (like a typical fairy tale hero) and put in a sunset since sunsets are symbolic for endings. I think I tried to attempt a Rockwell storytelling, but seeing what I wrote already, I'm not sure if all that was really conveyed that clearly in this work. Also, on other news, I am full of clichés. Fear me! Haha.

So this time I had the intention to try lineart that only lined the outside of each background or foreground and shade in chiaroscuro-like inside the lines to create a softer form. Unfortunately, the lineart didn't work so great for the dragon scales or the smoke. It ended up forcing a strict form on objects that needed more fluidity and variation than that. On the other hand, I really liked how the clouds came out with all the shades of colors in it.

In conclusion, the end product looks quite different in coloration from the color sketch and I'm happy that it is. The sulfurous smoke from the fallen dragon was a bit hard to convey actually, since I didn't think of how I would make that bit of air distinctive from the pipe smoke or the clouds (as you can see I made them all the same colors in the color sketch--faaaantastic). Haha, funnily enough, when I showed the WIP to people and asked them about the dragon-smoke, they couldn't figure out what it was regardless. Aw, maaan. Still, I rather liked how the dragon came out and the painting.

But, I did learn a neat trick from tweaking the blending modes. I think I used Hue to create that opposite, oily hue that was originally the same color as the pipe smoke and the overall soft-rainbow, golden extravaganza that I ended up doing made the illustration quite pretty. Even with all the mistakes and the sort of unsuccessful lineart idea, I'm proud of this one.

tl;dr: it was a very long experiment that didn't come out the way I wanted, but came out well for now anyway.

Whew, S'been a while. Again.

Well, things have been hectic, but finally I have a bit of breathing room to finally post some things on here again. For now, I'm posting something I just finished about an hour ago. It's prolly not a good idea to post it so fast since I'll just wake up tomorrow and pretty much go all "Oh, wow, why did I do that?" Ah, well.

This was another experiment. I tried to do a color scheme of orange and green. I think I managed on that end and since I had a set amount of colors to use in the beginning, coloring wasn't as painful as it usually is and I didn't violently upturn a bucket of rainbows on the canvas. Haha. I really ought to find a way to color that doesn't make me wanna cry in frustration at the end....

I had an interesting time figuring out the light source since supposedly there's a shadow on the wall-thing and, thus, across the woman's face. I never really attempted that odd light source and I'd like to think that I at least kept it consistent. I also wanted to draw cactus and 1890 fashion. I think I did well on the latter, but the cactus (well, succulents, really) ended up just looking like flowers. That was sort of frustrating, but I suppose that's what happens when one doesn't look at the reference that frequently.



I also prolly ought to learn how to shade in skin. I find that of all the coloring done, that's probably the weakest. So I'll be practicing some portraits here and there.

I should also probably mention that this is a submission piece for RAW: Natural Born Artist, Denik contest and I had to illustrate what my experience with RAW was. I'll just...copy and paste my words here:

RAW is where many artists and performers often find their inspiration from the traditional and past, older works. Yet they each have a uniqueness that can border on odd, but ultimately creatively beautiful. They all also have a tenacity to achieve and keep doing what they love and enjoy. All these characteristics are represented in my illustration where the woman in a traditional dress is contrasted with a sort of punk, modern design on the lace as well as adorning succulents in her hair instead of flowers to represent, in plant language, to endure no matter the circumstances. This is what I think RAW: Natural Born Artists is as a foundation as well as the artists that represent RAW.

So that's pretty much it for now!