Painting Drama 1: Craft and Discovery Homework

Here are a series of thumbnail drawings that I did for week 7. At first this one was hard to get into, but them this one was a lot of fun! Think that I will continue to use this method to broad stroke ideas or just for fun. Enjoy!

Jason Unmasked

Jason Voorhiees star of stage and screen and murder of a million or so pre-marital sex having teens. this One was done for the Daily Sketch challenge over on DeviantArt.com

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The Professor (fixing this one and evening out the tones more)

More going back and fixing things...a quick piece that I did a while back.

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Also Buy prints here:

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Street Fighter 25 Submission: Update!!

So Street Fighter is turning 25 (25th Anniversary!) and as a result Capcom is having a Street Fighter 25th anniversary contest where your art work can be featured. So I of course submitted work for it.
The two themes behind the contest were "I am a Street Fighter" or "Street Fighter 25". So I went with the former for this one. I actually did it as an illustration first, but then decided to re-do it as a painting, because I realized that I had more time. Which was cool, so I was able to take my time and do a proper painting. As always, there are some things that I think worked for this, but as always anatomy continues to be a challenge. So, I will definitely be working on that.
At any rate, on to the next!

Update*****
I recently found out that my submission was accepted to the Street Fighter 25h Anniversary tribute book. I am super excited about this, and I wasn't even sure that I liked this piece. Woo hoo!!!!

http://murdockink.tumblr.com/

http://murdockink.blogspot.com/
http://moebocop.deviantart.com/
http://twitter.com/mauricemurdock

Also Buy prints here:
http://society6.com/mauricemurdock

Nintendo Tribute: Elevator Action

 

This week's post is of Elevator Action, which is not necessarily a game that I so much played on Nintendo per Se, but more a game that was still fun from the 80's. So I figured "why not include it in the book".  There are some things that I tried in this piece, that I think worked out pretty well, however there is always room for improvement (in this case namely with the color). At any rate, below are the steps for how I got to the final piece.

Below: I wanted to come up with an interesting composition, so as always I did a number of composition studies, but they were all of the side view. I finally realized that the best view would be to have the main character shooting/looking/interacting with the viewer. Much more interesting than a boring side view. So after a few sketches, below was the final composition that I came up with. I wanted to have him running away from enemy agents, and shooting over his shoulder to have a feling of action to the piece.

 

Below: Now depending on the idea/subject matter, etc. I normally just skip right into drawing, etc. after doing some research etc. but...in this case I realized that in order for this to not* look like crap, I would need as close to a live model as possible. Since I didn't have one of those handy, I decided to just use myself. I set up my camera on my mantle, used the self timer setting and then took one or two shots of me looking over my shoulder while "dashing".(I used a pair of scissors as my "gun"). Despite the fact that I do NOT look like a super awesome secret spy, I decided that this would be a good reference to start work. As I go I am realizing how important research is, because without it, your drawing is just not going to look right.

 

Below: I did an initial sketch, then did a basic line sketch on top of that, and then started filling in the shadow layers and the highlights.I wasn't sure who to make the character look like, so I used Errol Flynn as a model, which I thought worked ok....I of course gave him a face scar...because....really who is going to mess with a guy with a face scar, would you? The lesson learned here is that structure, form, value and lighting are pretty much the most important parts of your piece. Without it, the rest of the piece is going to look sucky. It took me a couple of tries to learn, that, but hopefully I just saved you a lot of work.

 

Below: Now the biggest issue that I had with this one was how to apply color. As a matter of fact, I got to the point where I would add the color, and then get to a certain point, and I would hate it! A lot. I was getting bogged down in the order of whether to apply color first, and then shadows, or* whether to apply shadows and then color. On top of that, I was also getting bogged down on HOW to actually apply the color in the piece, because I would try a number of tactics, and it would not work.

It took a couple of tries, but I finally figured out the proper order for how to apply each (it still needs some finessing, but at least I have the basics down)--for now until I find a better way.

 

Below: From there I went in and I worked on top of everything, using various combinations of multiply, softlight, overlay, etc. and layer adjustment settings to get things to where I wanted them.

 

Again the biggest challenge here was the lighting (it always is). I wanted parts of the piece highlighted, and other parts not as prominent, I think it works, but again there is always room for improvement. 

I also learned that painting metal is def. not easy. I will need to work on ways to make it not look so "chalky". Anyway, Elevator Action is done, and is def. going in the book!

 

 

p.s.

Small piece of trivia...I just discovered that the name of the character that you play in the game is "Agent 17: aka--Otto"! Who knew...

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-http://murdockink.blogspot.com/
-http://moebocop.deviantart.com/
-http://twitter.com/mauricemurdock

Also Buy prints here:
-http://society6.com/mauricemurdock

Mighty Bomb Jack! (Again)

So here is the final Mighty Bomb Jack piece. I had posted this before, but of course I am never happy with anything that I do, and until I am, I am always tempted to do things over and over again and experiment. In fact that is one of the benefits to Photoshop, and it's hinderances as well.

There are so many layer settings, button options and menu options in the program that the possibility for outcomes is almost infinite. This of course makes this overwhelming when you are trying to develop a style and be consistant. I am working on another fun piece now (Elevator Action) which is getting there, but I had to basically start the thing over three times, because I was not happy with how it was coming out at all (and I might be a semi-obsessive-compulsive perfectionist)

All in all though the theory is that the more work you put together and the more work you do, the sooner you will arrive where you want to be. At least that the goal.

Anyway...enjoy!

"Monst-Her"

I call this one "The Monst-Her". This is basically a combination of "the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Swamp Thing" but the female version. Not anything really dramatic to speak of, but just for fun.

The idea came to me while I was down in Central America. I definitely took a sketch book with me, and along with finishing up the other sketches for the tribute book, I also put down whatever came to mind. This was one of those ideas.

In addition, I was also reading "Color and Light" by James Gurney (you can get it at Amazon here if you are interested). It's a pretty great book, pretty simple to get through and has a lot of really informative tips on setting up color palettes, and color schemes. 

I had definitely made my way up to working with creating color schemes, and up until now I was using color scheme designer. The thing that I was missing though was about color gamuts, and limited color palettes.

In short, using the color wheel, you essentially limit the colors that you use by drawing a polygon (a triangle, a rectangle, etc.) and then sticking to the colors within the polygon. What you will then get is a color scheme that is complimentary with each other (as long as you stick within the shape). Below is an example of a gamut mask pulled from the color wheel.

I found a site called livepaintinglessons.com that allows you to create your own gamut masks and you can use that as part of your piece/painting.
Now you can use this same technique when creating your own pieces.

In other news the art book is coming along nicely, and I will posting the Mighty Bomb Jack rework next!

'Til next time..

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Nintendo Tribute: Double Dragon 2

This weeks post is Double Dragon (the second part of the tribute--Jimmy Lee). I think that the first character is called Billy. For this one I decided to go against the dark background of the last post, and this time around decided to do a twilight/sunset scene. (I really like sunset scenes/shots.) I find that they are easier to create and develop than a night scene. I also tried out a new signature to make it more official in the 2K12. See below for some steps to see what I was thinking while I was painting this guy.

1) So after the last Double Dragon post, I decided that I needed some help. I wasn't sure where I was going wrong and looked into watching more tutorials, podcasts, etc. etc. I learned a few things such as how to create better backlighting, and also about the sketch process. Basically, the sketch is the key to doing a good piece of work. Lots of times I would scan a sketch from my sketchbook, and   then go right into painting. However this time around, I decided to take the extra step and go over my lines, because I was finding that the painting process was getting difficult. What's funny is that I still really look the textured look of sketch lines. So I will have to work to see how to make this more interesting. Anyway below is the sketch phase.

 2) and here is the line phase. I created the lines on a seperate multiple layer over the sketch layer (I also set the sketch layer to multiply). I don't know about you guys, but the layer order is the thing that always always always messes me up and gets confusing. (below)

 

 3) Below you see that I start to block in the basic colors on a normal layer between the basic line art layer (above) and the sketch layer that I scanned in initially. At this point I start to determine where my light source is coming from as this will help me make my decisions on shadows later on.

 4) Below I start to fill in all of the basic colors as well as determine the background. Since I want the scene to appear in a twilight setting, I decided to go with a gradient background where the sun is the source of the light and everything is hilighted accordingly. I am finding that lighting is the hardest thing to get the hang of, but is another key to making a convincing piece.

 5) At this stage I start to go over my lines and paint over the lines on a new layer.

 6) Then at this point I have a sense of where I want to go with the piece, what I need to do color wise, and what bits need more details. Usually by this point I have a sense of what I am doing and all of my basic decisions have been made so now it's just a matter of finishing things up.

 

7) Below is the final piece. In the background I added some clouds to fill the space and then had the colors reflect off of the clouds accordingly. You won't be able to see it really since I made it a point to soften the background. I am sure that I will learn a better way to do this. I also am going to try and work on making the piece more textured and vibrant. It seems a little too smooth. All in all though I like this one and will put this in the book!

8) Next up Ducktales. Yeah....I know..it's a game that was super awesome....and I really loved it. See ya next time.


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http://twitter.com/mauricemurdock