Gun Guy

Just goofing around with a pose from a Manga "how to" book. Their example was a Joker-esque character, holding a stylized knife. I liked the pose and body shape, so I played with the costume design and weaponry. This is what I came up with.

Pet Peeve Series - The "Mute" Point

This is one of those misuses of a word or phrase that is like nails on a chalkboard to me. This is just me trying to do my part to educate and illuminate. Being a visual artist, I use my art to help express my opinion on the subject.

Mute: Refraining from producing speech or vocal sound.

MOOT: Of no practical importance; irrelevant. A moot point is a point that doesn't matter any longer because circumstances have changed.

Disclaimer: Do I always use the correct words, terms, phrases or context? Nope. Am I a member of "The Word Police?" Nope, again. I'm just doing my bit to help folks avoid embarrassment by offering the correct usage of this particular phrase. No claim of superiority is implied or assumed on my part!

A "Continuation"

I came across this portrait that I'd painted in 2006. I decided to push it a little farther and mostly liked the result.

Digital oils and impasto.

Color Vibrations

A "two-fer" this time. Sketching for practice and relaxation while experimenting with creating visual vibrations with color.

Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009)

We lost a great painter today.

Cartoons Doodle Session

Its been a while since I posted some stuff from the digital sketchbook. I'd recently been looking over some model sheets that I'd collected and some of my cartooning books. That's what sparked this doodle session.

Two New Caravaggio Paintings Found

Two paintings by master painter, Caravaggio, were recently discovered.

They are titled:

• Boy Peeling Fruit
• The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew

Caravaggio's work is some of my favorite paintings to view. I love his use of color, particularly reds and blues. They are always so vivid. I consider him one of the best at portraying folds in fabric.

You can read the full article here.

Drawing Cartoon Hair

Sharing an interesting paper on drawing cartoon hair. The authors are discussing an animation software system, but the techniques are applicable to free hand drawing and coloring. The paper is a bit scholarly, but worth the read.

"Non-Photorealistic Rendering of Hair for Animated Cartoons"

Abstract
In cartoon drawings, hair is a strong vehicle of personality,emotions and style. In this paper, we present a powerful procedure to imitate the appearance of cartoon-like hair with a small set of parameters. Our approach is inspired by an inking technique called feathering, which consists of drawing hatches along the hair orientation while emphasizing the highlights with ink stains. Our system provides a set of tools to facilitate the positioning of the generated hair over the hand-drawn hair while keeping an intuitive interface for the artists. We can also achieve hair animation by interpolating various keyframes set by the user. Our approach has proven successful and flexible enough to adapt itself to different styles and is particularly well-suited for traditional animators.

Analyzed!

I used some blog analysis tools to analyze my blog. The results are above.

The tools:

Readability Test - Determine what grade level your blog is written.
Genderanalyzer – determines what sex you write like.
Typealizer - shows you the area of the brain that your writing style reflects most.
What is your blog worth - Determines your blog worth based upon Technorati ranking and advertising potential.

Analyze yours!

Custom Brush - Lines

I decided that I may as well finish off the week with this theme, so here is yet another image created with one of my custom brushes. This brush is simply called "lines." I'm able to created some nice line patterns with it. I mostly use it in backgrounds, when I want to add a bit of an edge or a gothic-y feel to a painting. I keep it light and subtle.

Custom Brush - Watercolor Grunge

I thought that I'd share the results of one more custom brush with you folks. I call this one my watercolor grunge brush. I used it to create the texture on the sphere. My goal here was to achieve an uneven soaked/saturated kind of effect.

Custom Brush - Texture Spray/Noise

One of the features that Photoshop has that Painter doesn't is the ability to create "noise." I wanted to have the functionality in Painter, so, I created a custom brush to do the job. This brush "sprays" fine bits of "texture" which generate a noise pattern. As you can see from the example, the pattern is pretty random, just the way I like it. As an added bonus, I can generate noise in any color or combination of colors that I desire.

Pen and Airbrush Portrait

Playing around with Painter's airbrush tool. I usually don't use it much because it tends to make things look a bit mushy and undefined. I was pleasantly surprised at the results of this particular sketch session. Using in combination with the blenders worked out better than I thought that it would.

Custom Brush - Sandstone

Here is the result of another custom brush that I created for use in Corel Painter 9.5. I call it my sandstone brush. The image above was created with only the sandstone brush, even the edge shading. I think that it does a decent job of creating the illusion of texture. You'll also notice that you'd be hard pressed to find any repetition of pattern. Recognizable pattern repetition is something that I try to guard against when I design my brushes. I forgot to mention that bit of information in the impasto brush demonstration post.

As I stated in my last post, I enjoy creating these custom brushes. I can't let the Photoshop artists have all of the cool custom brush fun! LOL!

Custom Impasto Brush

The effects that you see were achieved with a single brush in Corel Painter 9.5. This was created with a impasto brush of my own design. Painter's brush engine is one of the reasons that I really like working in this program.

With this brush, I'm able to create recesses in the paint as well as raised surfaces and edges. I'm also able to achieve the illusion of depth in the paint itself. The consistency of the light source on the edges further adds to the 3D effect.

I have to admit, I've come to enjoy creating custom brushes. I think they add a nice "accent" to my work.