Friday, August 31, 2007

For Another Friend



Henry Gilroy is an awesome writer. Hire him! I got to work with him on a project an WOW!! He knows his stuff. He carries around a sketchbook with the theme of "Your favorite Robert E Howard / HP Lovecraft character". I just happen to love both those authors ability to create some neat visceral visuals. I was happy to do a piece, or two. Of course having the book be over half filled with Bruce Timm's homages, tends to dampen ones ability. These were the best I could do.

Sunday, August 05, 2007

WHEN IS A SKETCH NOT A SKETCH

I was driving home about a week ago(the sun goes down around 8:00 right now) and I saw a hill with a window of golden light hitting it. There were hills higher around it but this one was the only one that was getting hit. I thought"Hey that would be a nice painting,...if that hill was a dinoasaur." I finally had a little time this weekend and I wanted to just do a little sketch so I wouldn't forget that hill top. About an hour in, I still thought I was doing a sketch


I had 2 versions before this, and it started flopped in the other direction. The gist of the piece is there. I have quite a few of these at this stage (and that's where they will stay). I usually stop at this point. For some reason I felt like I needed more from this image, to make it richer or more complete to me.


I added some atmosphere and foreground elements. This is where I got into trouble. Now I felt like I needed to clean up a mess that I made. I started trying to fix my mistakes in the "sketch". (the compy's looked like velociraptors and the diplodocus looked like a weird 3 legged beast) but I still thought I was doing a sketch(now 3 hours in).


Here's the semi final version.

So I think it must have been when I exported the image from Photoshop to Painter to use the Glow Brush. Yeah that was when I realized this was more than just a sketch. Still less than a "real" piece but much more than a sketch. It's important to go with the flow since you never know when the flow will come. Not my favorite piece but , there you go.
Based off of the response from this piece I am "finishing" it off and may present it in some final form later.