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Vielmond's Works

Nihal

Vala
Thank you!

I had a number of personal projects going on for months, and since I last posted I managed to finish at least one of them, my new portfolio site: vielmond.com.br

There are still a number of WIPs fermenting on my HD. I use them as a warm up, study for other pieces or just to chill by painting something rougher. Cards can be very draining, and sometimes I just want to do something less polished.

I'm working on some stuff I can't show yet, and what I can doesn't is too crude still, so here is one of these warm ups/studies.

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Nihal

Vala
One or two months ago I've set my little project in motion again. First I've written quite a number of chapters, and planned a couple more.

Then I rescued some sketches from my bottomless WIP folder. Some ideas have been sitting there for two years! I'm using them as studies as well, of course, sharpening my skills. There's no better opportunity to experiment than this.


Scene from a legend of this world, linked to the origin of magic and the big bads.

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Ashfall. First glimpse at the place the book starts.

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A splash of color to break these grays a little! Also a scene from the beginning of the book. Same forest from above seen through over-saturated lens, in different angle and season.

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Partial timelapse of one of those other WIPs. The main character reveals her face, at last!

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T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
Very nice as always.

That timeplapse is interesting. I wonder if you could include timelapse art effectively in an e-book somehow?
 

Nihal

Vala
Interesting line of thought.

I believe it's not in the standards, thus the support across readers will be inconsistent. I know that some versions of Adobe's reader support SWFs (flash animations) for PDFs, Calibre should be able to display animated GIFs for EPUBs, this sort of thing. I wouldn't make from this a central idea in a project.

This is the reason online art magazines still feature written tutorials with regular images, coming bundled with separate videos at best.
 

Philip Overby

Staff
Article Team
I have a question. What do you use to make this art? I'm always wowed how cool it looks. I'm experimenting with art these days and I'm looking for different ways to experiment (actual paint, software, etc.)

I really like the time lapses as well. It's cool to see how it evolves.
 

Nihal

Vala
I use mainly Photoshop + Wacom Tablet (drawing tablet, not those pseudo-pcs). I have an Intuos4 and a Bamboo for backup purposes, which is smaller and perfect for travel or for when I feel too lazy to set up the Intuos. My desk, so you can see the tablet:

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I use the default hard round brush a lot, and I've been fooling with other brushes lately. I talked about specs and posted links for the sets here.

I rarely do traditional stuff, and I have been always incompetent with real paint, ending with more of it on my forehead than on the paper. It's ironic that someone with a "painterly" style never touched a canvas, but that's the truth. That doesn't keep me from observing traditional paintings though, and attempting to learn from them.

You're more than right in doing experiments! Painting is all about observing the world, looking for answers and trying new things.
 

ascanius

Inkling
I use mainly Photoshop + Wacom Tablet (drawing tablet, not those pseudo-pcs). I have an Intuos4 and a Bamboo for backup purposes, which is smaller and perfect for travel or for when I feel too lazy to set up the Intuos. My desk, so you can see the tablet:

tumblr_nd73itnKFU1rzsagpo1_1280.jpg


I use the default hard round brush a lot, and I've been fooling with other brushes lately. I talked about specs and posted links for the sets here.

I rarely do traditional stuff, and I have been always incompetent with real paint, ending with more of it on my forehead than on the paper. It's ironic that someone with a "painterly" style never touched a canvas, but that's the truth. That doesn't keep me from observing traditional paintings though, and attempting to learn from them.

You're more than right in doing experiments! Painting is all about observing the world, looking for answers and trying new things.

Cant believe I didn't see this post till now.

I'm having the opposite problem. I get the color theory behind oilpaints, I still suck but I get the idea of using the split compliment to go lighter or darker. Doesn't work with digital painting to my continual frustration, the colors behave weirdly and you cant really mix colors like in real life. Though I read Photoshop can now do that. Adding black or white feels wrong but I'm getting used to it. Thus far I've mostly done still life but their turning out very nice. My biggest problem right now is textures.

Your work has a very oil painting with the knife quality mixed with impressionism. Do you go for that look or does it just happen. Have you done any other styles?
 

Nihal

Vala
I suppose the saturation and vibrancy are more noticeable in digital paintings due the nature of the medium. If you always mix pure colors it'll look very saturated and even muddy. I can't really compare with oils since I've never used oils, but painting digitally takes a little practice to get the colors right. I not only use triadic colors as a starting point but I do a initial soft stroke, colorpick the result (Alt hotkey) and use this color.

I've been also experimenting with less saturated colors, including grays, due their flexibility when placed next a cool or warm color. Truth to be told I don't follow specific rules, I just try to understand the reason behind the things and twist it to my purposes, first and foremost following my guts when it comes to color choices.

Speaking of Photoshop I hated the blending tool. Too slow and unnatural.

I love the texture of "painterly" things. It's intentional, and I had various accidents along the way before figuring out how to control my brushstrokes in an acceptable way, haha. I painted in other "styles" in the past, doing a smoother rendering, even very anime-ish, but that's boring. I did some stuff like that for games in studios I've worked at too. E.g.:

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The guy was made by another artist, but I had to change his expression and pose, and did everything else in the splash excluding logo design. Not exactly my cup of tea.

--
Just to say I've posted new things...

My second experiment to verify the viability of incorporating 3D in my workflow.

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Young Kvothe! I have this absolute love and hate relationship with The Kingkiller Chronicle.

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Yep, I'm perfectly aware that he doesn't look manly.
 
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ascanius

Inkling
Haha, know what you mean about the kingkiller chronicles, though i'm leaning more towards right now.

Took me a while to understand the saturation problem you mentioned. My first go at digital painting I went with saturated colors and like you said it makes things muddy.

If you don't like the photoshop blend tool you might want to check out krita. It's geared towards digital painting so lacks a lot of the photo editing aspects and tools that are present in gimp and photoshop. The one thing I love about Krita is I can blend/smudge and paint with the same brush. I hear that it can be slow on windows though.

My biggest problem is getting the colors right, taking the time to do still lifes has helped a lot. making the transition from greyscale to color for volume took getting used to.

If I may offer some crizicism. In the painting with the floating metalic orb I think light would be reflected off the orb and light up the rock face on the right rock formation. I think it might help to create better intigration with the 3d and 2d.

One other question. What dimensions/ppi settings do you use? In the painting i posted I use 7200x10800 though I noticed when I scaled the image to post it became grainy.
 
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