Kai's art blog

Happy Valentines!

2012-02-14T03:06:00.000-08:00

This is just a WIP but I couldn't resist:

Somber looking nun..

2012-02-08T14:13:00.000-08:00

Todays daily draw :)

Daily draw February

2012-02-08T05:50:00.000-08:00

I'm taking part in the daily draw at Sattellite Soda. The aim is to draw daily with a time deadline :)
There are some fantasic artists taking part so check it out.. Here are my entries so far:

..the dragon queens head

2012-01-30T13:53:00.000-08:00

A little detail on the face, I probably wont do much more as it shouldn't look too overworked when shown with the whole figure.. To detail the face I usually crop it out, paste on a new canvas and blow up the size again so my brushes are easier to work with (also doesn't kill my PC that way). When I'm happy with the level of detail I shrink it back down to size (it helps if you keep a note of the original height/width somewhere) and merge it back in the original composition.

5 tones

2012-01-27T14:46:00.000-08:00

A little more progress, using a slightly different working method, trying to make sure I've blocked out the shapes well..

Traditional fantasy

2012-01-27T06:31:00.000-08:00

I love fantasy!! It would be amazing to create art for any of the big companies like 'Wizards of the coast' or 'Blizzard' etc..

Here's a sketch I'm working on today:

Dragon number 1!

2012-01-26T16:26:00.000-08:00

Bedtime doodle, looking forward to finishing this guy tomorrow:

Vampirical part2

2012-01-26T14:55:00.000-08:00

Final version:

Though I think I prefer the cropped version:

Vampirical

2012-01-26T02:05:00.000-08:00

I created a portrait last night when I could sleep:

This morning I decided to take it to the next level and add a torso and some background texture. Here's where I'm up to so far:

2012-01-25T14:56:00.000-08:00

Just finished some freelance work so time for a quick portrait practice! :o
She looks annoyed and big nosed, just like the last portrait I did.. ¬.¬ Will try for something different next time!

2012-01-24T16:13:00.001-08:00

I'm quite busy at the moment, one part illness, the other part freelance work!! But here's some progress on some personal work:

Neat lines

2012-01-18T16:33:00.000-08:00

An evil Samurai character of some sort, I need to find the image that inspired it!

Will start colouring this tomorrow :)

2012-01-18T10:27:00.000-08:00

Another portrait.. hmm need to fix those wonky eyes ^^;

A little study:

2012-01-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

I'm back home with my tablet again!

Some quick studies to warm up:

Then something a little longer that I'm still working on..

2011-12-31T04:55:00.000-08:00

Yay more boring portraits! Sorry, I'm working on my process and colour theory, getting somewhere though :)

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T07:35:00.000-08:00

Quick kind of study/experiment.. there's red in it, that's Christmassy right? :p

Client work example

2011-12-22T10:01:00.000-08:00

A sketch in the style I've been working in for the past few days for a client, since I can't show you guys the actual work! :)

Sketch

2011-12-21T13:26:00.000-08:00

Just practicing building up colours and texture quickly within a piece.. Also still figuring out the complexity of the human face. No ref or anything really, experimentation! Sorry the compositions are so boring at the moment:

New and freelance stuff :)

2011-12-18T15:59:00.000-08:00

Hey I'm back! Just a little experimentation as usual:

Here's a sample of the stuff I've been working on for freelance! (this is one of the rejected ideas, so I animated it roughly with PS)

Raaawr dinosaurs.. and a mountain

2011-12-09T02:51:00.001-08:00

So I've finally got some paid commissions on the go! Happy days :)

That and working a part-time job has kept me pretty damn busy, but here are a few things I managed to squeeze in:

The next installment of my reptile study, dinosaurs! I wonder if people can guess where I'm heading with this. :-P

Saw this piece of artwork today http://andreasrocha.deviantart.com/art/Winter-Travellers-272996002 and it made me decide to take another stab at drawing a mountain.. Finally happy with one! It's getting closer to the look I'm aiming for I think.

Hair monster

2011-12-06T01:47:00.001-08:00

This mornings experimentation:

Expressions and lizards!

2011-12-05T13:58:00.001-08:00

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, since graduating I've been working as a catering assistant, needed to earn some money to keep me afloat!

I haven't had much time to draw, so I've tried to squeeze in some studies whenever I've had some time.. enjoy!

I love lizards, I can't wait to get a bearded dragon as soon as I have a graduate job! :D

As you can tell I really needed the warm up with these ones, the first few drawings weren't quite up-to scratch

Amazing lizard (bug, reptile) photography: http://blepharopsis.deviantart.com/

Stock faces: http://faestock.deviantart.com/gallery/

Rubble and rocks

2011-11-30T06:07:00.001-08:00

Still working on environment stuff... I found this cool little tutorial on painting rocks: http://scarypet.deviantart.com/art/Scarypet-s-ROCK-ing-tutorial-208101226

First attempt:

Second attempt, a broken wall type thing!

More mountains!

2011-11-29T06:11:00.001-08:00

Some practice:

Colouring practice

2011-11-21T14:33:00.001-08:00

Some colouring practice with more subtle colour schemes:

Another attempt..

2011-11-18T08:04:00.001-08:00

Here we go again, something is still missing hmmmm!

Texture experiment

2011-11-18T05:27:00.001-08:00

Bit of a failed experiment, trying to create a complete piece with more texture. I don't think the general composition and concept was good enough to make it work. On the plus side, I think I learned things!

3 in 1 character creation!

2011-11-15T10:51:00.001-08:00

First of all, some gesture practice to warm up:

I decided to then spend a little more time doing some male anatomy, as a fantasy artist I have only a few drawings of muscly men, which is pretty unheard of! I started with a reference image and created a base with a few exaggerations to get that 'hero proportions' feeling.. I then used the transform tool and some general scaling to create a variety of body types that were based around muscular characters, let's call them: 'hero', 'dwarf' and 'brute':

With the general proportions in mind, I then drew the characters on top, keeping the anatomy the main feature, but adding racial/personality traits in the detailing:

I want to push these base characters further to expand my character design work, so there's more to come! :)

Abstract colour and figure studies

2011-11-14T12:08:00.001-08:00

Trying to get my head around colour theory, so I made myself a cool and warm colour wheel and painted this :)

Landscapes

2011-11-11T04:27:00.001-08:00

A brush test to make a quick environment, expect more environment stuff soon!

And another attempt at getting a solid rocky look:

Pink portrait

2011-11-08T08:14:00.000-08:00

Another portrait!

No ref used, here's some steps:

Colour experimentation

2011-11-07T08:46:00.000-08:00

Nothing in particular today, just playing with colour and brushes as usual:

(Also did some final touches using Artrage, will post a proper blog when I get to grips with a proper technique!)

Warriors victory

2011-11-04T08:02:00.000-07:00

In working towards speeding up and re-vamping the way I work, I set myself several challenges today before I started a piece. These challenges were based on areas I felt needed improving or just re-directing:

1) Do not over refine/polish the piece, concentrate on limited mark making
2) Create a fully designed outfit on a posed character
3) Set a scene/moment that is easy to read/entertaining
4) Do not spent too much time making neat outlines on the original pose as they will not be visible in the final piece
5) Inform metal material better with shading
6) Collapse layers as much as possible to avoid distraction and make decisions quicker
7) Work on tonal studies and getting a good range

Here's what I came up with!

It may be a little generic but I'm happy with the outcome (and I love those helmets with the horns :3).. Some colours:

dA: Transcendent Master

2011-11-03T16:08:00.000-07:00

The completed piece:

And in big:

If you are a fan of 'Magic the Gathering' and like to draw join our dA group! There are new themes every week and it's a nice small community which is great for requesting feedback :)

Transcendent Master

2011-11-03T04:27:00.000-07:00

For a few months now I've been contributing to a fan art group on dA for 'Magic the Gathering'.

I'm a big fan of the card game and a big fan of some of the artists that contribute to the projects! This is what drove me and my friends to create the art group. We also all had the same goal of wanting to improve our art skills. It was a great choice, because a massive variety of briefs could be taken from the individual cards and most have 'flavour text' to push the idea process.

This week it was my turn to blog/choose, I usually use the random card generator to find something appealing. This week I chose Transcendent Master:

I wanted to portray an old wise character that is becoming transcendent, here are the steps so far:

Zombie Gal

2011-10-31T14:56:00.000-07:00

Went back to round brush work for some casual drawing :)

Fun bat brushes found at: http://kencho.deviantart.com/art/Bats-brushes-27854473

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T10:05:00.000-07:00

I'm busy texturing my Bard character for GA, some neatening up and refining to do as well as texturing the lute!:

Clothing layers!

2011-10-27T15:27:00.000-07:00

Just some casual doodling tonight, thinking about clothing materials and layering.. Proportions and initial pose are off in places but it wasn't really about that :)

Donnie Darko

2011-10-27T08:28:00.000-07:00

Finished unwrapping and started texturing my low poly bard, took a break to do some painting practice, it's Donnie Darko! :)

GA: Evil bard base mesh

2011-10-27T03:51:00.000-07:00

So I'm entering this mini comp at Game Artisan which you can find here: http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/showthread.php?t=31911

I'm just about to unwrap, here's the base mesh!

Dynamic brush strokes

2011-10-26T07:42:00.000-07:00

Still working towards a brush stroke style that is more impressionist and loose/dynamic, here's an amazing inspirational piece by Perzo that you can find on dA:

http://perzo.deviantart.com/art/calm-like-a-bomb-264055413

I chose to attempt another figure study with this in mind, using a square textured brush and a rounded brush for some detail.. It's still quite a rough piece, but it's closer to what I'm trying to achieve:

You can find the reference image I used here: http://mjranum-stock.deviantart.com/art/Dark-Tree-4-75686735

Everyone is fond of owls.. (except for mice and shrews)

2011-10-25T08:25:00.000-07:00

So I spent the first part of my day today doing an art test for a design company, unfortunately I can't share any of that stuff yet, but I will in future blog posts hopefully. I also did a tattoo design for a friend, so here are the two variations (don't think I really need to mention but: do not steal!):

If you want to commission a tattoo design, get in touch :)

GA: Evil bard

2011-10-24T06:10:00.000-07:00

New mini challenge on Game Artisan: 1 of 6 paths! I chose to create a bard as I thought it would be less popular and I had a few ideas :) http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/showthread.php?t=31911

Ork Squared

2011-10-22T15:12:00.000-07:00

A little more experimentation with brushes. With this one I drew an outline then went straight to colour with a square edged brush. This is much closer to the style I want to achieve as it's a lot more loose and I found my palette blending better.

Loose portrait

2011-10-19T08:08:00.000-07:00

Trying to loosen up my brush style today with a portrait from imagination. I sketched out some loose pencil lines, used a square brush to block out shade, then refined with a round brush. I also added a quick overlay of colour:

I also found another online resource for life drawing! This one has a really nicely presented website: http://www.artsyposes.com/index

Textural brushes in Photoshop

2011-10-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

My friend Hannah did some pretty cool blogs on an impressionist style of work and her influences, inspiring me to check out some brush sets available from this artist: http://leventep.deviantart.com/journal/26272180/

I wanted to continue my male anatomy studies from earlier today, so I spent about an hour experimenting with the brushes to make this guy:

My piece has a much darker atmosphere in comparison to Hannahs, so you should check hers out! http://hanimations.blogspot.com/2011/10/haha-i-tried-to-draw-cool-stuff.html

Gesture drawing with men

2011-10-18T05:31:00.000-07:00

More gesture drawing, but with only male models this time.. I'm fairly confident with male anatomy, but I found myself getting distracted trying to get the musculature correct rather than finishing the whole pose in 2 mins. There were some crazy poses!

Resources using http://www.pixelovely.com/gesture/figuredrawing.php as usual.

Tin can knight paint-over and textures

2011-10-13T05:52:00.000-07:00

Paint-over in PS of mudbox screenshot for some ideas:

Progress so far:

Tin can knight (complete with wooden sword!)

2011-10-11T02:48:00.000-07:00

Here's the first finished mesh, onto the unwrapping!

After completing the first model I want to do a few different helmets and weapons to see how much variation you can get out of the original base.

Low poly knight

2011-10-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

My portfolio is lacking true low poly work at the moment, so I decided to start modelling a low poly knight today. Here's where I'm at so far, the head is just a placeholder and isn't included in the poly count that is displayed:

I want to try keep the model around (if not under) 1000 tris, so after I've added the helmet, weapon and other details I'll make further poly reductions whilst aiming to maintain the silhouette.

Projection mapping test

2011-10-09T06:54:00.000-07:00

Imported my low poly mesh and high poly mesh from Mudbox into 3dsMax for a quick projection mapping test (the lighting for the render is really basic but you get the idea) :)

I also composited the layers of my base texture file together and tweaked them a little in PS for the diffuse.

Here's a good tutorial on projection mapping in 3dsMax: http://udkc.info/index.php?title=Tutorials:Normal_Mapping_for_Games

A quick sculpt

2011-10-09T02:36:00.000-07:00

The first step I took before practice was creating this very quick sketch in PhotoShop to work from! Since it was for my own reference, the speed I could produce the sketch was the key thing (equally, you could collate a reference library and pick from there). In my opinion working from a reference no matter what media you are working in, 2d/3d/traditional, improves the speed and quality of the work. This is especially if you are a beginner and daunted by a new tool or just daunted by a blank canvas.

The key to Mudbox, akin to other tools I work in such as PS, is layers. The key difference is the effect of opacity, though in essence it is the same.

In PS, when you reduce opacity, you reduce the vision of the layer. In Mudbox, when you reduce the opacity, you reduce the amount the sculpting changes you have created affect the mesh. In both tools you are working with the amounts a layer affects the overall look of a piece.

Another key tool to working in Mudbox is working in mesh levels. You start on a low level mesh, bulking out the main detail, then as you subdivide, you build up to the higher detail. Increasing the poly count in Mudbox is akin to increasing the resolution of a document in PS, it allows for greater detail but it could affect your PC performance*.

Level 0) For a quick practice sculpt, I use the standard head base mesh provided in Mudbox. The first step I took was to use the grab tool and rearrange the face to better fit my reference.

Level 1) I start to add bulk to the main areas of interest in the face.

Level 2) I can further refine the shapes such as the nose and horns.

Level 3) I can add sharper detail to key areas at this point using smaller brushes.

Level 4) At level 4 plus I am able to use stencils as well as brushes to bring out high level detail such as scales and skin pores

I also added some basic colours using the paint tools and layers:

I learnt my workflow in Mudbox using the Autodesk community resources available at http://www.the-area.com/tutorials. So for further explanation check out their vids!

*If your PC is struggling with high poly count, use the masking tool to pick specific areas to work on (tips and hints on masking can be found at 'The Area' as above

Tordek Dwarvenheim

2011-10-08T09:47:00.000-07:00

Today I finished up a Dungeons and Dragons character portrait for new player in our group DnD sessions. He is a dwarf cleric, of the name Tordek Dwarvenheim son of Johan Dwarvenheim. ^^

Here's a team of players I previously illustrated for friends, in this group I play the pale, googly eyed Eladrin wizard:

2011-10-07T13:42:00.000-07:00

Just practicing rendering using a sketch from earlier, for this one I also tried to imply a material sculpture rather than a real torso..

Gesture drawing at home..

2011-10-07T05:26:00.000-07:00

Do you remember going to life drawing lessons at school/college/uni, finding their timed pose sessions great for freeing up the mind and just pure practicing at its best. Well yesterday I found a simple little tool that recreates the process:
http://www.pixelovely.com/gesture/figuredrawing.php

The figure and gesture drawing tool has a few simple options and a great selection of stock images. I find this tool great for daily practice and opening up the mind to the diversity of poses that can be made with the human body. To me it is the next best thing to the real deal, with the advantage of being able to choose your time limit, and when you session starts/ends, all from the comfort of your own PC.

Also, it is currently FREE..

Here is yesterdays effort, some 2min studies of humans and animals:

Also as a side note, I found setting up a few PS actions useful to the whole process, such as a hotkey to instantly make a new canvas of the correct size and shape as the image changes. For a great tutorial on PS actions, check out 'Making your life easier Actions' at Ctrl+Paint:
http://www.ctrlpaint.com/home/2011/8/25/making-your-life-easier-actions.html