Unholy Alliances – Speedpaintings
Hello there.
I thought I’d give you something to rest your eyes on whilst we prepare for future posts.
I have been doing these very quick sketches lately, trying to get lighting right and not caring too much about proportions or accuracy as far as design goes.
I decided to take the three speeds I did last and put them together to a little triptych, though at first they did not really fit with each other.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Warhammer 40k universe, the first two from left are normally what’s called “Loyalists” or “the good guys”. The guy on the far right is most definitely one of “the bad guys”.
So I made the three of them lean more towards “bad” then “good”, removing insignia’s of the two first ones, adding more scratches and a hint of…. evil ominous-ness.
These types of speed-paints have proven to be extremely relaxing to me as they take no more then 2-3 hours and I just go with the flow whilst painting them. Very generous as far as breaks, things to paint on now and then between work.
Hope you like,
David
Carry on – Sketches will follow
Hello there,
Time for another update with images.
This time it is a little scarce because I am saving up two images for free tutorials. One of those will come within the week, the other will take a little longer.
In the meanwhile, here is a speedpaint/quick study for Imperial Fists armour in sunlight.
This was done as part of trying to figure out lighting of an Imperial Fist for a figure in a commission I am wrapping up. Never mind the faults in colouring the armour or faulty armourdesign as most of it was to get the yellows and blacks right light-wise and not for accuracy on Imperial Fists armour.
As soon as the client has said his and we see if there are any tweaks needed or not, I will post that one on here.
I like how the style is coming out, was painting this way more loose then most of my current stuff.
If enough people like it I will paint it completed so let me know what you think!
/David
Sketch away
Monday blogpost,
A little late, granted, but still.
Lets get some sketches away:
This is the beginning sketch of Electro, an old Spiderman Villain, as an old man. The thougt is to paint multiple Spiderman Villains in older form.
Next up is a speedpainting. Just playing with ideas here:
And finally, the completed Arbaal the Undefeated painting. This has been featured as a wip in several blogposts and now it is complete. This is me re-imagining this old Warhammer Fantasy Battle character. 
As you can see, he rides a demon, a so called Flesh Hound. He also holds an axe and a shield.
Since the character seem to have left the game a couple of editions ago, I felt I had some leniency to reinvent him somewhat:
I made the collar of Khorne sit behind the neck-guard of the Hound, it’s the brass-thing with skulls and horns on it. The hound has more colour then Arbaal himself, this comes from the factt that I see demons and beings from the warp as having more colour then in “the real world” of Wfb/Wh40k.
My illustration shows Arbaal as he sacks Praag. Hope you enjoy.
Until Next time!
Dragons, maidens and faeries – Where to begin with art and inspiration?
Hello blog-readers,
David here and the time has come for another blogpost!
It has been a while (again) and there are schedule-related reasons for this.
Because of these reasons, we are restructuring the postingorder.
Monday sketchposts will remain as they are and, hopefully, continue to be
posted every Monday for your enjoyment.
Wednesday blogposts will move to Thursdays due to it being more fitting in
the week for us schedulewise. Thursday blogposts, then, will not happen
every week unless we have a mass of things to share with you.
Thursday blogposts will also be alternated with tutorial posts so eventually
we think these will become more or less weekly anyway.
This week I thought I’d show you some completed work, as well as let you
know some excellent pages on the internet to improve your skill as an artist
whether professional or happy amateur.
This lady-knight on a blue dragon, is my sister-in-law. It’s a gift to her
and since she likes dragons I thought I’d paint her riding a dragon.
If you remember well, you have seen a couple of compositional sketches for
this painting in an earlier blogpost. The makings of this painting has been
veiled in secrecy, to not let her know it in advance we had to fake
referenceshoot with a sword and “tring to figure out lighting” with a
camera to get good face-reference.
The reference used for the dragon was a blue-white monitorlizzard,
to get the scales and colours correct.
The final illustration will be printed and given to my sister-in-law as a
birthdaypresent. This will also go into my portfolio, and if enough people
are intrested, might make a limited-run as a poster or print.
Next up is a little something that I think you will recognize.
This is the beginnings of completing the illustration I made in pen on paper
into a fully painted illustration. I am doing this as a test to see how far
I can move the digital medium toward traditional painting. Using the Flemish
technique in digital form, I took the pencilsketch, added a light
yellow/olive “imprimatura” cover over it (after having lessened the opacity
of the lines to make them barely visible).
I then flattened the entire painting, duplicated the layer and used the
real-bristle brushes in Photoshop CS5 to do a two layered underpaintig in
Umber.
This, of course is an aproximation of the colours, and I am doing a lot of
trial and error. Finally (up to this point) I am doing what is called a
“dead layer”. A Grayscale painting with a hint of cool respective warm tones
to lay as a base for the final painting.
This might seem timeconsuming, but the truth behind it all is that I want
to see how close one can get to the traditional means of painting using pure
digital means.
It is not going to be a substitute, and I am not expecting it to look like a
traditional oil-painting once done, but to evolve one must break with ones
patterns and try out some new things. This is how we get ideas and evolve.
What I am expecting to get out of this is an improved workflow, better
colourmanagement and perhaps a more subtle way of painting skintones.
As far as painting skintones, this way of painting will not be more
timeconsuming for me then what I already go through, so possibly it might
help me speed things up.
The Ahadi-painting is a personal piece, and something that I work on on-and-off.
And here is a sketch of something I am painting for a client.
This is going to be the cover for a tabletop miniature skirmrish-game called
Scrapyard. More about that in a later blogpost.
In other, artrelated, news, I am also making an illustration for something
called Feast of Blades:
http://www.feastofblades.com/
This illustration will be featured in our next free tutorial and so I’m
saving images for that post. Hope you do not mind.
So with the art displayed, let’s get back to a topic I have promised
previously:
Where on the net can you learn to improve, reach out to the crowd you want
and generally get hints and tips on what to do to have more fun and success
with painting or doing art in general?
Let’s start with some of the heavy hitters-
The blogspots where you can just get buckettoads of information:
(and bucketloads,if you rather would have that!)
http://muddycolors.blogspot.com/
This is the big one ladies and gentlemen. Although there are forums such as
conceptart.org, which I wholeheartedly suggest you check out if you haven’t
already, muddycolors is just the best spot to find information, inspiration
and help with just about anything in your art-aspirations.
Essentially, it’s a blog where several professional artists joined together
to post inspiration, ideas and information on what to think about when you
do art.
It’s not the names that make the place, though there are some impressive
ones: Dan Dos Santos, Donato Giancola, Arnie Fenner, Jesper Esjing, Petar
Meseldzija and Greg Manchess to name some of them.
No, it’s the information and what they share that makes this worth it!
Mostly, the information is concerning traditional painting when a choice
between digital or traditional has to be made, but in general, the
information and inspiration can be used for any medium. Ranging from
exhibitions to check out to how to compose, set your digital version of art
to best suit printing, through art critiques on readers works and all the
way down to how to handle turpentine and the dangers with it.
In short, the amount of goodness that comes from this blogspot to anyone
interested in doing art is just astounding.
http://enliighten.com/
Possibly not as known as muddycolours, Enliighten is a great place to
learn art. Mike “Daarken” Lim (Wizards of the Coast, Blizzard Entertainment,
Fantasy Flight Games, BioWare, Mythic etc.) decided to give back to the
community through giving awa free tutorials and discussions on art on his
boards. This is great resource for anyone beginning with art.
https://artorder.wipnation.com/
Jon Schindehette’s, Art Director at Wizzards of the Coast, exemplary
blogspot for helping aspiring artists and freelancers with tips, tricks and
challenges to get better at reaching future clients. This spot is just as
useful as the muddycolors spot, except this is more directed to those who
want to make art for a living.
Artorder used to be on ning, but has now moved to wipnation.
https://crimsondaggers.wipnation.com/
http://crimsondaggerblood.blogspot.com/
Dave Rapoza began with crimsondaggers and, together with his friend, Dan
Warren, they set up competitons, art-critiques and general awesomeness.
I found out about CrimsonDaggers through Daves Livestreamchannel,
http://www.livestream.com/fuckinartwithmrdelicious
, which is also filled
with awesomeness. Metal, awesomeness and painting. Like Artorder,
crimsondaggers used to be something all on its ow, but has now also got a
spot at wipnation.
http://www.awesomehorsestudios.com/
https://awesomehorse.wipnation.com/
Speaking of awesome, awesomehorsestudios is also a good spot to find info
and critiques at. For me, this spot had a little less to offer since they
do their critiques live, and you can watch episodes for free as they air,
but have to pay (albeit a smal sum) to watch thm later. Unfortunately I sit
on the wrong side of the earth to be able to justify watching these live.
The really great one for me was watching their interview-athon at illuxcon
(found here:
http://www.awesomehorsestudios.com/s1e5-illuxcon-interview-special/
),
As a freelance artist this gave me so much. It was also cool to see some of
the persons I have worked with, as well as some I’d like to work with, even
if it wasn’t pressing hands. Emails are useful, but sometimes a little
impersonal.
Awesomehorsestudios also has a spot at wipnation, but be sure to check out
their own website. There is something for everyone there!
A little edit here: Thanks to Marc from Awesomehorsestudios for letting us know
that all episodes from Season 2 on are now free, live and always.
You can see everything up at
http://www.awesomehorsestudios.com/watch-now
Thanks Marc!
Online Galleries and their use:
Online galleries can be really useful for the aspiring artist. It can give
help through comments and critique. It can give exposire and it can be
rewarding to exchange art with other artists.
Here are some of my favourites and their use.
http://cghub.com/
In my opinion, this is the best gallery currently. I might be wrong, there
might be something more suitable for getting more exposure and contacts
with potential clients, but currently the entire website just flows with
proffessionalism, ease and goodness. Mainly aimed at professionals, I was
lucky to get an invitation in the early days, but my bias towards cghub has
more to do with the way you can mark your artwork (time it took to complete,
lists of medium-including programs used, etc.) and the fact that it is
really easy to manouver once you get a hang of it. Nowadays you can get an
account on cghub without an invite and if you want to go professional I
think this is the place you should put a portfolio-gallery at.
The forums of cgub are probably underrated, as I find something useful or
inspiring there verytime I check them out.
Here is a link to my own profile on cghub:
http://colrouphobia.cghub.com/
https://www.wipnation.com/
This gallery is still fighting some early hickups, but in my opinion it is
still worth being there. There are several reasons for this: Many helpful
blogs or webspaces have recently aquired a spot under wipnations wings.
(see above), but the galleries can stand on their own. The most powerful
thing about wipnation, at this moment, is the opportunity to do redline
critiques. Redline critique is when you see something that you think
should/could be improved in an image and you take a red tool (for instance
photoshop brush) and paint on the image to show what you mean. Wipnation
allows for this in their own galleries, something that is really useful for
the aspiring artist.
This is a feature I miss on just about every other gallery online. If you
want to check out my own meager wipnation gallery, it is here:
https://www.wipnation.com/citizen/studiocolrouphobia
http://www.deviantart.com/
I think it is safe to say that almost everyone into art knows about
deviantart nowadays. This place has it’s plus and minuses. For one, it is
large. This is very useful if you wish to find something inspiring. Chances
are you can find it on deviantart. The downside is that you might have to
search for it for a long time if you want something more specific.
Exposure, this is a tricky one. If you manage to get the eyes of a few
people, there is a chance you will get more exposure. For me, I had the
fortune of getting into th semifinalists in a huge competition on
deviantart. After that I just got more and more watchers. I am still not
getting as much exposure at deviantart as I would want to, but it is still
a useful tool for other things.
Pure inspiration?
The above gallries are for you to put your works in, and to look through
works of contemporary artists.
How about spots where you can check out the old masters, or where you can
get help with anatomy and such.
There are a multitude of such places on the internet, and so I share with
you only two such places:
http://www.wga.hu/index.html
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/art/index.html
Webgallery of art is a great place to see art from museums all over the
world.
The first link leads to their mainpage, the second link directly to their
search engine. Explaining how to search will take a lot of time, so just
experiment, it’s worth it!
http://inspirationalartworks.blogspot.com/
is just pure gold.
This blogspot has really collected a great set of images, whether photos
or artwork, for an aspiring artist to check out and use for studies and
learning more.
http://inspirationalartworks.blogspot.com/p/anatomy-images.html?zx=c96bff9e99005f06
for anatomy pictures and
http://inspirationalartworks.blogspot.com/p/photorefrence.html
for
photoreference. Be advised that there is nudity or images deemed unsuitable
for the younger crowd in this spot.
I think that is about whatI have to give you today.
Until next time!
The joys of freelance – As time goes by
Hello again, time for another blogpost from Studio Colrouphobia.
It has been a while and for that we are sorry. The truth is tat it comes with the territory, being a freelance-company mean that sometimes we are just crammed with work and has little time to do anything else. The past two weeks have been such a time.
First things first: The reaction to the tutorial we last posted has been varrying but in general it was received with thanks and praises.
The main concern voiced as the lack of detail and in-depth description, as well as “tips” on how to paint like this.
The lack of depth an detail to the tutorial comes down to what we earlier explained is in store for the future:
Some free tutorials, and some with a cost to them.
To be able to motivate the tutorials, we need to look at the time it takes to create them. As every hour of work counts in this business, most of the free tutorials will be more like walkthroughs of paintings painted in the studio anyway, mostly portfolio-pieces or commission-work that do not have an NDA or where the NDA no longer keep us from showing the illustration.
These tutorials will be less detailed, with less explanation and not loaded with tips and magic sollutions to become a great illustrator. We do, however, feel that these will be invaluable for the beginner-up-to-intermediate illustrator as it will give you anything in the range of inspiration to tidbits you didn’t know.
The paid tutorials will be more descriptive, most of them will also be in the form of videos with voiceover to guide you through more detailed help. Some of these will still be aimed towards the beginner or the intermediate illustrator, but thse will also suit the intermediate to “almost-pro” crowd to a bigger extent.
Finally, the workshops will be tailored to your needs, they will include individual feedback and help on a level that only face-to-face tutoring could out-do (and we have face-to-face workshops in mind for the future as well).
Wen it comes to “tips on how to paint like you do”, there is only one thing that will help you achieve the level of ability you wish to reach and that is practice.
So we hope you are up for the future tutorials and workshops from us, we certainly are!
And now for some works.
This time it is a little limited, as mentioned earlier, there has been a lot of work and deadlines that had to be met the past two weeks, all of which still is under NDA, but here are some further painting on Arbaal (with details). This painting is still not done, mind you, and has quite a bit left to go.
WiP with detailshots click to zoom
And this is a very quick sketch of a Chaos Terminator.
Next time we will probably have a sketch to show you of a current commission that has the benefit of not being under NDA.
Until then!
Tears and Beauty
Welcome back after the holidays, hope you had a great time.
Studio Colrouphobia returns after two weeks of “off time” from the blog.
So lets get right into this weeks Monday Sketches:
First up, a little teaser for the next Primarch to be completed, Fulgrim.
This is just a wip, mind you, and the full poster will be in the same format as the Angron illustration as shown in a previous blogpost.
After Fulgrim, there will be Jagathai Khan, whom we have shown a wip of before, and Sanguinius.
Sanguinius is still in the sketch/blocking in phase so we apologise for this rough and cropped preview:
And finally, some conceptuals for Space Marine helmets. These are intended for a project called Damien, which hopefully will turn into a free Graphic Novel as soon as all the details have been dealt with.
These helmet variations are more placeholders then anything else for how the marines of the Angels Cruentis patch up and modify their helmets for doing boarding raids inside the warp, where the chapter predominately perform their duty to the Emperor and the Primarch of their founding Legion.
Until next time!
Fiery Christmas and a Dragon New Year!
Holidays are over us and regardless on your stance on this, the spreading of happiness is in order.
Next year begins the Chinese Year of the Dragon and what better way to sort thing out then by having Santa being chased out of this year by a dragon?
The blog will take a two week break from posting during this time but before we go there are some things to take up.
Music for life was a blast. The total sum collected was more then 7 million Euro and Studio Colrouphobia are happy to have contributed a small part of that sum. Thank you to all bidders on our painting and congratulations to the lucky winner (who wanted to remain anonymous). The signed and framed poster is in the mail and should arrive within the next two weeks!
And to end this blog with some extras, here is a finished Angron and a WiP of the next Primarch in line, Fulgrim.
We are pondering to make these Primarch portraits into posters, let us know what you think about that.
Enjoy the last days of this year and be sure to check back in 13 days for the next installment of this blog!
As bloody as they come…
As the Holidays are closing in, we bring you tidings.
And a WiP.
This painting is not done. The linedrawing of the weapon is not showing and parts of the armour are not complete, but why not show some blood for you.
Angron, Primarch of the World Eaters shortly before turning into a Demon Prince the signs where already there as there was a shine to him, only blotted out by all the blood…
And yes, that’s a yellow glow emitting from his skin under the armour. You can see it light up the muscles on his neck and in his eyes and seeping out through the seams of the wrists.
Enjoy!
a zombielicious Monday
Another Monday and some more sketches from the creative labyrinth that is the studio. We have also decided to give workshops in working digitally, for the folks who are interested. These will be topic based and will span the range from composition to colour theory to sketching analogue and rendering in programs. The details are still being worked out, but give us your input on the subject and it’s form so we can create a format that works.
First sketch is a 15 minute pen on paper sketch/study. Pirates of the Caribbean inspired, since zombies are the new vampires according to sources.
Sketch number two is for the 40K lovers out there: a necron for your pleasure! Well mayhap not much pleasure and enjoyment but the Games Workshop crowd might appreciate it for what it is: zombies in space.
It’s not easy to please me
Wednesdays are a bit tricky really,
On one hand, they are not Mondays, and as such not really that chaotic and filled with workstress. At the same time they are not the end of the week and relaxation neither.
Currently, David has found himself working on an unusual job. It’s a cover, which is not something unusual, but it is also contemporary. This is both exiting and challenging at the same time since almost all illustrations we have done so far have either been Sci-fi or Fantasy. For some more info on this head over to this place:
http://projectmabus.blogspot.com/2011/10/dont-judge-book-by-its-cover-unless-it.html
The illustration is seing completion this week and then we will see how long it takes before we can display it.
One of the things that has been asked alot is to show progress and/or doing tutorials.
Whilst this is something great and definately something worth doing, there are such a great number of tutorials out there that we first need to sit down and consider what we want to achieve with a tutorial.
The first one will most likely be a walkthrough rather then an actual tutorial.
David has a set idea on how to work, but usually all of this is just tossed out the window once the work begins. In reality what happends is normally what works. Sometimes it works to paint blobs of colour and go from there, sometimes a refined pencilsketch is the best and sometimes it is the usage of photo’s for interesting textures.
So look out for next wednesday when a little walkthrough will be posted of a personal piece in it’s beginning stages.
In the meanwhile, here are some WiP’s of current paintings and a sketch that was made at FACTS but that we didn’t have any photos of ourself. Courtesy of Alexjodo’s blog. Follow the link below.
http://alexjodo.blogspoAlexJodot.com/2011/10/david-sondered.html
