ImagineFX Issue 136

I recently had the pleasure of painting ImagineFX magazine's latest cover image!

ImagineFX - CreativeBloq

If you get the chance to pick up a copy of the magazine, there is a step-by-step tutorial showing how I've painted this image, including several Photoshop brushes and layered .psd files.

There is also a 3-hour-long video showing the entire painting process (sped up) with a bit of additional talking and explaining from yours truly. :)

Studies, Sketches + Brush!

First off, here are two quick landscape studies, done to test out some brushes. You can watch the entire process of the second one somewhere towards the end of this recorded livestream.


This one was an exercise in brush economy, based on photo reference by kouma-stock. It was done in a little more than 4 hours over the course of ten days.

And finally, another quick ASoIaF character portrait, this time of Stannis Baratheon. You can download the the sketching brush I used for most of this one and The Old Bear from my deviantArt sta.sh !

Studies and brushes

Here are a couple of more or less recent studies!

First off, a Game of Thrones screencap study - I just love how the series looks, so there might be more of these!

A master study of John Singer Sargent's self portrait to practice some brush economy. For those interested, you can download a tiny brushset containing the brushes I made for this study.

I also used these brushes for this Anders Zorn master study as you can see in the first two steps. (The brush used for the final touches wasn't made by me, but you can get it here.)


If anyone is wondering -  I haven't forgotten about the full brushset I promised a while ago. I'm still in the process of figuring out what could be useful :)

Lyssa the Shaman

At the beginning of February I took the time to do a painting for the Art Evolution Challenge over at the ArtOrder. It was my second time partaking in an ArtOrder challenge - some of you may remember the first one.

The participants were asked to depict Lyssa, "A young female human wizard with black hair who always wears white trimmed in gold." (More info here)
The description is quite vague, yet quickly evokes some clear ideas. I knew this was going to be fun!

This week the results were announced and I'm thrilled to be one of the five winners out of 126 great entries!
The winners will be published in Black Gate Magazine soon - I believe mine will be in May.

Without further ado, here is the painting and the lovely things the judges Todd Lockwood, Jeff Easley and David Deitrick have said about it:

“Has nailed the lighting in this snowy mountain scene. The skin tones are perfect. The movement in the figure and skirts suggest that she might have been running but a moment before; the wind is blowing in any case. “You see that I can summon a mystical spirit ibex, do you not?” she might be saying. “Now what are you doing on my mountain? Be gone before I summon a herd of mystical spirit yeti.” Beautiful balance of colors and values. Excellent!”

Todd Lockwood

“The bones of this painting are very strong, and backed with solid composition in the subject. Warm colors of the figure offset the cold background and had great impact on the scene. A truly stunning piece!”

Jeff Easley

“The warm colors of Anna’s figure stands out against the cool background. Anna’s work makes me think of mornings back in Alaska when the fog is just burning away. I can feel the chill through my parka. Atmospheric perspective adds to the feeling of depth.”

David Deitrick

I'm very honored :)


Now to spice this wordy post up with some pictures...

Progress animation - please click to enlarge!

(More progress stuff like thumbnails over at wipNation!)
... and some very rushed studies!

<3

Updates!

... It's been a while!
I have been painting some covers for the German pen&paper RPG Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye) since the beginning of June. Here are a few I'm allowed to show already:

More info here

More info here

More info here

As a sort of follow-up to my last post - here you can see how I use the same basic approach for studies from photo reference as well.

The finished study. I could have spent more time on it, but it felt pointless. I learned what I could from this one :)

And lastly, a little birthday gift for Melanie :)

Flower in a coffee pot

I've been meaning to do a still life like that for a while, but somehow I never got around to it during spring >.<
So although today there wasn't too much of a variety of flowers to choose from, in the end I was quite happy with my pink rose in the old coffee pot :)
Everything was painted on one layer, but luckily I remembered to save some steps!

Genie Doodle

This started as a random doodle to clear my head after a long day, so the process for this image was very intuitive and different fromt he last one I showed. That's why there is another progress video for you to watch!

Most of the painting was done with a custom variation of a default Photoshop brush, which I put up for download for you! It's very simple, but fun for sketching and feels a bit like a pencil when you set the size to 2-5px. Please tell me how you like it!

And by the way, any input on what you would expect from the little guide/tutorial I've been talking about would be greatly appreciated. Someone suggested streaming it, which is a great idea for the future, but I won't do it this time.
I was thinking about putting a few custom brushes up for download and maybe giving tips on how to use them. How does that sound? What else would you guys like to know or see?

First Post!

I did a little sketch the other day and just when I started liking it, there was a power outage. Being used to working with a laptop and not expecting such a thing to happen, I lost everything. But after a short burst of rage I decided to start over again and save some steps this time!

Here is the finished painting. (Please click to enlarge)


... and here are the steps:


This is not necessarily the way I always work - I like to switch it up and try different approaches every time.

Would you like to see a more detailed step-by-step progress of a painting in the future?