Project LXG - Nemo and Hyde, Allan and Mina

Took a point to polish my paintings, from now on everything will be finished. No more sketch paintings for me.

Project LXG - EDWARD HYDE

I think one of the most satisfying part of digital painting (besides it being digital) is when your last piece turned out well you can carry what you learn into the next piece albeit more confident. The beauty of knowing some painting fundamentals IMHO is that all it takes is mileage and keep churning out pieces and you will notice a considerable difference between your the quality of your work 2 months ago and what your presently working on. When building a portfolio this is frustrating since you can't hit the ideal number of pieces you are satisfied presenting and at the same time quite happy that your skills are growing.

For the next piece (still a work in progress) is Edward Hyde, Dr. Jekyll's evil alter ego. Painting over and using the values from previous

painting, I roughly blocked in what I had in my head then changed the color into a more reddish hue. For the scondary lighting I looked at near the opposite of the color wheel and found a misty emerald that I like.

Normally for portraits I find 1000 pixel wide canvas is good enough to get in enough details, I never go higher than that. Since painting I keep in mind to look at the Navigation Tool which is sized extremely small. If the overall looks good in that size its worth it to bang in the details because so far your painting already has a slight guarantee that it has a direction and "going somewhere." Take control of your painting.

Details up ahead.

So I made a list of significant details I need to research on like "Screaming mouth with Fangs" and bloody lip. The up is the FX part to add energy and motion to a simple headshot.

Project LXG - CAPTAIN NEMO aka Prince Dakkar

On my continuing journey in studying digital painting, I chose portraits of characters from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as my subjects. Choosing subjects I'm familiar with eliminates inventing a story background and just proceeds to portraying the essence of these characters.

First up is Captain Nemo from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.
I started quite rough at first to get the overall direction I want the painting to go. In this case a full front view with a dramatic light coming from the bottom conveying the feel of being under the ocean.

Method wise what changed here is I put some thought first into what I'm painting rather than depend on happy accidents (like the usual). This I found out saves a lot of time and energy.

Afterwards, making a new layer over the rough and adding details is fun and less stressful since early on the art direction was already established in the rough stage. Just proves that with careful planning there's a high chance you'll get a satisfying result. This work was spread in two days for a total of 5 hours.