Wednesday 28 September 2011



Readjusted the levels of my final as it was quite dark for some reason, I think my new monitor may incorrectly calibrated.

Tuesday 27 September 2011

Elf Warrior final Illustration

Heres the final illustration of the elf warrior, tried to get as much done as I can as I am going to be quite busy with university work so wont have the time to work on it.

Sunday 25 September 2011

Starting to add the details

Update for my elf warrior. Just adding more details now, improving the design of the weapons and armour, further definition to the hands and face. And adding some more definition to the lights and darks, and improving the form of the leg around the knee.

Upped the resolution of the character to 300 now so I can start defining everything, hence why it starts to get blurry when you look closely. But I feel this will give me more edge control, and an easier time at adding focus to different areas.

Haven't made any progress on my other illustration, think ill just leave it for now. Finish this one and then work on the other one when I get time. Starting my third and final year of illustration tomorrow, so I'm going to be quite busy. Cant wait to start though, should be a challenging but fun year.

Part of the reason I am working on my illustrations in such high resolution is partly because we are expected to do art stands this year so I need ot make my illustration ready for print. So far that involves making sure im using colours that will actually print, painting at a high resolution. And making sure that the illustration will hold up at my preferred print size of A3.


Friday 23 September 2011


Second colour pass, and some more definition. Think Im ready to up the resolution now and start working on the details, further definition etc

First colour pass of my elf warrior. Change the hair a bit as I didnt like the design. Think im going to give it lots of earth colours to give a forest/woodland elf vibe.


Thursday 22 September 2011

Finished Sketch of Elf Warrior

This is the finished sketch of my Elf Warrior character. I think Ill start adding colour to it now. Trying to get lots of interesting shadows onto the character, and have a couple of different types of textures to challenge myself.

Keeping with trying to improve my narrative aspect of illustration by adding little rings, tokens, and so on. Also playing with the contrast of value and detail.

If you notice as well Ive added a little arrow for the light direction, who knew doing something so simple would make the lighting easier to understand haha

Didnt realise I can add captions to photos, really like this new blogger layout much easier to post things.

Wednesday 21 September 2011


Update.

First picture is my first pass at colour, and some more design added trying out working from the back to the front. I think I prefer my usual method of working the whole picture at once.

Decided to change the composition as you can see on the second picture, I think putting the characters closer together, and overlapping more of the elements is going to make for a more intense illustration. Just trying out different things at the moment. Tried to get the character design of the dragon and his rider done as he was the main focus of the illustration. Definitely going to change the design of the blood mage. And I just indicated the figure in the bottom left. It was meant to be a thief who's been startled by the dragon and the bag of coins she was stealing breaks and smashes on the floor.

I think it doesn't really work with my new direction so will probably change it. Perhaps making her recoil from the site of the beheaded beast or perhaps more involved with the potential fight. I don't think they'll be that much blood in the final, it was just an indicator to work out an idea I had for a potential composition element.

Also started working on a elf warrior as you can see she is in the initial sketch stage at the moment, no idea why I started drawing her. I was just practicing the planes of the face as I was having trouble with my main illustration and it just happened lol So I now have 2 illustrations on the go at once ;) They are for my own study anyway so it doesn't matter if it means I spend more time on them.

p.s I have the Internet now as well, yay lol

Wednesday 14 September 2011

Hi sorry for the lack of updates I haven't had access to the Internet for a long time, currently posting from my university library. Didn't realise I was getting so much traffic on my blog (1k plus views most from early September it seems) So I guess I should be updating more haha

I kept repainting and redesigning the dragon from the previous post but have decided to leave that painting to rest I didnt really think it out and the painting suffered as a result. So Ive decided to just start from scratch with a different idea for an illustration with a dragon in.

I decided to really focus on the narrative aspects of the painting, and also try and add multiple figures. As I find figures particularly hard so the best way of fixing that is to paint lots of them right? Part of the reason of doing this as well is due to my dissertation that I have to do for my final year. I am thinking of exploring the narrative aspects of illustration, maybe with the title ''Do pictures speak a thousand words' or some such lol

I recently have been looking at the dungeons and dragons art with more in depth analysis of Todd Lockwood's and Ralph Horsleys paintings that have a lot of action and little story elements, so I want to try and put that study to use :)

This is the initial sketch before I do the clean up drawing to make it ready for painting. I'm trying to keep my process for painting the same at the moment as it makes it easier to tackle the different aspects of the painting and to help with the consistency of quality of the paintings.

I feel that I produce better work when I start from sketch and clean it up as well. At the moment I'm probably going to do the clean up sketch working out the little details etc ready for for paint. Then ill do a value painting like I did with my dominance war V entry.