Wednesday 10 October 2012

Fun with concept-arting

I've always enjoyed designing random stuff for imaginary games that would never get made. Here's a concept for a knightly leading hero:

For starters I wanted an easily recognizable helmet:



Then I started on some body silhouettes:



Some finalization to the design... Plus thumbnail for painting:


Final sketch:


Then some good old watercolor!


Some detail on the sword that my crappy camera didn't manage to get:


I recently had an insanely useful (arguably career/life-changing) "painted comics" course with Brian Stelfreeze, who gave me some extremely useful advises on playing with the color wheel and having a "damn subject" in our pieces where the most pure color would be put. Not sure if the camera captured it or not, but that's why the sword is the bluest thing here. By painting this guy I realized that while white rim-lighting work great for machines/metal (like my last painting), it is terrible for leather or non uber-shiny surfaces. I need to use some more shades of gouaches for highlights.

A little reference on the gloves might have helped too -- no idea while I didn't use any!

I realized watercolor paintings aren't the way to go for modern concept-arting... but it's so damn fun! The fact that my first digital painting I did last night was so terrible (that I'm not even going to put it here), did not help my move towards digital either...

Tuesday 18 September 2012

Re-imagining old characters

When I was in high-school, I created this world where the Soviets and Americans were fighting a Cold War on a secret alien planet called Demeter. The war would escalate to the point where they lose contact with Earth, and the story takes place 100 years after this. The game would be played through the perspective of an Earthling explorer who rediscovers the planet, who then ultimately has to choose to help either the Soviets or the Americans settle the conflict on the planet.

I imagined this as a video game, knowing full-well that it'll never get made, but it was fun and I used some of the pieces for the grad art show (you can see them here).

A few days ago, while looking for a subject to draw/paint, I thought back to this weird idea and started drawing one of my favorite characters I did as a 17-year-old:


This guy is a psychopathic outcast who is on neither side. I re-sketched him in several ways:


I didn't like this one so much: 


Then this just to show off his insanity...


I then water-colored his helmet. Did more of the same technique I used on the Merc dude... Got a bit lazy on the neck.


I think I'm going to try paint some of these sketches digitally, or maybe redoing some other old ideas from high-school -- I enjoyed doing that a lot.

Wednesday 12 September 2012

Watercolors update

I realized that I needed work on environments so I made this painting on my over-priced Moleskine watercolor pad:


It started out as me wanting to draw a demon standing in the rain... but then putting it on a building made more sense for some reason. After drawing this building, I realized that buildings were pretty cool after all.


When it comes to subject matter, I have a difficult time choosing between whether or not it should be fantasy, or science-fiction, or something in between. This castle is the most "fantasy" I've done in a while... Most probably because I've been playing lots of Dark Souls and Witcher 2.

But of course... You just HAVE to draw guys with guns every once in a while:



In lots of futuristic video-games /movies, most of the military guys have camouflage and a pretty dull color scheme in general -- being inspired by real life organized armies. In this painting I wanted to portray a mercenary or private military contractor (PMC) who have less uniform policies and more of a shadier and unorthodox approach to things -- Hench possessing the less "tactical" colors like red and yellow.

Tried a new technique of going from light to dark in this one... debating whether or not I should add some sort of background. 

I should also start scanning in these painting instead of using the crappy iPad camera.

Saturday 25 August 2012

Experimentation


So I took a pretty long summer trip to Kazakhstan. Being in an empty desolate country (even more so than my previous location of Oman), allowed me to contemplate life and draw more. I bought this cool Russian notebook with a cover of vintage cars and started doodling random stuff. Buying some crappy notebook made me feel more comfortable about doing really stupid stuff without caring whether or not it will ruin the book.

WOOF!

STARE INTO THE EYES OF OBLIVION

I played more with watercolors:

Eastern European wildlife

Check out those badly painted dubs

Floating alien

Pencil scenery -- if only I could do this with a pen...

Dramatic hand

'Nam badass

Then I got back to Van-city and started to paint things on actual watercolor paper:

Usain Bolt from newspaper:



My brother's hand:



Some photo of a girl from the internets:



Some guy from the internets:



But then I realized that painting from photo is so much easier compared to still-life or memory...

Salt from Bean Bros Cafe:


I saw a girl on the train the other day, she looked sort of sad and I tried to capture that here (from memory):



Sunday 13 May 2012

Dude with gas mask

So I visited my high school art teacher last week on my last visit to Oman and I sketched this dude out:


Guys with gas masks are probably the easiest things for me to draw. I liked this guy a lot because I didn't use any ref and still got the revolver in perspective (well, barely...)

So I got home and got this thing out, it is so much harder for me to paint from a drawing rather than a photo: (The iPad made him look so short! It's the iPad, I swear!)


I used linseed oil instead of turpentine this time and found it like 300 times easier. 

I'm still not 100% finished with him:

> hands are still waay too small
> some dark bits on the clothing needs to be darker
> detail on belt and filter thingy

Overall I still find pen and ink infinitely easier than this oily crap.

Wednesday 2 May 2012

First time trying out oils

So I went to the (only) art store in Oman the other day and bought meself a bucket load of oil paints.

Not knowing what to paint, I ripped off some bits of the newspaper that I was using to cover the table with:


And after like 3-4 hours it turned into this:


Did it on a pretty small canvas, I'm going to try a bigger one next time... It was a pain doing details!

Wednesday 18 April 2012

Artist trading cards collection (1)

I've been collecting/trading/stealing and making my own trading cards a tiny bit before Emerald City Comic Con... Unfortunately I sold most of my cool ones before even taking any pictures of them! So in order to avoid this...




























PORTRAITS:


First row:
SUNNY SHAH, 3rd year Illustration
Second row:
Me, PAKORN PATARAWUTIPORN, 3rd year Illustration
Third row:
ALISON VOGELAAR, 3rd year Illustration
PETER SHORT, 3rd year Illustration (?)
LAUREN CARR, 3rd year Illustration
ROBIN CARPENTER, 3rd year Illustration
SINAN DEMIRER, 3rd year Animation
Forth row:
DURWIN TALON, ECU Illus Prof
EMILY GOSSMAN, 3rd year Animation
DEVIN ROSYCHUK, 3rd year Animation
JAIME ANDERSON, ECU Illus Prof
GUIN THOMPSON, ECU Illus Prof
MIKE MCRAE, 3rd year Illustration

LANDSCAPE:

Me again
CODY SHAW, 3rd year Animation
WINFIELD LUI

Still missing a bunch of cards... will upload it later!
I'm trying to collect at least one of everybody's from Emily Carr, if I can has then it would be cash

Friday 6 April 2012

Introduction

Hi all!
So I started this blog in order to update new stuff, rant about random things and just generally get a bigger presence in the world. I've been meaning to do this for a while now... and since I never had a blog before, I'm still trying to sort everything out and make it actually presentable! This post itself is a test too... More stuff to come... (Well, obviously!)
Pakorn