Daddy's Home

Everybody's got a soft spot - even nasty looking dwarves!  This started out as just a portrait of an old wrinkly guy, and it kept changing to what it is now.  I liked the idea of juxtaposing a huge burly man with a little baby.  Judging by the last several pictures I've done (with the exception of a couple), I guess I like using lots of blues and oranges.  Oh well!  I'm happy with the result, let me know what you guys think.

PS CS5
Wacom Bamboo tablet

Mario and Yoshi redesign

A long time ago I was challenged in a class to redesign one or more characters from Mario Bros. as an exercise.  I found sketches of Mario and Yoshi (which might find their way on here in a second) again and painted them up in Photoshop just for the heck of it.  What I was going for was more of a literal interpretation of Yoshi and a Mario that looks more like a stereotypical plumber.  I thoroughly enjoyed doing it, especially the background.

-Photoshop CS5
-Wacom Bamboo tablet

Sunset Storm

We saw a really cool sunset right when a storm was rolling in - it was so colorful I tried to recreate it!

I haven't done a legitimate landscape in a long time, and this one kind of made me want to do a lot more.  We'll see.

I'm happy with the way the colors work together - I think it shows a lot of growth from past choices I've made in other pictures.

- Photoshop CS5

- Wacom Bamboo Tablet

A Boy and His Minion

 

Yet another movie still study - this one is from Megamind!  I hope you've seen this movie.  If not, watch it.  Now!   Your life will be at least 20% happier.  Go ahead, try it.

 

I haven't done anything cutesy like this (you know, with the beaming eyes and all) in a long time, so it was fun. I really liked the lighting and the effects in this shot, so I decided to paint it. This one helped me to learn even more about blending skin colors and doing better textures.  Right now I think I'll take a break to do some original pictures and see what I've learned before I try more screenshot exercises.

The King

This is another movie still exercise - I thought a certain Lord of the Rings shot of Aragorn was pretty cool, so I painted it. It was much more time consuming than I originally thought it would be. I started out thinking I wasn't going to put in much detail, but then I got into it! I learned a lot about picking the right colors, texture, etc.  Getting the likeness 100% is always a big challenge, but I think this one turned out nicely.

Let's Rumble

Been working a little harder lately - I've started painting movie scenes in order to better my skills a little bit.  It's been fun, and I've learned a lot from it. I have a few more coming soon!  This one is from How To Train Your Dragon - Stoick is about to take on a dragon with his bare hands.  I'm happy with how it turned out.

Gone Fishin' Repost

Ok, here we are - I got some tips from my brother on how to improve this one.  This time around I added some more depth/design to the water so it would flow better. I also darkened the mountains so that the contrast would not compete with the foreground as much.  I like how it turned out!

Gone Fishin'

For those of you that have been following the blog, anxious for another post, the wait is over!  I apologize, school kind of kept me a little too busy as of late.  This is a project I had started about 4 months ago.  Recently, I finally had time to finish it up.  I mainly had the urge to practice painting water/reflections - this is what I came up with.  It was fun to work on, but I sure am glad to be done with it.  I've posted a couple of different versions because I couldn't decide if I liked a cooler or warmer feel for the color scheme.

I'll be posting a lot more regularly in the near future, so stay tuned!