pyraxis | Fiona and Sha

Wow, what a great painting! What medium was used?

I like the hair. Are those dreads?

Thanks :). I still have some work to do on it... I showed it to

shashigai and he thought she looked diseased because her eyes were so dark, not just like the sun was shining from directly above (like I'd intended). Her left hand is too dark, and I think Sha's head is too small.

Yeah, they're dreads. The hair was fun to do.

It's Photoshop CS and Wacom tablet.

Are you thinking about redoing it and tweaking the proportions a bit?

I can do some pretty good oil paintings by hand, but I tried and tried to produce decent artwork with my Wacom tablet and ended up having a really hard time. I came to the conclusion that I'd need either a tablet PC or just have my hand directly on the canvas. Maybe I don't have the proper mental connections to look at a screen without looking at the art instrument.

I'm not going to start from scratch again, but I'm going to go back and edit certain areas. Luckily the freckles are on their own layer, so it shouldn't be too hard to change the lighting on Fiona's skin underneath. I can dodge/paint over the hand to get it lighter, and Sha's head will be a simple select-and-scale.

It took me a long time to get relatively comfortable with a Wacom. I could show you all kinds of crappy matte paintings I did before I got a handle on it. I borrowed someone's tablet PC to draw with once, and it was pretty awesome, but that by itself wasn't enough - there were a bunch of things that I needed to get straight before a regular tablet worked as an artistic medium.
- Tablet size: Mine is 7x9 (I think). Much smaller than that and it becomes impossible to get good line control. I've worked with as small as 4x5 and it was practically unusable for drawing.
- Pressure sensitivity: You need it. If your drivers are fucked up, or your system software or tablet are old, it might not work, taking a whole critical dimension out of your brushes.
- Photoshop brushes: Are important. The basic ones that come with the software don't come near to tapping the possibilities. If you can't find any to download, I could send you my set.
- Working technique: This one didn't click until I started going to the live figure drawing sessions in the computer lab at work, and watching how the professional concept artists did it. Not sure how you could get the same effect; maybe by watching step-by-step video tutorials from matte painters, and by trying some paintings from life instead of from photos.

You should post some of your oils sometime. I think I've only ever seen your drawings.

Wow, this looks excellent. I think you did really well on the faces, especially Fiona's expression. Is this after you made the changes?

My only critique is that at first I thought Sha was holding something white in his hand, like a rock or something, instead of it just being Fiona's shirt there. When I look at the full-size image, it looks like the shadow under his hand gets a little bit lighter towards his fingers, and it keeps coming across as reflected light and making the negative space look 3Dish. Hope that makes sense.

Glad you like it. Yeah, this is the changed version. I probably should have stuck up a comment to say so.

I see what you mean about Sha's hand. That's what I get for sneaking in a sharpen filter halfway through downsizing it to 800 pixels high. I'm not that happy with the hand's position anyway, so I might try totally repainting that bit. His hand was supposed to be relaxed, but it looks too purposeful, like he's clenching it around something, I think. Might make it flat against Fiona's chest or have him actually holding her shirt instead.

This is all working up to making a Water Song project on Behance. I discovered the place through work and made an account there, and then had an attack of disappointment, trying to pick out what work to put up and seeing that my stuff doesn't really have a coherent visual theme or style. Maybe it's because I'm switching media so much, but I really want to get some pieces together that don't look haphazard and disorganized.

It might be good exposure for Space Explorer as well. It's like DeviantArt for pros.

One more version... this time with Sha's hand fixed per 47's crits.

Fiona and Sha

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Oils...

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