I have some new work up in my illustration gallery! Firstly, the following pieces are small character illustrations I did for my Nodr project. The project is coming along quite well. I have a good amount of stuff finalized with plenty of illustrations for the wiki, and it’s been so much fun painting objects, environments and designs as well as people!

This next piece is part of an ongoing project of mine; I’m tailoring my portfolio more towards Wizards of the Coast-style artwork, because it’s my dream to one day work for them. I have several other images in the works for this project, including a mock cover, a “magic card” style illustration of a Displacer beast, and a square-format illustration of a tiny fellow going up against a big, mean dragon.

Lastly, this is a personal illustration that I finished last night, painting live on my Ustream account. It was fun to paint and it’s very meaningful to me, because it deals with temptation. It was interesting to hear the comments, because they were so different from my own interpretation of the piece. The ghostly figure appears kind and sympathetic, while the more aggressive figure in red has a look of contempt and resentment. The former appears to be a benevolent force while the latter seems to be the antagonist, but in reality it’s the other way around, at least in my mind.

That’s all I have to show for now. Look forward to more D&D illustrations soon, as well as further info on my artbook.

Amae genders:

A little Amae kid, with toy otter:

(I’ve made a new logo! One of the assignments for my last art class is to create a new logo for myself, and I liked it so much I decided to keep it.)

My plan right now is to work my hardest to find employment. I have a promising lead, but just in case I’m going to spend this month applying at various companies for illustration work. Once I know where I can find work, I’ll know where I’ll be moving! It’s probably going to be the west coast. It will be a strange and confusing change, but I’m ready to get out of this state (no offense, Virginia) and make a fresh start. I’m feeling very confident right now.

I have not been producing as much illustration lately because I’ve been swamped with work, and all my free time is going to my new worldbuilding project. This is the only place I will be talking much about Nodr. Today I’m working on some concept art, and hopefully I will be able to find time to do more soon and upload it to its own section of this site’s gallery. It’s basically the nerdiest hobby of all time, but it’s something I am really, really passionate about; I love designing whole cultures, languages and species, and I especially love map-making. When I have some more concrete things to show, I’ll be sure to make an entry about it.

For now, here are some portraits commissioned by the lovely Kate Tonkin. They’re characters from her Victorian novel, which sounds fantastic. Believe it or not, the hardest part of this commission was getting the backgrounds to look distinct from each other. I thought there were more colors in the rainbow…apparently not!

I don’t think it’s because the paper “feels more real” or has some sort of undefinable quality. In reality it’s because the limitation of not being able to undo your mistakes forces the brain to think carefully about each sentence, work around problems, see the whole picture before one line is finished. It’s more than a mental exercise; it changes your perception. There’s a reason the haiku has such a strict structure and why Shakespeare didn’t write in free verse.

I find the same is generally true for unforgiving traditional media like ink. Sometimes when I feel very uncreative I toss away my pencils and go at a drawing with pure ink, knowing if I make a mistake I’ll have to redo it or draw something else.

I’ve often mentioned that digital art lacks most physical limits. You can make the canvas any size, you can use any amount of paint. You aren’t limited by color and paint texture and the chemical properties of the medium, and yes, this can allow for theoretically unlimited creativity. But that’s where a lot of digital artists find they’re missing out. The challenges wrought by a physical medium are also helpful, if not integral, to the creative process.

To get this same effect in digital medium, I have had the interesting mental challenge of creating limits for myself. “One layer” is a common one. “No eraser”. “No undo.” “No guidelines”. “No color picking.” “Mix all colors from 3 basic ones.” “One brush.” “No blend modes.” I go outside of these guidelines when the job is on the line, but for my personal artwork I try to impose them on myself whenever possible. My brain has to stretch and leap and jump to get around these challenges and solve the problems of the work at the same time.

Anyway, if you’re a digital artist struggling to stay creative, my advice is to set similar limits for yourself. There’s no real difference between artificial and physical limits if you have a lot of willpower and self-discipline.

This sounds pretty egotistical but as part of the “internet generation” and someone who’s grown up using digital media to create art, I feel a bit like one of the pioneers of this new form of creation. We’re still discovering all the new ways to use this technology and one way is not any less valid than another. It might seem silly to some to impose limits on technology that has almost limitless potential, but I can think of a dozen ways they’ve helped me out.

Like these!

Wenches!

Over-saturated elves!

Julia Nunes!

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life so far: embarrassing myself, making selfish or immature decisions, blowing all my first and second chances, missing out on things I should have experienced, and taking things for granted. I can’t think of a period of my life that I can look back on and not cringe at my own stupidity. And for as long as I can remember all I’ve wanted is the chance to start over from scratch, trying everything again, but with all the knowledge I have now. I wanted some genie to just appear out of thin air and offer me a do-over, a chance to be the person I always wanted to be, to make all the right decisions.

But I know that any choice I make differently could change my entire life. It could lead me down a different path, possibly away from you. I might never meet you, or fall in love with you, or have a life with you.

So if someone offered me a do-over now, I would have to turn them down, because I’m not willing to take that kind of chance. For your sake I would turn down the thing I’ve always secretly wanted. I wouldn’t even consider it, because being with you is the one thing that I don’t have any regrets about. I know whenever I look back at my life I’m still going to remember all the mistakes, but they’ll seem tiny and insignificant next to our relationship, the one thing I managed to get right in all my life.

And that might not be the dictionary definition of love, but that’s what it means to me personally.

Happy anniversary, Nick!

It’s been a while since this attempt and I can’t seem to get the story out of my head, so I’ve begun to do all the planning I meant to do before and I intend to start over from scratch. I can’t possibly tackle another project right now, but I can do some prep work for when I eventually do have the time. Right this moment I’m working on the first draft of the outline (yes, my high school English teachers would be proud!) and I’ve done some new concept art for some of the characters. These designs are still in their early stages and I have a lot of work to do solidifying the style I want to work in, but I’m not unhappy so far.

Regarding the style, I want to try something a little different this time. I’m going to attempt total block-color, without any of the airbrush or blending I used before. I realized I was trying too hard to emulate an animated movie and it ended up looking cheap and rushed. I think block colors will allow me to focus much more on contrast and value. The difference is the brush I decided on.. I made myself a nice custom brush that’s soft around the edges, and it’s perfect for distinct areas of color that don’t look too artificial. I haven’t decided if I’m going to use paper textures or not. Might do some test panels and upload them here.

Apart from Madland, I’m also working on another small project called Nodr. This is just a sneak peek…I probably won’t get to work on this much until next year. I’ve got too much going on right now. But darnitall if I’m not a sucker for cute stuff. Everything I write ends up being so dark and cynical and grimy…this story is a little less so.

In other news, I just finished another illustration, and I’ve uploaded that and some other new work to my gallery. That’s all for now!

To see what I’m talking about here, pick up a box of Rice Chex at the grocery store. For the record, I love General Mills and mean no disrespect.

Unfortunately, right now, no matter how much I want to put the animal front and center, I can’t seem to get around the human element.

How To Get The Most Out Of Photoshop Brush Settings

Check out your tablet settings, and keep the preferences window open while you paint. You can adjust your brush firmness and softness on the fly. A lot of people don’t bother with this because it’s not handled through the program itself, but I find that it’s invaluable when adjusting to different challenges while painting. A soft brush will apply the “paint” more easily, with little to no pressure, while a firm brush will require a lot more oomph in order to get the full opacity/size of your brush stroke.

The first and foremost thing to know about Photoshop: you can make your own brushes. The “tip” of the brush is the shape you see in the brush selection pane. A brush tip is basically an image that Photoshop repeats in a certain way, according to its settings in the Brush window, to create a stroke of “paint”. This means that it’s ridiculously easy to create your own custom brushes, because it’s just an image. Open a small document (say 400×400) and make some random scribbles in the center. Then click “Define Brush Preset” (Edit > Define Brush Preset…) and it will present you with a name input. Name your brush whatever you want. Whatever tool you were using before should now be set to your new brush preset, which will be located LAST in your brush selection pane. (Scroll down.)

Now it’s time to open the Brush Window (Window > Brushes). I like to keep mine handy at all times, and save the brushes I use the most. To save a brush, create the brush you like via the Brush window and then right click on your open document to get to the brushes menu. It should pop up with a list of available brushes. Next to the input for the Master Diameter, there should be a little round button with an arrow; click that to get to the extended menu. There you should see the first option is “New Brush Preset.” Click that, save your brush, and then save your entire brush set by clicking “Save Brushes.”

Note: saving a custom brush will create another brush with the same tip image. You can delete the original pre-saved version (the one Photoshop automatically saved when you defined the preset), the one without the nifty settings, or you can keep it. As long as you remember which brush is which, you’ll be fine!

Here is a rundown of the different settings available in the Brush window.

Dynamic opacity is your friend in most painting situations. Some people prefer not to use it, but for blending it really can’t be beat in terms of speed and control. Combined with the tablet settings, you get almost unlimited control over how transparent your paint layers are; someone who’s been using a tablet with the same settings for a long time can usually feel the different “levels” of sensitivity that create transparent or opaque layers of paint. When you’re blending with dynamic opacity, it is easy to put down a solid color, then release some of the pressure on the pen and create a half-way tone between two colors; with the eyedropper tool, you can pick up that midtone and continue blending.

Shape dynamics is what makes the brush smaller when you apply less pressure and larger when you apply more. Pretty simple. But it can also do a lot more. Shape Dynamics is the menu that’s probably the most useful when creating a custom brush. From here you can edit the angle jitter (it rotates the brush at random, creating a more organic, spontaneous feel), size jitter (randomizes the size of the brush, also controllable by different means such as pen pressure, pen tilt etc.) and roundness jitter, which creates alternating “flat” brushes mixed in with the usual round ones. Play around with these to really understand what they do.

Brush Tip Shape is your general editing pane for the shape of the “tip” (the little picture you see when selecting the brush). From here, you can change its diameter, spacing, angle (including a handy “flip” feature, if you’re using an angled brush and you need to angle it the other way), and “hardness”, which only applies to round brushes. Spacing is great for creating things like jewelry or patterns very quickly. You can make a great “star” brush if you take a round brush and space it out very far, with size jitter.

Scattering is another way to make great, natural-looking brushes. You can control the count (how many tips are included in the scatter), how wide apart the tips are scattered, and even how random the count is.

Dual Brush is not something I’d recommend for beginners, but it can be a nifty tool if you want to experiment to get different effects. It basically combines brushes, using one brush for the general shape of the stroke and another for the “fill” (texture inside the stroke). This can lead to some pretty crazy combinations, so definitely fiddle with this to get a feel for how it works.

Texture is one I never bother with, personally, but if you’re really into making super-detailed or grungy brushes, you can use this pane to add a texture to any brush. I would not suggest using the default Photoshop textures, as it’s almost always very obvious when people do this.

Color Dynamics is pretty self-explanatory, though it took me forever to figure out. You choose two colors (your foreground/background – see those two blocks of color under your vertical toolbar?) and Color Dynamics will actually shift the color of the paint you’re using between them. You can choose the colors white and black, for example, and Color Dynamics will paint white if you press down very hard, shades of grey when you’re painting normally and black when you’re barely touching the tablet. For that level of control you might want to play around with your tablet settings to get the right balance down. But it can do more than just this; it can actually jitter between Hues (giving you random colors), Saturation, Brightness (values) and even Purity, which you can adjust to decide how far your color can stray from the original color. It’s a really nifty menu and you can do a LOT of neat stuff with it, but don’t overuse it.

Here’s a trippy example, made with the default brush set on “saturation” jitter:

The last five options, which don’t have menus of their own, are Noise, Wet Edges, Airbrush, Smoothing and Protect Texture. Noise adds grit. Wet Edges…makes your brush look like it has wet edges, I guess. I’m not certain what Airbrush does but I think it has to do with continuing to add paint even after you’ve stopped moving your stylus. I don’t know what Smoothing does but I always have it turned on, along with Protect Texture. In 99% of cases you won’t need to worry about these checkboxes.

With this many options for brushes, there’s really no need to use the sidebar tools like blur, dodge and burn, or smudge to paint. They’re handy for very quick fixes, but as painting tools (in my opinion) they always come in second to pure brush work. With custom brushes (or even edited defaults) you can create an array of very subtle effects, and you can be completely in control. I tend to use abstract brushes but you can make some really nice terrain brushes too; a lot of concept artists use custom terrain/environment brushes for speedpaints.

Hope that was helpful!