Inked sketches both factual and fanciful. In Photoshop I placed a paper texture below the scanned image layer (set to multiply) and then added some color on a third layer. I set a copy of the paper texture layer on top at a low opacity (set to overlay I believe). I especially like how the white beard stands out from the parchment colored background.
About 30 minutes of goofing around got me this. I was going for a city scape with texture. That changed into a destroyed city. Then I wondered what had caused so much urban devastation. Sure enough, Gojira.
If you’re looking for a great place to draw plants, I recommend the Alden Lane Nursery in Livermore, CA. Fantastic oak trees, benches for sitting and sketching, lots of space and of course a wonderful variety of plants and flowers.
This was just a quick sketch in pencil and watercolor with Photoshop touch-ups.
Not the best scan. Red col-erase pencil, watercolor, and watercolor pencil on gessoed paper. Photoshop color touch-ups. Thanks to AB, SK, and BS for modeling.
My brother asked me to paint the ketubah for his wedding. Because I was going to incorporate text I decided that a fully digital painting would give me the most flexibility. After sending a compositional rough I made corrections, sketched and scanned then jumped into the painting. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.
I took one of the artistic brushes that comes with Photoshop and customized it. I basically used that one brush for the entire painting, changing its size and opacity.
The grapes and bread at the bottom originated as tweaked photos which I then used as the basis for painting by sampling colors and repainting with my texture brushes. There is a brush in Painter 9 that does this same effect but I had a lot more options and control by doing it manually.
The final was printed onto canvas and wrapped on a frame. I then, painted a clear matte acrylic gel on top to create some additional texture.
Dinner guests make fabulous portrait models. I ended up overworking this and lost what slight resemblance to the original that I had initially. C’est la vie…
Messign around with hand-drawn calligraphy. I think I’ll work on refining this and try it again. I especially like how the leaves turned out.
Just messing about.
I was asked to create an illustration of a wilderness scene. After kicking around some ideas that were mostly Photoshop image composites, I was asked to do something with natural media.
I painted the background with gouache and a smidge of a new long-drying acrylic sample I had on hand from a local art store. I painted directly onto some computer paper which I had taped onto a portable lap desk. I kept working the image over adding color before moving on to texture.
I ended up incorporating some paper towel into the painting (the mountain range, lower left corner, and area behind the tree). I sponged the painting with paper towel and flicked paint to add more texture. I wanted a really physically tactile painting.
When I was happy, I moved on to the tree which I painted in a similar fashion on a different piece of paper. On the version shown here I actually created a negative out of the drawing of the tree. I liked the contrast and openness; the Joshua tree is almost a doorway into something beyond the desert landscape.
I created some texture to scan using bubble wrap and cellophane, scanned every thing and brought it into Photoshop for compositing. When I scanned the background, I placed piece of cellophane directly on the glass, creating some interesting reflection lines which I liked.
I played around with layers and blending modes and added some texture with a custom brush and incorporated a gradient overlay.
I sent the client 4 variations but like this one the best overall.
