W13 PROJECT #5: Write-up/Concept (4/4)

Hello everyone! This is the promised post regarding the thematic aspects behind the work

Connection to the assignment:

I was quite excited for this assignment, as digital art is something I rarely do anymore. I started doing art in digital--on an ancient iPad that barely ran procreate with more than 4 layers (14 years old and still kicking!). Thanks, covid, for accidentally,

I wanted to work with the themes of Kitsch and "Hyperreal"

Here is the definition of Kitsch as I understand it: Excessively sentimental, in a way that's both too much and endearing.

This use is a bit more apparent in the work. It's a bit of a love letter to my previous forms of art. I also used to love fantasy as a kid, so I wanted to work with that. The work itself is a bit tacky--I did what I wanted to with it, with not too much of a concern for how it would look. Showing the "childhood whimsy and want" of it.

For the connection to the hyperreal, I have a bit more to cover first on my research journey. 

Photobashing in Industry:

Like I mentioned earlier, I used to want to do digital art. My main reason for this was animation. I wanted a particular niche, though---background painting. Background painters are the ones who determine the colour scheme, design, details, feel, etc of a background for an animation. It's different from "Background design" as they are the ones who figure out the perspective and logistical aspects of the work (which was still a huge interest!).

Here, I was introduced to the term "photobashing." This is more commonly used in video game background art--since the CGI rigging is realistic, and a cartoony background on a tight deadline may not fit the aesthetic--but also in some digital art platforms. Photobashing means combining multiple images into a work (especially in areas with high amounts of details) to create a stronger sense of realism. It can include adding textures, far away background details, and sometimes encompasses image tracing. It's a way to take a "shortcut." 

It's somewhat of a controversial technique, but I won't fully get into that. Mostly because it's seen as "cheating" in the art world. It's commonly used in the professional landscape.

So, I wanted to do something similar with my work in regard to photobashing, since that's what this assignment basically is. 

"Paleoart" 

To take a bit of a turn, you may not have heard of the term "Paleoart." But I promise you have seen it before. Paleoart is essentially, drawing dinosaurs for scientists. Which is potentially the coolest job ever. A paleoartist is responsible for taking all known knowledge of a creature (habitat, location, genus, etc) and making a visual work as close to the real thing as possible. 

For example, all artworks of the quetzalcoatlus are complete speculation--they don't even have a skull for that species, they only guessed based on others in the genus. 

So, going back to the idea of "hyperreal." Essentially, all paleoart is 'hyperreal,' turning something that cannot exist and making it into something tangible, based on our understanding and photographs of other things. 

Goals: 

Relating this to my work, I wanted to make a bunch of "real" animals into fantasy animals that don't exist--dragons. I worked with an arabian sand boa, a fancy pigeon, a blue heron and a great eared night jar. All of which look like dragons already, but I wanted to take this a step further.

I used a lot of reference images for the design--around 2-3 each, so 6-12.. From there, I edited, restititched and changed the refrences to fit my goal for the art aspect. Then, started painting.

Once I had finished the painting, I wanted to tie it into the theme of Kitsch further. You know how when you're a kid and very bored, you start imagining creatures in your enviroment? That. I left the background images relatively untouched, and altered the creatures into them.

And there you have it! The final project. Great. I'm going to take a long nap and get studying for my exam now.

W13 PROJECT #5: Changed my concept again... Whoops (3/4)

 I'm going to post the write up and symbolism later, so then I can focus on the progress aspects.

But for now, just know that I changed my concept again haha. I liked the orginal one... but digital art has a weird curse for me. I rarely finish the work. I'm not completely sure why--maybe because it's easy to avoid when it's a document in my laptop rather than an actual piece. I also think it's because I am much more of a perfectionist, since I don't have to "just roll with it" as often, since I can hit undo over and over again.

I'm using some aspects of my previous project for this one. I liked the process of designing the dragon creature, so I wanted to do more of them. 

Starting us off, this is our creature list and refrence images:

From left to right, we have a Fancy Pigeon, Arabian Sand Boa, Long eared night jar (bottom left), great grey heron (bottom right).

I picked these out because I felt it would be both fun and challenging to turn them into dragon creatures.

I sketched out vaugely what I was going for with each one. You can see I kept the original little guy from the first concept.

I started blocking out the basic colours for each one.

here is the completed "blocking" stage. I was mostly considering capturing the colours of the actual animals

For brushes, I used: Kyle's Real Oils 01 and Kyle's Real Oils Round Wet Flex, both are from basic. I also used one of the charcoal brushes for the texture on the snake.

I pull up the refernce and I start painting. There's no trick here, I just start going. I use the eyedropper for some colours, but I try not to so I can learn to 'digitally mix' paint. 

More painting progress.

Close-up progress photo.

I also went in and worked with some rake brushes! These are from Devin Elle Kurtz Fur & rake brushes pack. Completely free. I linked them in my previous post.

Sooooo satisfying to add in these lines.

And here are our finished creatures!

Now, I wanted to add the photos.

These are my source images.

I went in by hand to paint in the shadows, but also fixed the contrast curves of the work as well as going in with blending layers. I wanted to make the creature seem apart of the background, and felt like I got pretty close with this one.

Slowly, I fit them in with the background.

I put them all together!

I picked the background images based on the creature, so not much editing had to take place, but I still made sure to keep it together.

And here's the final piece:

I got it printed at Staples and it was crazy expensive. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it after this class.

W12 PROJECT #5: A Bunch of Digital Art Resources + Tips!! (2/4)

 As I mentioned before, I am a digital art senior at this point. I've done art in photoshop for roughly 4-5 years now. Here are some tips and resources.

 This person posts story highlights of their process as a PROFESSIONAL digital artist. Less about "how to use photoshop" and more "how to utilize photoshop as an artist." It's great if you don't want to sit through a 10-20 minute video on the lasso tool or whatever.

Free brushes! As well as photoshop files for digital paintings to look through and learn from. And again, free brushes!

Hate the way photoshop looks? Already used to digital art programs? Open photoshop, click on this symbol.

Hit "Painting." Now it reformats the structure of photoshop for painters.

Here are some other tools:

Under "Window" you will see this drop down menu. I've highlighted what I will talk about.

Brushes: This is a bit obvious. Having the window enabled lets you see the different shapes your brushes can be.

Colour: This pulls up a colour wheel for you.

History: Long list of the "undo" button. So you can go back multiple steps.

Layers: Lets you draw on one "layer" without impacting the other layer. For example, if you had grass in front of a house and they are both on a seperate layer, you can erase the grass without erasing the house (and vice versa)

Swatches: Lets you see previous colours used, as well as save frequently used ones.

This is a very cool feature.

Click on the drop box that says "Normal."

A million things pop up! Don't fret! I will explain!

It's better to experiment with these than to explain, though. 

In short: Blending modes change the way the layer you've selected reacts with the other layers.

Normal-->Dissolve: Normal is how your layer is now. Dissolve makes it into a screentone/dotted style.

Darken-->Darker Colour: This, as you can imagine, darkens the layer depending on the layers below it. You can see how it changes the ones below. This is great for shading and adding contrast.

Lighten-->Lighter colour: Opposite of darker colour. See how it reacts to the layers below it!

Overlay-->Hard Mix: This works with both lights and darks. All of these will increase contrast. I use "overlay" constantly.

Difference --> Divide: These will invert the layer, or cancel out what is in the layer underneath

Hue --> Luminosity: This adjusts the "basics" of the layer underneath. For example, if I filled in a layer with blue and applied "hue," it would change everything on the layer under it blue.

Here are other things related to layers that may be helpful:

Eye Symbol: this shows up if the layer is enabled. If the eye is shown next to a layer, that layer is visible on the canvas.

"Layer 52": You can double click to change the name of your layers. This is good for organization sake.

Opacity: The drop down box with a percentage listed is to adjust how transparent the layer is. 100% is a completely visible layer, while 0% is not visible at all.

These are some basics that aren't obvious. So hopefully this helps?

I would love to add more to this, but it's insanely time consuming to type this out. If anyone has any questions or wants advice that's particular to digital art, my email is Kennedy.chinn@uleth.ca. Go crazy.

W11 PROJECT #5: Reference/Research Stage (1/4)

 Due to my schedule, this project will be a rapid creation. I was just able to get started on research today, and I plan to finish it Sunday/Monday, as I won't have any time the week leading up to the actual due date. 

I was excited for this project as it has been a while since I've done a completed work digitally. I mostly use digital tools for creating mock ups and refrences, but I actually started my art journey working digitially in March of 2020! I worked in Procreate, then wanted to move into animation, so I invested in ToonBoom and photoshop shortly before 2022. I then started focusing more on background and concept art, still somewhere in the animation realm. Because I had to go back to in-person school, I picked up traditional art so I could draw in class. Whoops. Now here we are.

I'll get into the symbolism/ties to the assignment later, for now here is my process for prepping references and research!

Research:

One of my favourite artists for quite some time now is Devin Elle Kurtz. When I was beginning with concept art her work and photoshop tutorials was a huge inspiration and helped significantly. She's been a background painter/designer for many many TV shows and you might recognize some of her commercial work:

So yeah, a lot of her work is super cool!

Here is her website: https://www.devinellekurtz.com/ 

I enjoyed the idea of "magical realism" where creatures dwelled in normal 'human' spaces. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do. Here was the intial sketch.

Confusing for now, but stick with me here. I wanted to draw a dragon on a skyscraper, being reflected in building windows.

First I wanted to design the dragon. So I listed anything "dragon like" and worked from there.

I pasted references into the document. I thought it would be fun to work with a leopard gecko, a great eared nightjar, and/or a leafy sea dragon. To narrow down my scope, I did some gestural sketch studies aiming to capture the main features.

I started to narrow down and combine these ideas. I wasn't too big into the leafy sea dragon for this, I felt combining it would be too much. 

As you can see, I'm getting the feel for the character a bit more

Here I started sketching a bit more, working the design into the composition.

In case you're wondering about the various sketch colours, it's just so I can tell what is what without having everything on different layers.

Now I start roughly adding my values

I liked this, and added colour.

Once I've gotten a "painterly" view of what I'm trying to do, I photoshop my references more coherently.

This is a process called "photobashing." You combine a ton of images to make a new one, in combonation with other digital art elements. Think of it like a collage with extra steps and filters.

Mine looks bad. But it works!

It lines up with my sketch pretty well!

Everything looks disjointed still. So, I put a few overlay filters so it's a bit more coherent.

Perfect. This looks horrendous, but it will be useful.

If I was working traditional art, I would stop here and use this as a reference.

I can also do more useful things with this!

Above, I put a lighten and darken layer (one enabled at a time) with a neutral grey (exactly at 50%). This allows me to isolate the lightest and darkest parts of the work, and see the distribution of the values.

I also anonntate my work with any changes that need to be made or noted in the final version.

Now I start painting. This is what my set up looks like! I put screenshots of my work on a seperate document and pop it out. When I have it as a photoshop document, I can still colour pick & draw on top of the references. I can also zoom in and out, as well as collage the works.

Now I just... start? There isn't a lot to this part. I use a limited amount of layers from here on out (reference photoshop + planning was around 30-40, I'm estimating around 10-20)

I use default brushes I've customized with the mixer brush tool.

Here is the progress so far. I'll keep updating as it progresses.