Final Bullet work in progress #6

It took me a while to hit my stride today with this, but I made some great progress. Mostly concentrated on the background, blocking in some middle ground textures & shapes. I always have trouble somehow with connecting the background to the foreground, and too often I think I end up just adding a layer of fog or ground smoke. I'd like to avoid doing that with this one, although it is a dirty environment and there's going to be a lot of atmospheric dust.

I refined the man's pistol a little, but that's about it for him today. I really like what I did with that crane thing in the mid/background. And I started adding in my hunters. I like the lighting I added to the hatchet man, but I worry it's a bit much and maybe I want to keep these figures as mostly silhouettes. At any rate, this is really coming together.

Final Bullet part 5

I wasn't quite happy with the shape of his gun, so I altered it a bit and extended it out. I still need to give it the small details bu I'll come back to it later. I resolved some of the lighting in his left pant leg, but it's by no means finished. I also modeled his right forearm further and carved some more realistic cast shadows in front of him.

The boots were problematic because I didn't know what kind of shoes I wanted him to wear. I wanted to give him military-style boots but took care to avoid making them look too much like shoes I usually draw, which are usually of the generic utility boot variety. I'll need to go in and change his ankle wrappings; at this point they look too "neat." I want to make them a bit more tattered and blasted. His shoes too; they need some grime. He needs to look like he's been through hell.

I'm really happy with where this is going. At this point I only have two layers; the background and the man. I love just painting over my mistakes; it makes the art more interesting.

BPMI Figure Drawing

I tried some color with this one; warm shades of flesh tone for the light areas and cool shades of violet for the skin shadows. Mixed it up with some greens, etc in the midtones. Not much else to say about this one, except I wish I had more time to refine both of her feet a bit more.

Final Bullet part 4

More progress on the digital painting this week. I worked out the folds and lighting on his shirt and right pant leg, and refined his face, which is by no means finished. His left hand (your right) is holding the bullet, and I had my co-worker Liz take a look at this to see if it made sense. She informed me that the bullet may be a bit hard to see (she thought it was some kind of detonator, mostly from the way he was holding it), and that I might want to change the pose of the hand so that he's holding the bullet with his fingertips. This would bring the bullet out of the shadow of his hand and give it more focus. I was a bit dismayed by this, as I was very happy with the lighting and pose of the left hand but at the same time I know she's right.

So I may paint a new version of his left hand (on a new layer of course) and see if that works. This is, I have found, where a good artist can really shine. It comes back to having the will to destroy your work and remake it into something better. And it's not like I'm on a deadline for this, so I'll give it a try.

Final Bullet part 3

After finishing up some freelance obligations, I made some more progress on my painting today. I like how the tactical vest is coming out, with all the pouches. I had to consult some photo references of soldiers- Marines, SAS and the like. I added some refinement to his face. This is a tricky painting because he's mostly in shadow, which requires pulling off very subtle changes in value. I'll have to make sure I rough him up a bit and not make him look too clean, because he's been chased and shot at for some time now.

Final Bullet part 2

Made some more progress on my illustration today, after a few false starts. I wasn't sure what to do about the background, or the color palette. But I think for now I'll concentrate on value and composition above everything else. The trick is to try to make a cool futuristic dystopian landscape and do it quickly. Again, this is a learning project, so I was trying some new things. Repeating shapes here and there, skewing, transforming, trying to match the perspective, etc. I figured a patrol vehicle would be a nice touch.

I never know how to go about doing the ground plane. I want to avoid just putting in atmospheric mist all the time to obscure the ground surface, and I want lots of junk and clutter in this one. That should be fun. Overall I'm happy with how this is going.

Final Bullet

This week I embarked in earnest on my latest digital sci-fi/fantasy painting endeavor. It's about a man being hunted and chased by a pack of enemies. He has put up quite a fight so far, but now he's tired, trapped and down to one last bullet for his pistol. I wanted the story to suggest that this man wants so badly to avoid being taken alive by these people (or things) that he's contemplating what to do with his final bullet, and seriously considering using it on himself.

I started with a thumbnail composition and value study, trying to set the tone of a dark, post-apocalyptic environment in which savage beings roam the landscape. I blocked in the main character easily enough, hiding in shadows with the enemy searchlights casting upon him a nice outline of rim light. Then I blocked in some distant silhouettes of characters, and that's where my first hurdle appeared.

I wasn't sure how I wanted these fiends to appear. Are they human? Alien? Machine? Animal? I started putting together character studies involving mostly silhouettes to try to see which type of character cuts the most threatening profile. I'm still unsure about which one I like the most, but I do like several of these - particularly the dreadlocked rag-wrapped person carrying a hatchet. I might give him a gas mask as well. He looks like he might be some sort of cannibal. I also like the tentacled alien-thing, who looks as though it might want to experiment our protagonist. But then I've always thought that the most barbaric creature to man is man himself, so perhaps that's how I'll proceed.

So I started painting the actual illustration in high-resolution this afternoon. I am, as one of my art instructors used to say, "on the board". I've got a nice composition, I think. His face is supposed to be the focal point of the painting, and I've got that smack in the center. I've got his body shape and hands fairly well blocked in, and I added a layer of rim light to see some contrast and separate him from the background. I'll be posting some more updates soon.