Project 6-Winter Landscape

Finished up the tree.

Project 6- Landscape

Project 6 - The End of Magic

There was once magic in the world. A bountiful and unending supply. Humans and animals a like reached into the pool and performed great feats. It was the dragons who taught the humans in those days. Those who wished to dabble in the arts sought out the last traces of our kind that rested in the mountainsides, under riverbeds, and lakes. It was until there was a tradgedy, that slowly the whisps of magic began to fade away. Dragons were hunted down and killed for our body's magical properties. Alchemists and sorcerers... our brothers and sisters, who had once stood by our side, now turned against us. The dragoness, Ishalta, rose up against the armies of men to fight for dragonkyn and kaiyn. However, one man by the name of Gregoren, slipped into her cave and stole an egg from her clutch. Wrought with anger and despair, Ishalta sacrificed the rest of her own brood to seal the gates between Thaer and Earth so that both may only touch each other through Ohm, the rift of the planes. It was then that the magic of the world began to fade. With every use, the Earth's magical supply would slip away, no longer able to create more. Ishalta and many others were trapped on Earth, serving out their long years to watch the world spin into chaos.

--Excerpt from The Awakening by Elissa Clare

I thought I'd roam through my archive of written literature in order to draw a landscape from one of my worlds. I stumbled upon this little excerpt and just knew I had to bring it to life. Originally I was going to have a whole illustration of all the different parts of the story, but I decided that the battle between an army of humans and Ishalta would suffice.

Ishalta
In my book series, Ishalta was one of the most renown sorceresses in both Thaer and Earth. Many magical users, human, dragon, and animal, would come to her for her knowledge. She was purple and instead of blowing fire, she preferred (if provoked) to conjure beams of energy in her palm and use it to destroy her foes. Many dragons of my series actually didn't blow fire but attacked in this manner. However, it was difficult for humans to tell the difference since dragons usually shot their beams of energy near their heads.


Vintage Grunge Textures © `Princess-of-Shadows
Used Pillbox Opaque Font

All Characters, story, etc. © Me

Project 6 in Progress

Figured I'd do something for the holidays. I plan on adding a snow-covered Christmas tree in the foreground once I'm done touching up the details on the mountains

Project 5 - Cloud Image

The idea looked more epic in my head. But it's supposed to be mountains flooded by rainwater.

Lickem' N' Stickem'

Project 5- Cloud image

Project 4 Megashark

This is the Best picture ever. This is an image of a Mega Shark frozen in the water. To give an idea of how massive the shark is there is a submarine and divers in present to be viewed in comparision.

violin (project 4)

so heres the violin i took a really long time on...it was done mostly on the cintiq. it came out pretty decent...the light shininess of it was really hard tho

Underwater Waltz Video

Here is the video of my project 4 painting. It took about 3 1/2 hours to paint. I thought I spent more time on it then that but after putting the video together I guess I did it pretty quick.  It is speed up about 10 times about 21 mins in total. Sorry there is no music to go along with it but hope you  like it. -Matt C.

North Pole

Recently, I watched the episode of Top Gear where they went to the North pole. It is a remarkable place, but when we started doing the speed painting, I flashed back to that show. Something very unique about the North Pole is that during a certain time of the year being on the North Pole you can see day and night at the same time. So that is what I was depicting here. You can see the celestial orbs on both in the sky.

Project 5-Classical Painting Remixed

I once took watercolor classes with a teacher in Colorado Springs, and a common painting exercise was to reproduce works by classic painters like Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo. Thinking about those classes gave me an alternate idea for project 5; a personal twist on a well-known painting. I looked up a reference of this painting of Napoleon Bonaparte in the Alps and reproduced the pose, lighting and background as best I could, but with some original fiction characters me and my boyfriend came up with (the dragon is mine, the knight with the hat, monocle, and coffee cup is his). One thing I learned while doing this is that using the Wet Media brushes on different opacities along with the blur tool is a faster and more interesting way of shading color.

The steps of this painting went about thus:

1: Background. This was done freehand with the original painting as a reference.
2.: Sketch: Sketch in the two figures.
3: Base Color: Add in some sharper looking final lines and the main bodies of color. I tried to keep the lineart thinner to make it look more like a painting and less like a comic, but this turned out better on the dragon than it did on the knight.
4: Shading: Add in the shadows and highlights.

Project Fowa.

I am very tempted to continuously use them for the rest of my projects. But yes, Arrona as a mermaid, and a squid/octo/ursula kind of deal for Pompeii.

Probably am gonna go back into this one some day and sort of do something with/to it. Couldn't come up with a decent sort of...background thing. Need moar skills. /shrug.

>.>;;;

This is really late but here is my project 2 finally. Lolz And even though I am uploading it, it is still not finished. The scales around the left eye and the cheek still need work but it is in a presentable state so I figure I would upload it. I will have the other projects up soon.....I hope.

Water Creature

Light on Dark-Smoke Monster

Just playing around with some of the irregular shaped brushes and the smudge tool.

Project 4: Underwater Waltz

Video Coming Soon. -Matt

Project 4- Underwater creature

Project 4 Final

Finished up the statue base, seawall, ocean, and city.

Project 4 In Progress 3

Statue's all finished up, now to finish the detail on the ocean and the city (I hid the sketch layer to show off the shading a bit more.

Project 4 - Underwater Scene

This was actually from a speed painting I did a while back for the seadragon choice. I decided to improve more upon it and I really like how it came out. :) Though I didn't incorporate as much square brush as I'm starting to now, it came out ok I think! I love his glowing lights.

Project 4 In Progress 2

Hid the sketch layer to show the shading progress a little better.

Arctic Speedpaint

Update

I know it is very sketchy...still a work in progress. I didn't realize how long, or big, this project was gonna be.

I'm trying to get an Edo era look. I have some reference material but I forgot to bring it to school today...will update again soon.

Speeding Painting of the day

Project 3: Minas Morgul

This is my idea of what Minas Morgul looked like in Lord of the Rings. I did I technique of only using one push and changing flow and opacity. The end result was good as a drawing and then I added more color.

Halloween B.C.E

I took the prehistoric cat concept in a slightly different direction. Happy Halloween, everyone.

Project 3: Sauron in his tub

Dino

Heres a dino I did...I started it in class as a speed painting...then ended it out of class. I may try and find scales and add to it more...hmmm...

This is the ghost of christmas past (hence the mint)...he loves candy so much he went back to halloween to try and eat some...but can't because he just always floats through it...Sad ghost :(

Wolfman

My Halloween themed project 3.

Project 3 - Medieval setting

Here's my project 3. I really wanted to work on sunsets and oceans so I decided to do both at the same time. During this project I went to Blizzcon and was able to watch their great artists at work. I learned a lot which helped me finish this image.

Gandalf Project :D

Project 3 :D

Perseus

This is my idea of what it might look like at Perseus' funeral.

Desert Rocks

Funky set of rock formations out in the desert somewhere. Whoever put them there must have had very steady hands...

Project 4-Maritime Scene in Progress

Playing Civilization V got me thinking about ancient cultures, so I decided I was going to try and paint something related to that, specifically a version of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Since the theme had to be water related, the scene I picked is of the Colossus of Rhodes overlooking the harbor at night. The first step was to sketch out the basic layout of the scene before filling in the main color forms (the statue is based off a stock reference photo). The sky was created with a gradient skewed to match the contour of the hills overlaid with starburst shaped brushes to create the impression of the Milky Way. The fire was created with a brush adapted from this tutorial here http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/tutorials/index.cfm?FeatureID=1740&pn=1 The next step after this is to add the value to the statue and finish blocking in the background elements.

Project 3

This isn't fully done, but I felt good enough about it to post it. I didn't really do anything special as far as painting techniques. I just used the same brush with varying hardness/flow.

2, Too.

So, this was the project two that I held onto for the longest because I couldn't think of a way to make this look movie posterish. The top was a 10 minute sketch I made of them a while back..and I just..spruced them up a bit for the assignment.

3...ish..

Don't feel too strongly about this one, mainly because I went for something different, and well...meh. I say nay.

Shapes Dragon

Got this little guy finished up

This was a very interesting read. Quite useful, I think.

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials/brush_away/brush01.php

Project 3

I went off topic for this project.  I was making some interesting shapes in alchemy and put together this robot with energy whips.  I didn't plan on doing this for my project but I liked where it was going so I decide to finish it.  I used pull shapes, x shapes,  ribbon shapes, type shapes, and detached shapes under the create section in alechmy.  I saved these sessions as a pdf and opened them up in photoshop.  I selected some of the shapes and adjusted them with transformation tools.  I drew a quick sketch over the top of the shapes to get some structure.  I shaded everything in black and white and adjusted certain parts that did not look right.  I put my layers into sets, then copyed and merged the set into a flat image.   With the flatten image I would create new layers and paint on them.  I would place those new layers into a set and copy it again. I always keep a set with all my layers in case I mess up.  The last thing I did was add color.

Alchemy Shapes

Project 3-Deleted Scene from "Lord of the Rings"

Well, "The Hobbit" technically. To get psyched up for the movie that'll (hopefully) come out in a few years or so, I painted Smaug fighting a giant eagle. I used a lot of oval, calligraphic brushes, especially for the eagle's feathers. The sky and the eagle were both done from photographic references.

PROJECT 3

This is a frankenstein guy...maybe he's from Jersey?

Speedpaint

Todays speedpaint. I spent a little extra time after class.