Photoshop Digital Painting Tutorial #2 - Word Stacks, Abstract Thumbnails, Lasso Tool

These Photoshop exercises were designed to get us to relax a little about thumbnails and show us that there doesn't always have to be a definite idea of what you are creating/drawing, and that ideas can be generated from abstract shapes and brush strokes. 

Firstly we were directed to create a "word stack", a continuous stream of conciousness in writing form of descriptions and ideas and links made in your mind about a chosen city, which is a great way of getting everything in your head down on paper quickly, which then acts as a great resource for planning and developing your work. Initially I chose to create a word stack of Esmeralda, because I was interested in the city and had not yet developed any thumbnails for it, but then decided to also do one for Baucis as this is my chosen city, but due to the open-ness of the description of the city itself I am taking on board inspiration from other cities I like, especially Esmeralda. 

Then we were given a thumbnail template in photoshop and directed to create abstract compositions from our word stack (stacks in my case) using only the brush tool. 

Next we were given the same task but using the lasso tool and polygonal lasso tool.

Lastly, we combined different abstract thumbnails through different layering techniques to see what might emerge from the abstractions.

Photoshop Digital Painting Tutorial #2 - Master Studies

These are my completed "master studies" from yesterdays photoshop tutorial. These were quick studies, we were given approximately 10 minutes per painting and they are an excellent way of developing digital painting skills so I will be completing more master studies in the future to help develop my skill. We were to focus on blocking in the bulk of the colour rather than focusing on the minute detail to help us work on tonal value and composition development. I experimented with using different brushes in each painting to see what different effects I could create and what was more effective. 

I believe my most successful study was #2, and if I had had more time I would have liked to go back into #4 with a harder edged brush to develop more definition in the rocks, however I feel I definitely got a good base tone layer down.

To help us assess if we were capturing the right tones of the works we were directed to also view our work in black and white, so we could see the depth of the tones in the colours and see how successfully we were creating the master studies. 

Invisible Cities: Baucis Influence Map - Interior

Here is my completed influence map for the interior digital painting of my chosen Calvino city.

Stemming from my interest in the city of Baucis I found myself thinking a lot about botanics, in particular the growth of them in a controlled environment, originating from the description of Baucis' inhabitants "having already everything they need up there". I've drawn inspiration from such places as the Eden Project and other such large greenhouse spaces, genetic laboratories (cue Jurassic World reference) and aquariums. 

Invisible Cities: Baucis Influence Map - Exterior

Here is my completed influence map for the exterior digital paintings of my chosen Calvino city.

I am particularly drawn to cities that have an element of multi-storey chaos, such as Zenobia with its "many platforms and balconies placed on stilts at various height,crossing one another, linked by ladders and hanging sidewalks..." and also Thekla with the "scaffoldings... wooden catwalks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles... cranes pulling up other cranes, scaffoldings that embrace other scaffoldings, beams that prop up other beams". However, I am also very interested in the city of Baucis, just the idea of an entire city propped up high above the earth on "slender stilts...flamingo legs", completely isolated and self-sufficient is very intriguing to me, especially as there is no real detail about the city itself, leaving it quite open to interpretation and incorporation even of details from other cities.

Maya Tutorial - Intro to Maya - Modelling - Egg Cups

Here are my completed egg cups from the first Maya tutorial. I was really nervous about Maya before starting this course, it just seemed like a huge scary piece of complicated software that I'd never be able to use. However, after just this one tutorial I already feel more relaxed about it and I'm excited to get on and complete more tutorials and learn more about the software. 

Invisible Cities - Thumbnails 103 - 117 - Tamara, Thekla

Invisible Cities - Thumbnails 81 - 102 - Octavia, Phyllis, Sophronia

Invisible Cities - Thumbnails 66 - 80 - Leonia, Moriana

Invisible Cities - Thumbnails 48 - 65 - Esmeralda, Fedora, Isaura

Invisible Cities - Thumbnails 33 - 47 - Despina, Ersilia

Invisible Cities - Thumbnails 17 - 32 - Baucis, Diomira

Invisible Cities: Thumbnails 1-16 - Anastasia, Argia, Armilla.

(I need to find a way of increasing the contrast between my pencil lines and the paper as my scanner's made them appear quite faint, but without making the paper have a very orange/yellow tint. - will re upload/update post when I work this out). 

(I initially started working in pen, then decided I would prefer to be more sketchy and work quicker with pencil, to get my ideas down quickly and not worry so much about every line looking great and being in the exact right place) 

Photoshop Digital Painting Tutorial #1 - First Ever Digital Paintings

Today was my first digital painting class, using my Wacom tablet and photoshop. We were given approximately 20 minutes for each study, working on the black and white image first. Considering I'd never used the software or even a tablet before I am quite proud of the results; it definitely could have gone a lot worse.

Summer Project - 101 Concept drawings

For our summer project we were first presented with these images and asked to produce 101 conceptual thumbnail sketches of life forms, structures, and machines, stemming from the images.

Thumbnail sketches 1-5

Thumbnail sketches 6-10 

Thumbnail sketches 10-14

Thumbnail sketches 14-20

Thumbnail sketches 21-22, and 67-68
(After going back over my sketches later on I realised I had doubled up on some numbers so had to fix that)

Thumbnail sketches 23-29, and 69

Thumbnail sketches 30-36

Thumbnail sketches 37-40

Thumbnail sketches 41-44

Thumbnail sketches 45-49

Thumbnail sketches 50-56

Thumbnail sketches 57-61

Thumbnail sketches 62-66

Thumbnail sketches 70-73

Thumbnail sketches 74-78

Thumbnail sketches 79-84

Thumbnail sketches 85-89

Thumbnail sketches 90-93

Thumbnail sketches 94-101