Showing posts with label grimdream. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grimdream. Show all posts

Thursday, 1 October 2020

TOP 3 illustrations (dark and fantastical)



have some serious doubts whether people still bother reading something as old-school as blog posts. However, I prepared a new post, just a short one. 

Not so long ago I made 24 illustrations for an upcoming fantasy card game (yay!). Nevertheless, currently I can show only 3 of them (not-so-yay). 


After long deliberations  the TOP 3 was finally chosenLadies and gentlemen, please let me announce: 


#3 “Infiltrate”  

Simply because most of my illustrations present only buildings. And this one looks quite mysterious (I hope).




#2 “Tsunami”  

 A combination of classic “grimdream” medieval architecture and dramatic/time-consuming waves. 




#1 “Lord of the Void 

Because dark surrealism is my favorite genre... is there such genre as “dark surrealism”? Anyway, the color combination is nice.






Saturday, 2 November 2019

Mysterious Temple



Ha! I bet that you totally forgot about my blog… I apparently did. A year and a half of silence would suggest that anyways.

The illustration below was actually made over one and a half year ago, which could confirm that I haven’t drawn anything since a looong time. But that’s not true, I swear. I’ve been just extremely busy with projects I cannot share with you… yet.

I’ll be brief (just as a busy person like myself should be).


In the beginning, I made a few concept sketches. Not real pieces of art, I know. But don’t lose hope:

Outlines drawn in pencil:

Some details in waterproof ink:


The whole building and the foreground were masked with masking fluid to protect these areas from being painted over with very liquid paint (“wet on wet” technique). Mountains were salted to achieve these textures:

Working on the sky with watercolor paint mixed with gum arabic. Previously masked areas were painted slowly and carefully:

Hmmm… looks almost like the previous step. Maybe I just wasted my time, but I actually added some extra precise shadows and highlights with ink and dense white watercolor paint:


Thursday, 23 April 2015

"Fantasy Castle"



“I know only one thing. When I sleep, I know no fear, no  trouble, no bliss. Blessing on him who invented sleep."

Stanisław Lem, "Solaris"









This is a  kind of prelude to the tutorial about 3-point perspective. I'll present here how the drawing was created step by step. Whereas principles of perspective will be explained in the next few days in a downloadable tutorial somewhere here http://grimdreamart.blogspot.com/p/tutorials.html. (At least that's the plan)







1. Setting a composition. Guiding lines were made with a pencil:


2. Aha! experience - it will be a castle. At this stage there are lots of constructional lines and I'm still not sure what shape the castle should eventually have. Using a pencil rather than a pen is much more safe right now:


3. When all what's desired is fixed with a waterproof pen (Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen is my personal favorite), we can get rid of additional interrupting lines. Well, it doesn't look excessively awesome, so...


4. Let's make some additions: windows, ornaments, dragons. It's immediately more cheerful, isn't it?


5. Time for watercolors. It's better to start with the environment before we'll go to the main subject. Apparently it's not necessary to choose warm colors for the foreground and the colder ones for the background. In some circumstances an exactly opposite approach can also work out well. Let's try it!


That's how the background looked like before it dried up. Grains of salt bravely absorb water and leave a fancy pattern:


6. These additions mentioned in the step 4...ekhmm, they're easier to draw with a pen than to paint with watercolors. I should have thought about that earlier...


7. Now it's time for textures made with a thin brush and dense paint. What's even more important I had to work further on overall color settings and  unify the whole painting. It required using a broad brush and diluted paint (yellow, purple and opaque gold):


8. Working on details with a pen once more. The whole drawing looks more "sharp" that way: