SÖDERMALM, STOCKHOLM

“Been there, done that, got the T-shirt”

I guess I haven’t painted any existing landscapes since a long time... Oh, I just had to check it. I haven’t painted any existing landscapes since May 2015, which gives us over 2,5 year! Looks like my record. This previous painting presented a high school building from my hometown.

This one is a view of an island where I’m living right now. Nah, I’m not living in any of those buildings, but the surrounding is pretty awesome anyway.

There are sooo many inspiring places in Stockholm that I would like to draw. I’ve even made a short to-do list, but, as always, lack of spare time can thwart my plans.

To the point! Drawing process:

1.      An accurate pencil sketch:

2.      I started painting (as usually) with the sky. Then it came turn for roofs. 

3.      And the walls. I used here a thin brush with a flat tip.

4.      The next step was painting windows and finally, the water reflection. OH, MY GOD, I’ve been struggling with this reflection so hard.

I'm glad that it's finished. I just hope that I won't have to wait another 2,5 year for painting some nice, real view :) 

Miniature Buildings - p.III

Here is the third part from the serie about architectural designs for tabletop games (see also partI and partII). Now it's time for ruins and steamunk buildings.

The little pile of paper below doesn't look impressive, I know... But these are 125 pages of plans, cross sections, elevations and perspective sketches making up designs of 27 objects, which can be parts of a miniature world. 

If you're curious about how "Winterdale" looks like in reality (ie. after 3D printing), you can visit Printable Scenery website http://www.printablescenery.com/.

In the next post (about something completely different) I'll try to be more wordy, I promise :)

Winterdale - miniature buildings p.II

Time for continuation of one of my previous posts and presenting new designs of tabletop miniature buildings. A fantasy land "Winterdale" is expanding more and more!

It's really nice to know, that my buildings are "real" somehow. Well, they can be touched, they form an environment... for a group of miniature figures. Sounds awesome to me :) 

Here are few sketches of miniature buildings in medieval style (a merchant's house, a cemetery chapel and some parts of a castle):

If you're curious about how "Winterdale" looks like in reality (ie. after 3D printing), you can visit Printable Scenery website .

Far Eastern Style

“Why is it that when one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to know what's on the other side?” 

George R. R. Martin "A Game of Thrones"

 

This time, for a change, my blog post will be concise <<Hurray!>>.

Once more I had an opportunity to try my hand in designing architecture... fantasy architecture of course. I made concept sketches for an upcoming video game Tenesha Must Die (sounds nice, isn't it?).

My job was to design various types of buildings in the Far Eastern style with a dash of hi-tech and fantasy.

Below you can see some sketches of these buildings. The task was actually a little bit more complex than just that. It contained cross sections, floor plans, interior fittings, various construction and decorative details.

Blacksmith's house:

Fort:

Inn/Bar:

+ a lumberjack's house and some ordinary houses. In short, lots of fun for several winter weeks:

Female Portraits

How about making an exercise from painting female characters with watercolors? Yaaay!

To be honest watercolors aren't the easiest technique of making portraits. Drawing realistic people requires a very high level of accuracy, while watercolor technique is quite often perceived as series of "controlled accidents". When I googled "watercolor portraits", the vast major of searching results presented a very painterly style - sort of unfinished faces with colorful splashes around them. But the good news is that there were also a few extremely accurate artworks! 

This exercise was made in a way I usually paint buildings. The only difference was that this time I decided to follow strictly photo references (most of my buildings are painted totally from imagination). Special thanks to stock models: http://faestock.deviantart.com/ http://nastiaosipovastock.deviantart.com/  http://mirish.deviantart.com/ and http://chirinstock.deviantart.com/ !

The first step is a pencil sketch. The more accurate it is, the easier it will be to paint over it with watercolors. Tool: a mechanical pencil (0.5 mm, lead hardness H) - it should prevent from smearing. Luckily I chose yellowish paper, so the coffee stain is almost invisible :) 

To achieve a skin color I mixed yellow and red in different proportions along with adding different amount of water to it. For shadows I was also adding a little bit of violet. This brush appeared to be very useful. I used it for the whole work (except the background and some clothes):

Just as in case of drawing buildings, I used a thin waterproof pen (size XS) for making contours. Metal details were highlighted with a white opaque marker. I was using it for the first time so I had no idea what kind of results should I expect. For me it's like a very thin corrector (0.7 mm):

During such exercises you probably won't have an opportunity to fully express your creativity or move into the world of imagination, but hopefully it will improve your attention to details, proportions and light. Strongly recommended from time to time!

 

 

"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: