I Used to Hate Photoshop

Maybe I still do, on the inside. Right now I only hate the fact that I can't organize through 300+ new brushes my friend gave me.
Anyways, I digress.
Here's a speedpaint process for you. I'm looking to post something like this AT LEAST once a week - my deviantART page will undergo a huge gallery renovation next month (meaning I'm deleting everything and starting anew). So! Here we go!

rough sketch +/- 5  

Starting with a digital sketch here, to practice with drawing digitally only (I'm really traditional when it comes to sketching). Just using a peach color that will be painted over later ~
On the right, I've outlined the sketch in a darker brown to be able to see, created a new multiply layer, and began painting color over it. Just initially blocking in value and shape ~

Adding a background color and a light source underneath the painting here ~ 

Finished! Fun little speedpainting ~ : )

                   

Digital Painting Practice #2

                We're getting ready for our huge digital painting character environment, so this was our practice assignment: take a picture of a still life and create a Photoshop painting. 

Photo Reference (c) micalemer

30 min. block in

I wanted to do something atmospheric, and since I've had a thing for candles lately, that was my first thought.







      The easiest way for me to get a digital painting looking halfway decent is to go in 100% opacity and block in the color shapes with the solid circle brush. I work in a lot of layers, both traditionally and digitally painting. It's just never going to look good for the first three layers or so.

1 1/2 hr. rendering stage

I spent the rest of the 3 hours rendering the piece. From this point, I drop up and down in opacity and begin adding color gradients; I'm mostly using the fuzzy circle brush for this stage.

It's during this stage that I either make or break the piece - sometimes I go way overboard rendering, but I did my best to keep it looser than usual.

3 1/2 hr. finished piece

Learning Digital Painting

In progress (25 min.)

And finally somebody is teaching us the right way. My Comp ILL instructor is a fantastic teacher ~
We're preparing to place our characters into their environments... I'm thinking of background concepts and outfit designs in the meantime, while we're practicing painting.
So happy that I remember how to create clipping masks from Graphic Design back in high school - thanks Mrs. Campbell!!!

Grayscale quick study of a pot (I didn't pick the reference). Mostly we should be concerned about getting values right rather than perfecting the shapes... at least, that's what I'm most concentrated on.

Finished product (50 min.)

Character Develop. Sketchbook Page

Finally done! This probably was the most fun I've ever had with an assignment ~ <3 I really love character concepts and story development. The digital painting came out too bright again... I swear those cintiqs mess with the color display...

This is my original character, Damon C., who is 21 in the timeframe I decided to draw from his life. He's a retrograde amnesiac, meaning he suffers from complete memory loss from birth to age 17, as well as recurring repressed memory surfacing in the form of nightmares. He copes with this by smoking (temporary), but mostly with high-risk activities, such as bike racing and dangerous adventuring in the wastelands around his home town, an arid desert surrounded a small oasis where the city is built around. His world is set alternatively from ours in the future, where monsters from the wastelands and wild around cities are beginning to find ways to kill the populations hidden behind the walls. 

And that's all the backstory you get until the graphic novel gets underway (currently #2 on the waiting list).

Character Concept Development (c) Michelle A. Martin / micalemer 2012

I've had Damon for a little over 3 years, since senior year of high school. He's a fairly new character still, but his backstory and plot have been developed to the point where he is one of my senior characters. I hope you like him as much as I do~!! 

Reference Sketch #4

Facial Expressions + HAIR

Day's hair was super fun to draw - it's naturally wavy and pretty lengthy, so I had a lot of possible hairstyles to play with, particularly with his ponytail. I think it reveals a childish side of him when he ties his hair back (mostly when he's concentrating). His facial expressions were fun too, although I wish I could have done more to define his character more. But seeing as I still have more sketches I want to do, I don't think I can fit any more. : (

Reference Sketch #3

Costume Design
Day's (nickname) particular outfit and gear for his races; he's a licensed contestant of the Dome Races, a competition variating between superbike and hoverbike races. It's a huge event that the city attends, which usually takes place a few times each month. The bike is his superbike, and I am regrettably not releasing my sketches for the hoverbike concepts quite yet. 

Reference Sketch #2

Interactions x2
Damon is a pretty quiet person: he keeps mostly to himself, minus his two closest friends, he rarely shows emotion, and yes, he smoke(d) from age 18-19. He's an interesting character to work with out of my collection, for being so intellectual and depressing. 

Reference Sketch #1

Facial Features
Just some facial specs and notes, for me but mostly for the viewers (since they can't visualize him like I can). And now I realize that I should have also done a full-body analyzation... next time. 

Cintiq Speedpaint?

30 min. 

Just something quick, to get used to the Cintiq before starting on my character development page... this is the character I'll be designing! His name is Damon - the rest you'll find out soon enough! 

Also - it's so much easier to color with a Cintiq than a tablet!!!

My Illest Entry

It didn't make it into the gallery though. >: c LAME! I spent a long time on this (at least 40 hrs.). 

It's watercolor on watercolor paper. I really enjoyed doing it though! I'd like to make a children's book out of similar illustrations. : )

Back With Some Fan Art

Although I never really left to begin with. I've been working on artistic things and such everyday since Ringling got out for the summer (minus the week and odd days I took off to play Final Fantasy XIII-2).  I can't exactly post everything I've been working on, since it's been quite the project I am undertaking (meaning you won't hear anything big about it until the fall).

 An offering to appease you:

I really love graphite portraits. Mostly, I really love graphite portraits of popular Korean singers. I've been on quite the Korean binge lately, particularly with music. One of my favorite boy groups happens to be INFINITE... so this happens to be Sungyeol from the group's most recent single, The Chaser. ^____^
This was done in graphite with the intent to make it into an oil rub. But the oil rub turned out too dull to post, sorry guys. ;;

Ver. 1 of First Confluence

Sooo. I bought a sketchbook for my good friend Hyung Min's 21st birthday. : ) When I buy sketchbooks for friends, I naturally write a personalized memo inside, and draw a little something to get them started. He and the other Game Art majors kept talking about Journey, which had just come out earlier in the month. So I bought it on PSN and got about halfway through before finals took over. It was amazing, even at just halfway. It still is amazing. So for his doodle, I thought about Journey. I based it off this fanart I was painting in Corel.

< ----- 

This is another version of the painting. I put this through critique in my Illustration class. My professor had said that there needed to be some sand dunes in the foreground (mostly just more sand dunes overall), not enough value, and that the clouds needed some color. Yet another tried and failed piece, but there's a good start here, so I'm going to put it back into Corel and tend to the loose ends. 

If you note the watermark, you can find this piece on my deviantART: http://micalemer.deviantart.com/art/First-Confluence-301734283

And this is the sketchbook version, done in colored pencil ~ 

Thanks to my Korean friends for helping me out with the phrase (I'm still at the novice level to form a complex phrase on my own):

"너의 여행은 시작된다... "

"Your journey begins..." 

Today's figure class was... pretty much don't-even-bother-coming-to-class day... our teacher wasn't even there. But Heather and I went anyway, since it was the last class of the year. A few of our classmates went too, so it wasn't completely empty. So we stayed an hour to do a sketch and then went to go work on Illustration...;; How there is even time to do a blog entry, idek.

Semester's almost over!!!

City Island Landscape

oils + walnut alkyd on canvas, 14x18"

This was painted at the bay on City Island, at the Marina Jack harbor in Sarasota, FL.
I saw a dolphin here. Seriously. It was kind of awesome; one of the many perks of painting outside.

Wish I had more time to work on this... it was a 3-day painting, but I ended up getting about a day and a half to work, because I changed my composition on the second day. So this is a quick study painting. The clouds were so nice that day.

Weird Costume Today

But I don't want to offend anybody. : D

It was a fun pose, nonetheless. The all-white costume reflected a lot of the colors in the environment.

I think this will be my last figure painting until next semester. My teacher's opening up the medium for the remainder of the semester, so I'll either work with charcoal or maybe even digital... we'll see.




2.5 hours
acrylic paint on watercolor paper

Something Different

Although it probably doesn't look much different... my right wrist still hurts, so I painted with my left hand today. I remember my drawing teacher last year, Steve Kaplan, having us draw with our opposing hand in class, saying that it'd make us work harder to be accurate, and he's absolutely right. Your lack of skill really sharpens your ability to observe, because you're spending more time looking than stylizing.