Monday, August 20, 2007

The Injured Sparrow

So after reading through several other artists' tutorials, I've been wanting to try out some techniques in Photoshop. Here's the final result:

I really didn't know where to go with the color on this one. I just couldn't visualize it very well. The only thing I was sure of was that her hair needed to be blond. Then I started thinking about John Bauer's work and figured a dark, earthy background with a pale, glowy figure might work out all right.

I'm not so sure about this piece... it's not quite there. Maybe it's just the bright, isolated figure and/or the fact that there's not much color pushed around throughout the background that's bothering me... I was kind of going for a faux watercolor look, but I don't think it really worked out that way at all - it looks pretty digital to me. Either way it was primarily a learning experience for me, considering how seldom I produce art digitally.

Every element (hair, trees, etc.) except her skin has a different texture overlay with painting done underneath. Some of the textures came from Mayang's Free Textures and some came from other free online libraries.

I've got my other painting, The Blackberry Princess, in progress and that's probably what I ought to go and do now, but all I want to do is sit down and finish reading The Golden Compass. I'd been told it's a really great read and when we were at the Comic-Con, I noticed a lot of promotion for the upcoming movie and thought I really should read the book before the movie comes out. So with gift-card in hand, I picked up the book at Borders last week. I just started reading it on Saturday and I've barely been able to put it down since. It seems like it's been a while since I've really gotten hooked on any books (haven't read the new Harry Potter yet) and this one's got me thinking about my next fix already. I still have credit on my gift-card... looks like I'll be walking down to Borders sometime later this week to pick up The Subtle Knife....

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