Thanatos

I started out this painting as a Colors! 3D doodle, after being inspired by reading a blog post  about the work of Ivica Stevanović on Muddy Colors . I had initially intended to make it more illustrative, but it just organically grew more painterly as it progressed, and I just went with the flow...

I didn't realize until about the halfway mark that I had defaulted to painting with local color; I have to remember to take into account the color of the light. I ended up trying to go back in with some transparent washes, but it's not ideal. I just have to keep working on it.

Also, I turned down the brightness of the screen on the 3DS XL, and that seems to have helped with picking more correct values. The image isn't as washed out as it's been previously; that being said, there's still room to push the values even more...

Once more into the breach!

I was up again far too late working on this painting, one of those instances where I got lost in the flow:

Hardsuit 85
(A bit of trivia: the 85 is a nod to Robotech, which had 85 episodes and first aired in 1985.)

Tried to concentrate on a couple things in this exercise, with varying degrees of success:

• Contrast/1-2-3 read of form
• More detail in the light, less detail in shadow
• Unified color palette
• Working with more opaque paint, rather than building up transparent washes

Painted with the app Colors! 3D on my Nintendo 3DS XL. Here's a playback for your viewing pleasure:

Anne Bonny, Pirate

I attended the September session of Aaron Miller's Figurative Illustration Workshop last night, and the model this month was dressed as Anne Bonny, the Pirate Queen. She wore a great costume with a ton of accessories, like sashes and pistols and swords. It was an overwhelming amount of detail; seriously, I could have spent days upon days trying to capture it all. As it was, I constantly had to fight with the tendency to linger on every little area, and instead concentrate on capturing the gesture and form. Hopefully there'll be good photorefs made available so I can go back in and give the paintings some more polish.

It's been a while since I've been to one of these workshops, and it was pretty evident to me how out-of-practice I was. I definitely felt very rusty, and slow. Still, it was a nice opportunity to use Colors!3D on the 3DS XL, and for the most part it worked out fairly well... I have to adjust to the XL's larger footprint; my hand cramped a couple times while holding it. But it sure was nice being able to paint on a (relatively) bigger touchscreen.

Overall, it was a great figure drawing/painting session, as per usual.

Raid on the HMS Arcturus

I've had a hankerin' to do a Star Wars-style space battle scene with the 3DS... This is just a quick down-and-dirty doodle painting, more a brain dump than anything else. It looks pretty cool in 3D, IMO:

Gallery playback:

Supergirl - Figurative Illustration Workshop, April session

As a nod to next week's comic book convention C2E2 (Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo), this month's Figurative Illustration Workshop was held a little early, with the model dressed as the DC Comics heroine Supergirl.

The model alternated between two poses, at five-minute intervals with breaks from time to time. This was done to give the model an action pose and a rest pose. Because of the switching back and forth, I found it a little hard to pin down the likeness; still, I think the resting pose one turned out decent:

Another fun life drawing workshop under my belt!

Colors! 3D released today! Also, a painting of a turtle

Colors! 3D is now available for purchase through the Nintendo eShop. For only $6.99, it's a versatile digital painting program with a well-thought-out interface, and I think everyone who owns a Nintendo 3DS needs to add it to their app library. And I'll admit to being biased, but what can I say? I painted a turtle!

Mr. Turtle

The painting got a little glitchy towards the end so I'm not able to share a 3D .MPO file, but if you have Colors! 3D you can view it all dimensional-like in the online gallery.

Colors! 3D painting playbacks

The Colors! 3D gallery repainter has been tweaked, so I can now share playbacks of the paintings (it's still a little glitchy, but they're working on it). You can get some idea of how the 3D works by clicking and holding the image during playback, and dragging your mouse pointer around.






Colors! 3D will be official released to the Nintendo eShop in the Americas tomorrow, April 5th. I'm really looking forward to seeing the creative things other users come up with.

L5 Astronaut - Figurative Illustration Workshop, March session

Last night I attended the Figurative Illustration Workshop, where this month's model was "Astronaut Rodney Lewis" from the crowd-funded sci fi miniseries "L5". The model, who is also L5's production designer and "action wrangler" Chad Burns, had on some really nice gear; as I understand it he built the spacesuit himself from things he picked up at places like Home Depot and American Science & Surplus. So awesome.

L5's director Stanley Von Medvey and production designer Chad Burns

The life drawing session was a great opportunity to test out Colors! 3D "in the wild" and it worked out really well. Having the compact form factor of the 3DS allowed me to paint from what would normally be a problematic angle. Also, the built-in camera allowed me to take reference pics on the fly, which I could then import into Colors! 3D without pause. And being able to paint using layers offered a lot of flexibility in terms of workflow. I built the painting up primarily as a 2D image; doing it in 3D would have required a bit more forethought, and I wanted to concentrate more on just painting.

Astronaut Rodney Lewis of L5

Just for kicks I tried converting it into a 3D image afterwards. It actually adapted to 3D pretty well, and didn't involve much if any blending. Check out the .MPO file if you have a 3DS (or some other compatible way to view 3D) and let me know what you think.

Thanks again go to Aaron Miller for running the whole shindig, it's always a good time.

08th Div. Tactical Cyborg Ops

More exploration of Colors! 3D:

3D .MPO file

I took a pic with a 3DS camera of a sketch I had doodled in a notebook. Then I set it as a background and blocked out the silhouette and some tonal values. I mostly worked everything out on one layer, and then copied it over a couple times to add depth. I erased away from each layer whatever I didn't want to pop forward; in some cases, I tried using the eraser tool at low opacity to blend pieces into the background, with mixed results.

While the 3D is admittedly pretty gimmicky, it does have me thinking about spatial relationships, how to make stuff come forward or recede into the background, and that's cool.

Colors! 3D for the Nintendo 3DS

I've had the distinct opportunity to play with the Nintendo 3DS app "Colors! 3D" (available in the U.S. starting April 5th, via the Nintendo eShop), and it's quite cool. If you like to draw or paint and happen to own a Nintendo 3DS, purchasing this program is a no-brainer in my opinion.

If you have a Nintendo 3DS, you can download the .MPO file here and view it in the camera app's gallery

I'll have more to say about the program in upcoming posts as I put Colors! 3D through its paces, but all in all my experience with it has been great. I think it definitely has the potential to be considered a killer app.

Check out the.MPO file here and view the picture in living 3D! (Well, sort of 3D... More akin to a "View-Master" cartoon image, but still pretty cool!)

Developer Jens Andersson and his crew at Collectingsmiles have created something really great, and I have no doubt that their hard work will be widely appreciated.