A Pirate's Life

Yeah, I missed a couple of weekends and haven't sorted out the sketching from two months ago yet, but I was busy. I'm here now, and ready to show one of the things I've been busy with. It's the first really finished digital piece I think I've done since November, and it took a while. I have some other stuff coming up I'll briefly mention first though.
I was working on a cover for Book 4 of Phil's TARDIS Eruditorum series, but we've both agreed it would be better suited for book 5, so I need to come up with other ideas, while still working on the #5 cover (it's a reasonably big job). I've also got this months sketches to scan in, and then I have to decide if it's a separate post from the previous two months or not (probably not, I didn't do all that much), and another speedpaint post is almost ready (I just want to do one more speedpaint for it).
Saints Row IV is out next month (probably this month by the time I post this, which means I should probably do a post about my work on the previous one before it's irrelevant. Beyond that I'm almost done with another painting class, so I'll be posting the results of that too. Remember the last one and set expectations accordingly. But now, on with this post...

You can click that to get a rather large version.  Hopefully your browser can do a half decent job of re-scaling it to fit your window.  You can enlarge the rest of the images in this post as well if you want a better look, though none of them are this large.

The story behind this one isn't terribly involved.  It's based on this stock photograph from Dingelientje-stock on DeviantArt and has been in my Favorites collection there for quite a while.  In the usual course of things I would probably have forgotten about it unless I stumbled across it while browsing my Favorites, which I do on occasion, but this one just kept popping up for some reason.  Every time I saw it I thought 'that would make a good painting' and then I'd move on.  Finally, when I was in a mood to actually do a portrait I stumbled across it again and thought 'Of course, that one!' and got started.  Really I just liked the puppy peeking out of her shirt, and in fact the initial name for this one was just Puppy Shoulder.

So I actually spent a little time sketching the layout for this one.  Not enough time apparently as it's still way off (sometimes I get it almost perfect, other times I'm way off - this is somewhere in between), but somewhere between 40 minutes and an hour.  The image on the left here is simply a quick sketch to get the very rough composition, taking about a minute, and then I filled in the detail that you can see on the right over the remaining time.

This is the blocking in process.  It's not supposed to be particularly pretty, and it really isn't.  Mostly it's just getting the rough masses and areas of colour blocked out.  Unlike my usual technique, where I keep the line art on a layer above the painting for constant reference, this time I kept it below and painted right over it (as I would with real paint), trusting the blocked image as a guide. I  didn't go quite dark enough with the shadows and her hair is the wrong colour here, but it was more important to me to identify that there at least was a shadow, and get the rough shape of her hair - the rest could be tweaked on the next pass.

Which was this one.  Still a little rough, but you can see I'm smoothing out the transitions and adding detail to her features as well as getting her hair the right color.  There's about 90 minutes or so between each of these stages, and while I would do further passes on most of the image her ear pretty much stayed at this stage all the way to the end.  Likewise I didn't really adjust the shirt after this except to add the stripes.

I had a little panic attack at around the point I finished the image on the right.  I have one at some point in any work I do that takes more than a couple of hours.  I start doubting the picture and wondering if I've just wasted my time.  Usually I reach the conclusion that even if the end result is terrible, the time will only have been wasted if I don't finish it or give it my all, and then I'll get back to it.

You can see the stripes here.  I did cheat a little with the stripes, because rather than spend the effort of making them darker as they went further into the shadow I just painted them on another layer and then used ArtRage's Multiply Blending mode to do all the hard work for me.  I did go in and tweak the result once I'd flattened the image, but still.  Despite the 'cheat' adding the stripes still took over an hour - I could have done a speedpaint in that time ;)

No cheating for her headband though, except with real paint I probably would have needed t paint the scarf white, darken the shadows, and then paint the black over it, while here I could just paint the white and grey straight over the black.  I didn't notice until this point, but firstly I realised the scarf had Skulls and Crossbones on it, and then I noticed that the skulls had hearts for eyes, which is pretty awesome.  I was tempted to not bother doing that in the painting, because who'd notice?  But then I decided it would be a really nice detail and made sure I matched it as best I could. This was also the point I decided to change the title to A Pirate's Life (Originally it was going to be A Pirate's Love, but was she the love? Or the pirate in love? And would my wife get the wrong idea?  Life it is then!).

The final panel here may look the same as the preceding one at first glance, but her hair has had an additional pass along the top and side.

These three may look almost identical except for her tattoo, but I made a number of tweaks to her face, including smoothing some of the shading, improving her eyes, changing her eyebrows, tweaking her nose, adding detail to her lips, and adjusting her cheeks.  Hard to see at this size, but fairly obvious at the size I was painting.  Those changes may be more visible in the GIF below.

The tattoo itself I'd put off until the end as I thought it would be nightmarish to do.  Turned out that other than being a little time consuming (The line art for the flowers took about an hour, and the rest about the same) it wasn't too bad, and actually quite relaxing.

This is just an image from the end of each of the 4 main passes at the painting, to give a better look at the progression.

And this is a GIF of the painting stages at the end of each session I worked on it (mostly between 1 and 2 hours a time).  20 odd hours reduced to a few seconds...

Finally, just for a bit of fun I took the painting and ran it through some adjustments and filters in Photoshop in order to change the mood.  I think the left one looks more romantic as a result, while the right one looks more dramatic and candle lit, but the real one is the one at the top there.  Maybe I'll paint something candle lit looking next... Or not.

A Collection of Pleasingly Structured Lies (№ 1)

I have depressingly little to report. I have started several pieces, but most of them are some way off from being something I can show. I scanned two months worth of sketches, but have yet to arrange them into something I can display (and if you're a regular reader you'll know that's a pretty major undertaking, which is why I decided to do it less often, but now I realise that just means I have more to do when I get around to it). I haven't done any new speed paints (though I'm hoping to do one today), but I have done some speed sculpts. Digital sculpts you understand, if it was real sculpting materials I would just be showing off a blob of Playdough.
I also started a new painting class with Paula McCarty, so there may be something to show there in a few weeks. Other than that? Not much. Nothing to show anyway. But I don't want to leave you hanging, so since I can post pretty much whatever I want on here you're going to get a little fiction.

I don't write. I am not a writer. I am a story teller though, as I suppose many people with kids are. At bedtime my son insists I tell him a "Story from your mind," whereby he picks two random things (invariably robots and something, or, when that is banned for being overused, a cat and a refrigerator), and I have to tell a story about them. I have yet to write any of these down, although some of them may be worthy of me doing so.
I had to write this down though it wasn't a story for my son, it was a story for me. I had an incomplete dream (I rarely remember dreams), and decided I had to know how it would have ended, so I wrote it down and completed it. I'll leave you to it, and hope you enjoy it, as my tale telling is rarely something I draw attention to.

Until the next time - fiction!

Quite Another Dimension

Two men sat in the sunlit room, one either side of the table. Both men were highly regarded doctors in their respective, but unconnected fields.

"So," said one, "You claim you have succeeded in your attempts at trans-dimensional travel?"

"Claim?" came the others response, "Yes, I suppose 'claim' is fair, as I have no physical evidence that my experiments were successful."

He elaborated, "It is not my physical being that travels you see? Such a thing would be a physical impossibility, and in some dimensions a liability. No, it is not my person that travels, rather my consciousness is transferred into my closest biological equivalent in whichever dimension I arrive in."

The other doctor looked interested, "Closest biological equivalent implies you do not always transfer into your physical duplicate. Have you transferred into others?"

"Quite so. There are an infinite number of dimensions you see? Thus an infinite variety of alternates, only a small number of whom are my biological duplicate. There are a few billion versions of me out there, a few trillion at most. In the vast majority of accessible dimensions the closest thing I can transfer into is very little like myself. I have been a potential sibling a few times, some of them women; I transferred into my father's duplicate twice, once my great-great grandfather, and on one memorable occasion a snake."

"A snake?" the other cried in disbelief, "but how could you possibly operate the controls to return?"

"Well, I didn't need to. The machine works on a timed mechanism. As I said my physical being does not travel, and this goes for any other physical object as well, so taking controls to bring myself back would be quite impossible, and, as you have now realized, quite inconvenient.

I said earlier that this lack of physical transfer avoided some liabilities, one of them being that I may appear in a dimension where the natives breathe a mix of nitrogen and methane. Quite inconvenient to arrive as an oxygen breather in such an environment. But the problem is avoided, as is the problem of operating controls. the machine brings me back after a preset time, with my physical form being seated in a chair within the machine while I am gone."

"In the machine... unconscious?" The other doctor seemed to find this possibility even less believable than the snake, the incredulity evident in his tone.

"From your tone you will be happy to know that I am not unconscious during my travels, no. My physical form must have quite an interesting adventure of its own I gather, as the consciousness of whoever I posses in the other dimension must go somewhere, and so it temporarily occupies my form here. I discovered this the hard way when I returned to find some considerable damage in the lab. I couldn't afford to risk the machine becoming inoperable while I was out of my body, so I installed timed restraints. They lock when I leave, and release when I return. Quite simple really."

The other seemed impressed by this solution to the travelers problem, and made a note on the pad before him, one of many he had written in the last few minutes. He looked up again.

"Tell me Doctor, have you done this often? Does it hurt? And when will you do it again, I would be most interested in observing."

"Why yes, I have done it several times, although after the partial destruction of my lab I have done it less often, and to a more strict schedule. I had to change locations after that as well; the others in my building were quite disturbed by the violence of my dimensional alternate on that occasion, as well you might gather.

It is interesting you ask about pain. early on in the experiments I had very little, just a slight discomfort, but recently I have returned with a level of quite extraordinary pain. I had not thought to wonder why this would be until now, but it did seem to start when I moved labs.

As to when I am trying this again, I believe I have scheduled time in the machine tomorrow morning at about ten o'clock, if you would be free to attend then?"

The other stopped his now relentless scribbling and looked up once more.

"Ten AM? Yes, that sounds perfect. If you'll excuse me though I have other matters to attend to now, and I'm sure you could do with some rest before tomorrow."

He reached over to the intercom on his desk and pressed the switch,

"Orderly, would you escort Doctor Frederick back to his room please?"

After they had left he turned to a third figure, shrouded in shadows and obscured by sunlit dust motes in the corner of the room.

"I believe I'll see him in the morning for his scheduled cranial electro-therapy at ten. I'm afraid he's still quite delusional, although seemingly quite harmless. I doubt we'll have a repeat of his performance at the Davidson Institute here. Are you agreeable to the continuation of his treatment?"

"Yes," said the woman, the Traveller's wife, "He clearly needs all the help we can give him."