Author: Matt (Page 3 of 12)

Testing my Metal

Heh. See what I did there? Ahem. But seriously, I really need to learn how to paint metal surfaces properly. Not there yet. But, hey, first post of the new year! 🙂

I gave MyPaint a spin tonight with only a little assist from Gimp.

A weapon of sorts.

A weapon of sorts.

Digital Painting in 2013!

Okay, so this is really bad since there was no plan ahead of time and no composition and no real underlying talent, but it represents a start on finally learning to do some digital painting. So there’s that. Clearly I’m starting with basically no idea what I’m doing, but I have to admit to really enjoying this particular activity. So there’s also that. I’ve dabbled in digital painting a time or two before but this is the first time I’ve ever tried it in a larger format. The version you see here is reduced considerably. I used Gimp 2.8 on Linux Mint.

Digital Death

Digital Death

I also did some Blender modeling – an eyeball. I spent more time figuring out the best render settings than I did modeling the eyeball. Boy could I use a couple of GTX 580s about now.

Blender Eyeball

Blender Eyeball

At Arm’s Length

Tonight I started trying to draw with my entire arm for really the first time ever. Before today, I had always planted the heel of my hand on the drawing surface and drawn with my fingers. I kept reading how that wasn’t the best way to go – at least not in all circumstances – but drawing with my arm seemed really uncomfortable and out of control. Well, today I watched the umpteenth video of a person with vastly superior skills drawing with his arm, so I threw in the towel and dedicated myself to learning how to do it.

I drew a lot of circles on several sheets of scratch paper, way more than would be worth posting. By the end of the evening, I had noticed two things. First, even though I was still new to the process, I was markedly more comfortable drawing with my whole arm than I had been when I first started; the “pain” of this new approach only lasted about an hour or so. Second, drawing with my arm seems to be a paper and pencil thing; it’s almost impossible to do effectively on my Intuos – at least so far.

A crop of circles

A crop of circles

One of the things I’m hoping to get out of this is the ability to draw larger. I have a tendency to draw really small and it hasn’t worked very well as I’ve been trying to do some traditional paper and pencil animating. We’ll see how it goes.

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 Matt Jordan

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑