Ranarh's Art Blog

I did this quick study while creating a tutorial on water reflections for deviantArt. It is based on a photo I took during a visit to Hagenbeck zoo in Hamburg, it is the elephant region of the zoo which is beautifully designed to resemble southeast asian ruins (they are Indian elephants).

I finally finished my roleplaying characters from the Dark Eye setting. The twelve of them will be subitted to deviantart over the next few days. I used Painter 12's real Watercolor to paint them. I was very different from my paintings with physical watercolours because I work very wet, and I missed the accidents that happen with that medium, but the digital brushes were okay too.

I've been working for the past few issues of the Cthuloide Welten , the Call of Cthulhu magazine by German games publisher Pegasus Spiele. Now, the last issue #21 has been released, featuring my works in several articles. These are some of my favourites, and I have to say that especially the monsters came over nicely in the print. I leraned a lot about working with print media while illustrating for the magazine and met nice people, and I thank editor Frank Heller for giving me this opportunity.

Some of the commission I created since I put up my Fiverr account. Fiverr is a platform where people do things for five dollars - strange things, useful things, in my case funny things: "I will create freaky chimeras" for five dollars. That spaghetti thing for example is the infamous Flying Spaghetti Monster - I'm still waiting if the client will actually have it tattooed :)

I've been sick for days now, and what I hate most is the lack of concentration. I can do almost nothing, although I could really need some small feeling of success. At last I sat down and doodled a little with Painter's mirror feature. I like headdresses and facial paint.

Painted over a drawing I made in my sketchbook, using ArtRage, Photoshop, and Painter. I also just finished drawing all my rpg characters of the Dark Eye setting - well, the lineart at least, and I hope to find the time to paint them soon. Because there's a timeline to be followed in the world, I have twelve (!) characters - sometimes the adventures overlap, and then you need more people to them all, and there are so many concepts that you could try out... and then you have twelve characters that get played once a year each. Good thing I have a certified super memory ;) so I don't forget how.

Just doodling a little, I came up with a ruined city, a mysterious arch, and some people hiking off. I don't often jump into picturs like this, but I have taken a liking to painting with just one brush and all palettes off recently. I just finished playing F.E.A.R. 2 - there are pupils who are experimented on, and one of them has my name! That was creepy...

Eye study, done in Painter, touch-ups in Photoshop. I had drawn the sketch last year, but liked the idea enough to pull it out again to train painting eyes. Especially the corner and lashes always caused me trouble, but I think I'm on the right track to solve that. I like putting many eyes on characters a lot. I think that comes from the myth of the third eye with wich you can see the otherworld; sometimes I have trouble drawing people with just two eyes :)

A group on deviantArt called weekly environments suggested the subject "volcanic planet" and I made these. I used both Painter and Photoshop for them.

As promised, updates on the progress of the TDE rpg supplement for Amazons. These are two of them practicing - I got the idea from a wrinkled old asian guy teaching some longnose tai chi, and it fitted just fine.

Based on a photograph. I allowed myself a small amount of abstraction, leaving some paper textures visible. I think I did okay - this kind of sunlight is actually more difficult than directed artificial light. It just hits everywhere, and you have to use subtle contrasts to make the shapes clear.

I made a cover for a fanmade rpg supplement for The Dark Eye last week. It deals with the mage's guild convention, a septennial meeting of the most eloquent ages (or those who frighten most other mages). I've had some time-pressure troubles with the publishing guys, but they're solved now and I'm happy to have a supplement finished. There's also an interior illustration made by me. (You can download it here: webzine.nandurion.de )

I just finished playing Mass Effect 1 and 2 and dug out my planet creation tutorials because of it. The planetary trips in the first game were set on beautiful locations, with asteroids raining down, lava lakes, moons covered in glaciers, and pollen-infested greenhouse worlds. I love those views and set out to create some myself. I know these are a bit cheap, but I'll try to create some more, and views on the planets themselves, too. The four small ones are just scribbles, about fifteen minutes each, the bigger one took me two and a half hours - I'm still trying to get the hang as to how detailed the textures have to be. Mass Effect is a sci-fi roleplaying game meant for a trilogy, the first two are out, and I have to say that I found the depth of the world quite intriguing. The alien races have an appropriate culture, the tech is advanced but believable, the squad you get together to pull off your insane plan to save the galaxy is really nice, too. The second I liked even b...

I've long admired the techniques of Android Jones' colourful abstract portraits and tried something like it myself. I don't yet have Painter 12, which has mirror features - those would have been handy - but did this in Painter 11 with a load of tools I don't always use. I spent the entire morning creating new papers, patterns, and brush features to use - papers are really great to get texture in! I had actually wanted to show a progress .gif of a character painting I did in this style, but it turned out to be several MBs big, so I can't put it here :( You can still see the picture in my deviantart gallery. I used a lot of different brushes here. I'v been thinking about sharing some of my brushes, or brush settings I found useful; I'm not sure if it isn't the particular way I handle them though, that gets me my results. Any thoughts?

I got involved with a fan project for The Dark Eye that deals with the Amazons.  (DSA © Ulisses Spiele ) They are something between a religious order of the war goddess Rondra and a small state spread over several castles. I signed up to do the illustrations, while maps get done by someone else and the initiating author being Schattenkatze (quite important in the orkenspalter.de forum ;)). We're trying to get the Amazons out of their corner of being a sparsely clad band of furious women. If all goes well, the Amazon Gamer's Supplement will become a website, but don't expect anything soon. I'll update as it grows.

A landscape technique practice based on the environment workshop by Annis Naeem in the ImagineFX. It's not as good as his - it's very messy and not very clear to read - , but I learned a lot about using the lasso tool to my advantage. The picture is based on on of the landscape sketches I made a few days earlier.

My new wallpaper, explained in a some working steps. I created the painting in Corel Painter 11; it took maybe 15 to 20 hours, spread over seven weeks. First, I create this incredibly detailed sketch ;). I had done a scribble in my sketchbook before that I thought to have a more gloomy atmosphere, but finally decided colourful would be better. I fiddle with Blender until I find a viewing angle for the planet and rings I can live with. Blender even offers to put in stars. Very meager, but maybe they'll provide ideas where to put real stars later, so I render them too. Prior to working on the rings, I create a nozzle in Painter for the asteroids. Several sizes and shapes are needed, and I will only use this for the basics but paint the closer asteroids individually. I make sure I have the right resolution, then enlarge it to a workable size, in this case, 4000x3000 px. I lay down several passes of colours until I find a combination I like with strongly textured brushes ...

It's a good idea to just get out some ideas. When the morning had started with a blue feeling, I enjoyed how easily these sketches came down. Maybe some of these are worth pursuing to a full painting as well. I really like doing landscapes; I think it's rewarding exercise (and much more forgiving than portrait art). 

A pirate bay I sketched out a few weeks ago. I had watched loads of video tutorials of the Feng Zhou Design School from youtube and wanted to try the techniques.

Some of my pictures recently appeared in the online magazine Emerging Visions . It's subject is mostly surreal art, and the pictures are beautifully combined with poetry. Take a look and enjoy!

Study painting of a fashion model. Idiot that I am, I choose a girl that was made up like a doll and halfway through started wondering why the painting wouldn't look like a human... I gave it a washed out look, and I think it's only half as creepy now than it was. All done in Painter.

Concept of a cybernetically enhanced agent, complete with sensory upgrade and harpoon gun; I was actually thinking about centaur concepts then. I've recently finished reading Advanced Painter Techniques by Don Seegmiller. I think it is quite a useful book; I thought I could handle Painter rather well by now but the book shows some of the often overlooked features in action, like fractal patterns for water reflections, or locking the layers I don't want to paint on (not so overlooked maybe, but I never thought of that before). Nice and easily understandable, if a bit repetetive at times (but I'm a bad judge here, I don't like being told things twice in any case). So, if you are new to Painter, it's a useful book to have.

My second guest gift sculpture. This is Ahmet - called that because of the fez, of course ("I wear a fez now. Fezes are cool." :D). As before, made of Keramiplast; wooden base with a fiberglass stick, a custom made tassel, and two snail houses, all painted with acrylic paint. The hula hoops are glow-in-the-dark sticks, things we had a lot of fun with on New Year' Eve (try putting them inside balloons).

Family members had been asking for a while for some roleplay experience with us. So on a visit, we quickly made some characters and went after some thieves, and possibly an ancient monster.... that's next session ;) I took the opportunity to depict our characters in brown and white chalks. I've always loved the look of these drawings. You almost can't tell they were done in Painter and not on paper (the new real brushes are so awesome!).

I had been to town in the early evening one day and saw a guy lean next to the entrance of his snack bar just like that. I'm rather sure he wasn't called Kolya, but that's the name I read out of the neon sign ;) Some steps: First, I set up the lighting and general colour scheme; added more details with custom textured brushes, refining the lighting from the shops and fleshing out the other aliens; finally made the neon signs with either the Glow Brush or by copying, softening, and setting to screen layer mode. I also addes serval layers to correct the colour, textures for the walls and windows and finally threw out the sketch layer.

I frequently visit a toy shop (I looove toy shops, I wish I had time to play all those things), and my fiancè said, "why not take some street chalks along, you'll probably do something nice with it". And since flattery goes a long way with me ;) I took them and attacked my mother's terrace with it. First a fish, then a portrait of my sister. Apparently, it looks like her. Must be the smirk.

If you are interested in following my other artistic endeavours, I also have these accounts: Ranarh on deviantart – my main account. The place I publish my recent works, as well as the other stuff the platform offers, like news articles. Ranarh on conceptart.org – I'm not that active there, but I take part in the Character Of The Week contests every now and then, and sometimes open up wip threads. Ranarh on cgsociety.org – about the same... I haven't had much time to network there. Ranarh on Elfwood – just a little account for the fun of it. Not particularly recent since updates take so long. So you see, finding a "Ranarh" is an almost safe bet it's me ;) Except in the Imaginefx forums, where I go by Aeon. I'm also open to suggestions which other platforms to join.

I was off to a family visit and made a sculpture as a gift - say hi to Ernö. Obviously inspired by owls, but not quite one himself; ceramic modeling clay, dove dunes and acrylic paint. Ernö Rubik is the guy who invented Rubik's cube (obviously). The professor of architecture came up with it to teach 3D thinking to his students. I haven't solved mine yet. My second sculpture took residence in my mother's garden. Fiete the Sixteenth fishes birds - if that makes any sense. Fiete (pronounce vy-teh) is a northern German name and fitted his fisherman's appearnace just fine, and he got his royal descendance when my fiancé noticed Fiete's resemblance with a certain hoverchair-riding Dominar. Sorry for the bad picture.

Michael Ende is definitely one of my favourite authors. His fantastic creativity and poetic storytelling, with a deep philosophical content that's easy to understand even by small children the way he tells it - it's marvelous. A friend gave me Momo a while ago and I read The Neverending Story again; I can only advise fantasy artists to do the same. Where Lord of the Rings is epic and heroic like the sagas of old, The Neverending Story is amazing in its new and previously unseen ideas. This is Xayide, the evil witch that tries to turn Bastian to her will. Her description just screamed for an illustration: She has bright red hair in a curious hairdo, marble skin, and is clad in purple; one of her long-lashed eyes is red, the other green; she sits in her carriage, made of coral, and blows rainbow-coloured smoke from a pipe with the shape of a snake's head. Done in Painter 11.

I'm not sleepy anymore after getting up. I read recently that sleeping cycles are approx. 90 minutes long, and if you sleep a multiple of 90 minutes, you are always waking up in a light sleep phase. So far, that works fine for me; I'm as alert as a rodent all day long :) Or maybe yoga has something to do with it. I also found that there's a club for people like me: delta-t is a club for all who like to sleep in and get up late, and their social issues. Seriously, have you tried getting an appointment with practically anyone after ten o'clock? Or telling your parents that since you're freelancing, getting up with the birds is a waste of time and concentration, and your clients overseas couldn't care less anyway? What's more. I made this nice new notebook for the plot of my graphic novel. I even got a gold pen to write in it, but oh no! It works like shit. The ink grows to twice its size when on the paper, stupid expensive thing; I wanted an Edding - those...

I used Apophysis 2.09 for the fractal flames and Painter's Pattern Chalk for the fairy's dress. Ever since I had seen a workshop by Android Jones about abstract painting, I had wanted to try it myself. I had started this several weeks ago, but it had a long pause; then Painter 11 had one of those pictures in its opening dialogue, and I decided to finally finish it. Getting shapes out of Apophysis on purpose isn't that easy...

You know how inspiration goes - not in any way you could explain later ;) I was flipping through the latest ImagineFX when it suddenly struck me while looking at a small picture. I created this pelty fella with the Artist's Oils brushes from Painter. I could tell from his reaction that this rodent won't be one of my sweetheart's favourites ;)