Ranarh's Art Blog

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 ...