Ranarh's Art Blog

Speedpainting based on an Al.chemy scribble. I played a bit with the channels after flipping through Exodyssey by Steambot Studios, and I like some of the effects that it produced. Also, handpaint is better for birds; I often use custom brushes, but they need tweaking anyway, so I guess I can just scribble them myself from the start...

Now for some colours. Right now I want a topological map showing the heights of the land. Green is for sealevel heights; the colours go from brighter green to yellows, ochre, browns, and the highest mountains will become grey, then white. This is standard, anyway; you might want to try other colours. I keep the outlines on a separate layer set to Multiply and lay down flat colours. I keep the landmass as a selection made from the outside of the linework, and the water on top. I roughly blend the colours with low-opacity brushstrokes, and then put several textures (rust-stained paper, acrylics paint strokes) over them to provide details. I use them on low opacity as Overlay and Soft Light layers. After that, on a new layer I brush in shadows on the lower right sides of the mountains, and use some of the texture details to put in even more mountains. I fix up the rivers with the lasso tool and add some more. I could of course texture the water as well but find it too distracting for no...

I created a new blog for my fantasy setting Genius Loci at starmakersgaze.blogspot.com Along the paintings, you can find a lot of descriptions there (its not just a visual development, there is actually quite a lot of writing involved in coming up with a world) and, hopefully soon, some of the sketches I do. this blog right here will of course stay online. The fact remains that I wouldn't know where else to put spaceships.

Originally done as an assignment for a group I run on deviantArt. 1. Sketch I quickly scribble some sketches to get the steampunk stuff down. I already know I want an older guy with the classical hat of an engine-driver, and come up with a pressured strength-enhancing arm, jumping boots, the inevitable goggles, and a lot of tools, including a pocket watch. I sketch in Painter 12 with the Real 6B Pencil on an A4-sized canvas. I usually use a different color than grey to sketch for a more lively effect. 2. Clean drawing I use Poser Pro to set up a view of the character and indicate lighting (which I will later ignore, but it inspires me for the right lighting conditions) and export the render as a png. I make a cleaner drawing over it, again in Painter. 3. Colour flats For the first colour blocking, I often use Painter, because the colour wheel beats Photoshops colour picker hands down. But here, I use a technique I learned from the youtube videos from Feng Zhu Design Sch...