Ranarh's Art Blog

I started this early in January when I fiddled with Painter 12's mirror feature to create a portrait and then added some fractals and lizards for interest. There are about five hours of work in this; I meant it to be only a speedpainting but now find that I may have taken it a little beyond that.

I decide against my sloppy handwritten names and get a nice free font from dafont.com to type everything (of course handwritten text is much nicer, but takes a lot more time). I use no more than three font sizes and rotate the names when needed, but keep them straight; curved text will be reserved for landmarks. If a name really doesn't fit, I put it outside, either overlapping the border when there is a lot of room, or connect the name and land with a line. This requires a little shuffling to make sure everything is readable. I now have three maps on poster format. The prices for having these printed are murder, so I divide them into nine pieces each, add the topology as grayscale, print them at home and tape them together, then hang them up the wall. From now on every time I pass my maps, I will add a little something; a mountain here, a capital there. I have often found that taking my time will give better results, and I expect this step of naming everything to take just u...

The Light tutorial series by Richard Yot has proven invaluable to me. Richard explains natural light and artificial light, lighting conditions and how they can be used to effect in art. He clears up thinking mistakes in stereotypical lighting, and uses wonderful pictures for examples. Everything is easy to understand. I strongly suggest to read this tutorial, and then go paint som wonderful light!