Ranarh's Art Blog

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 ...