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...

I've recently discovered the sketching software Al.chemy for myself. Sometimes I paint on the base of a collage of plenty of gradients, structures, and textures, then draw a sketch on top and develop a painting from it, but Al.chemy can do all that in a much more random way, plus nice recording functions. Here are some of the sketches I created with Al.chemy; the cityscape has had a little touch-up in Photoshop. Al.chemy is an open source software and it's free to use. You can download it on http://al.chemy.org/

The lizard people of Kitas are called garren, or singular gar. Don't be irritated by the race template, they normally wear clothes. Their long tail is flexible, if clumsy, and can be used as a weapon, mostly they drag it on the ground. Smaller body parts like the tail or fingers can be grown back, although it takes several months. Garren can have practically any colour and pattern; they can change it by eating certain foods, and after a little while they change in appearance. The patterns are never quite certain. The crest is covered in soft thin scales and flexible between stabilizing spikes. Garren have quick reflexes and lots of stamina; since they are also cold-blooded, they prefer the southern region and are most common in northern Lozir, but can be found anywhere. Psychologically, garren are impulsive and usually the first to act. They tend towards polarized views; because of the trouble the combination can get them in garren are often found in voice houses getting counsel b...

I think of Genius Loci as a world of its own and not a sibling to earth - different but the same - an especially not in any medieval terms, like cold dark castles, muddy streets, and dirty people, but not in unproblematic high fantasy terms either. The peoples of the setting are the classical races - there are humans and elves, dwarves and lizard people -  but I also invented some races that have not appeared elsewhere, and the "classics" are a little different, as are the relations between them. I am often bored with stereotypes and try to avoid them in my own creations. For example, elves and dwarves are not at odds, but in fact friendly towards each other since both are long-lived; elves are not superior. There are other creatures that take the place of the traditionally mysterious elves; the elves themselves are very down-to-earth, because I am bored with the overly powerful, overly magical, overly beautiful guys you meet in every fantasy forest. Many of the creatures wi...