Heights

Another Illustration Friday prompt.  This one took me over two weeks to complete and it's only half of what I was aiming for.  Granted, I did lose quite a few days on the Guild Wars 2 beta weekend, but I still think I was unreasonably slow on this.  I'm still learning a lot about the software, so I guess that's understandable.  It's still frustrating, though.

This piece took a few days just to come up with an idea I liked, and it only came about after talking over the ideas with a friend and then having my eyes randomly land on my shoes sitting on the floor.  I wanted a solution to the idea of heights without going for something terribly obvious, and really high high-heeled shoes seemed like a fun way to address the idea.  I also got to look up lots of shoe porn for reference photos.  The shoes I did settle on weren't quite high enough for my tastes, so I added a few inches.  I originally intended to have a pair of shoes, but the second shoe had such odd reflections of color and was so fuzzy, I just scrapped it out of frustration.  I should've spent longer on the skin, but I was eager to be done with this project and the skin was the last step, so there you go.  I also had  no idea what to do with the background, but that's par for the course.

I did learn a lot, though.  After trying to erase around the shoe and make a perfect shoe shape, I found that using the paths tool was really what I needed, since it could give me perfect lines and curves, which is really necessary for something man-made like a high-heel shoe.  I also used the paths tool on the leg, but I don't think it was quite as necessary.  Maybe it saved me some time, I don't know.  I also learned that a gaussian blur can really come in handy (i.e. the heel of the shoe).  And I finally figured out that changing your brush is a good thing.  For the longest time I've been frustrated by using the brush on anything lower than 100% opacity, because you'd get this annoying layering effect if you went over something after lifting up your brush.        So I finally experimented with the fuzzy-edged brush and found the solution to this stupid, stupid problem.  I still wanted a hard edge for the highlights on the upper part of the shoe, so I had to use the hard-edged brush and do every layer perfectly in one stroke.  I'm not sure what the solution for that is, or how to even ask the question to find out the answer.  All I can think of is using white on different levels of opacity, coloring them over the base color, saving that image as it's own file, and then pulling colors from that new image and coloring with them at 100% opacity (which is what I did with my last piece).  That seems like an overly complicated and unnecessary process, so I can only assume I'm just really stupid when it comes to digital painting.  But I already knew that.  HA!

Digital painting.

Puzzled

I've decided to start doing work based on the prompts on Illustration Friday.  I'm not actually submitting this piece, but just using the prompts as an exercise.

My first ideas were about playing with the idea of puzzles, and then specifically crossword puzzles, but I ultimately couldn't really think of an interesting image.  Then I decided I wanted to do something more about a really quizzical expression on someone's face.  Then I thought of a sort of quirked-eyebrow, beard stroking sort of image and I really liked it.  I like beard stroking in general.

I changed the eye direction from what was in the reference photo to be more thoughtful and added the hand.  I'm not sure if the hand reads is if it is really stroking the beard, or sort of floating in front of it.  The irises are also a bit too big, I think.  I think the face reads as puzzled, but not that puzzled, which I would've preferred.  This isn't the first piece I've done digitally, but it's the first I think is good enough to be put on here, so hopefully I'm getting better at it.

Digital Painting.