Computer

 I made a computer! I think its lacking in detail, but the over all shape seems nice. My main goal was to figure out that anaimated screen effect in Sketchfab.

3d computer - Sketchfab Weekly - 11 Mar'23 by BrushDip on Sketchfab

Pumpkin pie

Pie!

Pumpkin Pie - Sketchfab Weekly - 04 March 2023 by BrushDip on Sketchfab

Old blue box

This weeks sketchfab was a of a box, so I made the old blue box from ragnarok online. 
"A mysterious blue box that seems to hold something inside, but you'll have to open it to find out."
It's weird how the sprites for that game and the item illustrations differ pretty wildly. 

Old Blue Box - Sketchfab Weekly - 19 Feb'23 by BrushDip on Sketchfab

After swimming on fridays I like to paint in some of the local coffee shops. 

The portrait from last week, done in gouache. There's something off about this but i can quite figure it out. 

Scotch Egg

Snack Scotch egg- Sketchfab Weekly - 11 Feb'23 by BrushDip on Sketchfab

A scotch egg and some tomatos. I think it makes a healthy snack. I didnt use a normal map and used hight instead, the normals were causing me some issues. The breading was just a simple dirt hight map it looks kind of cumby...

Karakasa card and Portraits

 

Karakasa card by BrushDip on Sketchfab

The Karakasa card, from Ragnarok Online. It was fun, I may try to remake more cards like this. 

More portraits in oil. One of the issues I seem to have is making the eyes too small, which ends up with a small looking face. But this also comes down to lack of planning and incorrect drawing.
Back to the black and white.

Puzzle, portraits and plein air

Puzzle - Sketchfab Weekly - 9 Jan'23 by BrushDip on Sketchfab

My first portrait of the new year. Used a reduced pallet without any blues. 

 

Plein air Reading town fountain 26/12/22

Plein air of Reading Abby, 24/12/22

Portrait progression of 3 hours. 

Portrait progression of 3 hours

I was hoping a while back that if I record my portrait painting in steps Ill be able to see where I go wrong and I think it helps. I've gotten into the method of background first, than working on the other elements, leaving the eyes and features untill last. I think I need to focus on the begining sketch more than I have been. Perhaps return to black and white painting for a year untill I've really got it down. 

Fan art - Ragnrok Online - Wild Rider

Fan art - Ragnrok Online - Wild Rider by BrushDip on Sketchfab

Lightning - Sketchfab Weekly - 26 Dec'22

 

Lightning - Sketchfab Weekly - 26 Dec'22 by BrushDip on Sketchfab

Zap zap.

Christmas Gift - a turret in a box

Gift - Sketchfab Weekly - 19 Dec'22 by BrushDip on Sketchfab

I had this set up so it shot confetti, but for some reason on import all the confetti just hung in the air in a big cloud. Im not entirely sure what I did wrong, but I didnt want to spend too long faffing. 

I think this would have looked nicer if i used roughness and metalness maps, i used specular and difuse instead.  

Im quite enjoying putting together these small challenges. Sketchfab is more fun then just static renders. 

Flower - Armeria maritima

Flower - Armeria maritima by BrushDip on Sketchfab

This uses a 512 and a 256 texture, both with alpha channels. I wanted to try and make something a bit different from what I usually make. I think the rocks came out looking like potatoes. 

Spirited away - Restaurant

Some renders of how the scene looks at the moment just in Max. I tried making the roof tiles on a single plane, but they didnt look very good. So im just using instanced tiles. The whole scene at the moment is 60k tri, 20k just being the roof tiles. 

Another bowl of food, this time I just baked all the food down onto a 1028. The high poly was somewhat in the millions because of all the rice. Maybe I should have just make a repeatable rice texture, and added the other food bits on top. 

I could get the tri count down on this by quite a lot, but Im leaving it high for the moment. Also the texture was just a default texture from Substance. But it think it looks okay. The rope parts around the base of the seat need to be a bit thicker on the normal map. And the secular maps aren't there. The rope on the ledges could look more like rope, the wood also is basic.

The stained glass doors. These dont have an opacity map on them.The wood also looks pretty flat, so I'll come back and edit them at some point. 

The counter, each piece is two tiles side. There will be 7 of them, so the roughness may make it obvious its duplicated, or it may not. Ill add some grungy decals over it to break it up a bit.
Substance painter is pretty good for baking normals from high models made in max and the AO maps to.

I really disliked my first attempt at some kind of meat(?) bowl, the second attempt looks a good chunk better.

 

My first attempt at lanterns were pretty sad, this is the second. The handle needs to be re-done as its a bit too low for what I'd like. Ill need to figure out how to make them glow nicely with an emission map. 

Pots and pans on a shelf.

I'm trying to do something small each day in the hope that it will build up to something more complete. Even if they're rough and quick, its more than nothing. Also it's quite good to have something that needs to be improved nagging at you. 

Portraits and life drawing

 I've been attending some portraiture sessions recently. Sittings are about 3 hours, so I've been trying to focus on getting better with oil painting and focusing on tones. So I've been working in greyscale with titanium white and ivory black, which lets me focus more on tone and not get distracted by colour so much. My thought is to get my tones and my manipulation of oil right, before jumping into a full pallet. Ill probably use a limited pallet next portrait session, and see how that goes.   

Oil. 8"x10" panel. Three hours.

Oil. 8"x10" panel. Three hours.

I tape off the sides, mostly so I dont get paint over myself walking home as I dont have one of those panel carriers. But it also looks quite nice to have clean edges.

Charcoal. A3. One hour, thirty minutes.

Gouache. A4. One hour, thirty minutes.

For most of October most of my figure drawing has been one in inks. I've been using 3 water pens with different mixes of ink and water. Starting with the thinnest and finishing with thick ink. 

Ink. A3. Thirty minutes.

Some older gouache life drawing from this year. I have quite a lot of old drawings from the past 3-4 years, but I dont think they'll ever see the light of day. I should keep things current, instead of looking to far in the past.

Gouache. A4. Thirty minutes.

Gouache. A4. Twenty seven? minutes.

Street draw

 The street draw exhibition was on a few weeks ago. One of my paintings sold, and the other won a runner up prize. Talking with some of the people who put the event together the runner up picture showed the spirit of the event, which was raising money for the homeless.  There was some really nice pieces on show, hopefully it all went well.

"Coffee gets cold fast" - On the day I bought a coffee and sat outside in the rain, it was cold in minutes. The staff of the cafe gave this man a coffee after I started drawing, I couldn't help but think the same for him.

The prize was a Winsor & Newton Cotman water colour set. I rarely enter any art events, but they're quite fun, so I'll keep an eye out for more in the future. 

Maenport beach, and other paintings.

I walked to Maenporth today to spend some time painting the beach in gouache. 

Here's some other paintings I did over the summer. This artichoke had an really vibrant purple colour, i couldnt match it, but I think I got close enough, 

I spent a while painting in oils, trying to get generally better at wet-on-wet. I think I just need to do more of it and I will get it eventually. A few of these have been bought by people who have seen me painting.

Painting and figure drawing

 I took part in the Falmouth Street Draw this year, I started by painting this man in the rain on one of the wettest days of the week. I tried using some masking fluid for the rain, but it didnt turn out that nicely. I think I should have set out a bunch of small thin lines, then just erased what was needed. 

The next day I got to paint some boats in the morning. Although what I was paining was quite grey, I was able to get some sunlight in there. 

I think before that there was a Show girl themed life drawing session. So I took part in that too, poses ranged from 1 min to 15. I decided to work purely in inks, with three water pens filled with different ink consistencies. 

Beach background

 

A background for an animation I made for work, a few characters were added,  washing  rocks and removing rubbish from the sea.

Oil thumbnails - beaches

 Some studies of beaches from Ted Dyer's book, Paintings of Tresco. And a painting of a nice cloud formation I saw while on a walk with my wife. I like how the stormy weather created these layered bands of clouds, with a single white tip against a some what clear sky. These are quite small, roughly 12cm x 7cm.

D&D - 22/9/22

 

On entering a ancient dwarf underground settlement, our elf barbarian finds frost zombies.  

Snow leopards

 I've been doing small studies for a while of various subjects per day. As there's a snow leopard in the D&D group I play, made sense to doodle a few from search engine images. I have been looking through an atlas of animal anatomy, but have not got to the feline section yet. 

D&D - 19/9/22

 

Last weeks D&D resulted in our necromancer losing his two dwarf skeletons after suggesting using them to touch a trapped book.