Wednesday 21 January 2009

Hannibal- Phase 2


Phase 2 of my Hannibal picture. Without getting too detailed I done a full black and white value painting. I would have liked to have rendered it to a higher degree but time is against me and today will see him getting some colour applied.
I made some structural changes through the painting process most notably to his head. My photo reference was relatively low quality so I put my hand my pocket and paid to download the movie Silence of the Lambs from iTunes and was able to get some good screen grabs, which has really helped. Still toying with the idea of throwing some 'props' into the picture, so dont be surprised if you see a bottle of Chianti in the final.

Tuesday 20 January 2009

Everything has to start somewhere

Well, its the final week of the Seiler course on Schoolism. After doing a few studies of various celebs I've decided to go with Anthony Hopkins for my finished piece. Here are my modest beginnings and the initial sketch I penned out for the painting I'm currently working on. I should have a black and white 'value' painting up in a few days and god willing the final colour painting by the end of the week.

I'm using photo reference of Hopkins from the film Silence of the Lambs and putting him in more comfortable surroundings and narrating from a child's nursery rhyme book, quite a disturbing thought I'm sure you'll agree

Saturday 10 January 2009

Initial draft Ideas - Final Assignment



Here are two ideas I was working on towards my final assignment for the Schoolism course that didn't quite make it past the draft stage. Barack Obama and Anthony Hopkins, I wonder how many times we'll hear their two names together in the future, not too many I suspect.
I'm still keen on doing a Hopkins/Hannibal painting but looking at it from other angles. As for Obama its all a bit too cliche at the moment, though I have a feeling we'll all be drawing him a lot more over the coming years. Are caricaturists the only people who will be sad when Bush steps down?

Sunday 4 January 2009

Bruce Willis Caricature - Week 5, painting techniques


For my Bruce Willis caricature I wanted to work from photo reference which portrayed him as the action man we've come to know him as. So what better than a screen shot straight from Die Hard 4. I loved the lighting in this scene and enjoyed painting it. My process for this, the first full colour caricature in the course, was to do a detailed black and white value painting. I spent the majority of the overall time working on this stage. Next I painted a layer in colorize mode blocking in with my split compilation palette before returning to normal mode and detailing the piece in a direct painting style. After a bit of horizontal flipping and a few structural changes I was now happy he no longer looked like a distorted potato and pleased with the finished result.