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This is just one of my not-so-mysterious "visions" that my fine art instructors warned me might dry up someday. (HAH!) It is no doubt inspired by artwork by The Dark One, and his centaurian warrior Klor from the Animal Mystic comic book. (Get it, it rocks.)
Pencil, paper, ink; Adobe Photoshop 3&4, Kai's Power Tools 2&3, Fractal Design Painter 4&5
SKY: This is a 'Shop 5 custom gradient from bright yellow to
orange, red, purple, and blue. The rays of the sun are created on another
layer. First, I took the bright yellow and drew squiggles around the
sun's center with a pencil. I put orange squiggles in between them,
also. Then a radial blur with maximum zoom setting a couple of times
blurred the rays out nicely. Note that blurring will make the rays
more transparent with each application (if you're using a separate layer),
so you can punch up the colours with the pencil in between applications.
There is another set of blurred rays on a higher layer, over
the centaur's legs. (Note: When using the radial blur, it will insist
on centering itself in the center of whatever you have selected. If
you select a circular area that goes off the edge of the page, it'll screw
up your center. You can move the center of the blur by grabbing it
and sliding it around in the preview window... but you can't see exactly
where you're putting it!)
CLOUDS: These were painted in FDP 5. First, I wanted to have the clouds on a separate layer, so I drew them in a separate layer in 'Shop, using a violet-red pencil. (FDP doesn't like painting on empty floaters.) First I used pastels to block in the violet-red midtones, gold highlights and darker blue/purple shadows of the clouds. Then I used the frosty water and plain water to blur and blend the colours together.
GROUND: This is a conglomeration of brown pencil lines and fills, noise, 'Shop's Lighting Effects, more noise, and who-knows-what. Luckily, I wanted the background to be out of focus.
LEDGE: The cliff ledge that the centaur is standing on... Um, even I don't know exactly how I got this to work. It's made of two layers, one is purple pencil lines, at about 20% opacity and hard light (?) blending; over top of another attempt at a cliff painted with disolving airbrush strokes. At any rate, some weird magic combination of these two layers managed to give me a cliff. :) Thank goodness.
This, of course, was the old inked-in pencil sketch scanned
in trick. This time, however, instead of using the sketch layer to
select pieces of the work, I drew my own friskets over it. More like
a real airbrush artist. I saved each piece, too, so there were more
channels than there were layers! First, I selected the outside of the
figure sketch, inverted it, and filled it with white, so I could paint the
figure on it's own layer.
I began with the mane and tail, because I knew the hair would
give me the most trouble. It is airbrushed in strong brown and gold
streaks over the basic shading.
The skin tones are underpainted with purple shadows and gold
highlights, with a golden brown body colour. The war paint was placed
on top, in colour mode to preserve the shading of the contours.
Everything else is painted with close attention to detail, up
to 300% zoom; the spear tip, the feathers and fur and tail and stone and
bow and crown and jewels.... There's also a few helpings of KPT's Sharpen
Intensity, curve and variations adjustments.
This work is very strong in colour; which isn't characteristic of me -- I tend to see in subtle shades. But hey... I kinda like it. It even printed out rather well, despite the out of gamut reds. Wow. :)
copyright: ©1997 All rights reserved. You may download this image for viewing on your computer. You may NOT print it, upload it anywhere, use it for a commercial or non-commercial illustration or companion piece, place it (or a link to it) on your web page, without requesting and obtaining PRIOR permission from the artist. For contact details, click here.
price list: This image is NOT available as a print quite yet, but it will be soon.
| Image Size | Frame | Mat | Cost | Shipping | TOTAL |
7 x 7.5" |
8 x 10 black |
black |
$40.00 |
$5.00 |
$45.00 |