Official OT-Creativity Thread 2

[ptoing]

Indeed, Thrustburst is clean, but some heuristics algos think it is a worm or trojan.

[Dennis]

Thanks to everyone who responded to the stroke practice question and for sharing your thoughts on that.
-
I've had virus scanners report false alarms sometimes as well, even on .exe files built by myself but only after I had used some executable packer/encrypter like upx. Maybe the antivirus software thinks it's malicious because it detects some code in the packed executable which unpacks other code into memory and runs it from there (which I can see could be seen as a potential threat especially in the case the antivirus software is incapable of unpacking the code itself and of analyzing that new unpacked code instead).

[HughSpectrum]

I didn't want to completely center the picture on the "top" but I did eventually find it beneficial to pan it just a little bit (and I made it "widescreen" since this will be landscape and I didn't think about my canvas size when making a new file).  I instead tried to balance out the picture by toning down the sunlight and it hitting the top.



I want to start making the on-paper version of this soon, though.  I'll apply any future suggestions in an improvised and on the fly manner.

[Indigo]

sketched out a nightmarish creature... time for sleep now...

[malkomk]

Made this with Grafx2 + my mouse. Would like some critique, especially on the proportions & anatomy.



EDIT: I'm aware that the legs are too short & the top body is too long. I'd correct it, but I'm feeling too lazy right now.  

[Batzy]

indigo was this your ref: http://www.characterdesigns.com/bandaid/content/artists/136/155/Executioner.jpg x'D nah... only some similarities.. tho pretty similar design

[Ai]

Made this with Grafx2 + my mouse. Would like some critique, especially on the proportions & anatomy.

Here's a crit: When trying to learn the basics, use tools that are more effective than 'a bar of soap'.
Not to put too fine a point on it, if you are trying to learn basics like proportion and anatomy, you ought to be working with tools that let you draw effectively and quickly, so you can make, spot, and fix mistakes rapidly. If those tools != a tablet + paint program, then it's pencil and paper. A mouse, quite simply, is not a drawing tool.

[Atnas]

Some avatar attempts. The first one is haha serious lumberjack and didn't look like me. The second was too sassy. The third was just right! c:

[Batzy]

huzzah... i never ever haven't liked sketching but recently i've been trying to skill up mah general art in order to become better with art overall 
so these may look like their done by a 8 year old kid??? damn i suck 



cheers.... 

[st0ven]

some nice pieces since ive last checked

Ive been doodling this off n on for a couple weeks, but admittedly way more off than on. i think i like where its at for what it is so i thought id share it.

[Mathias]

Steve, you make me wanna paint!

nice little WIP!

His lower robe has some very airy gradation/blurring, you just using softer brushes there? Cool job on the clothing material overall! Natural looking.

[pistachio]

Damn st0ven, that's one sexy painting. Better than I can do. My only problem is that the face seems a bit... Out of character. I'm thinking the head should be tilted upwards more, perhaps to represent meditation, and the face should reflect that. The eyes could be closed as well. And maybe toss in a few leaves in a spiraling breeze to add to the point? Can't wait to see it colored (if you're going to color it at all).

On the topic of digital paintings, here's something I recently doodled out. Was a bit confusing at times. I'm still used to pixels.

[Dennis]

cheap watercolor on cheap printer paper applied with a cheap brush, scanned with an ancient re-branded mustek scanner with a hacky Windows 2000 driver running in a 32bit Windows XP virtual machine under a 64bit Windows 7 Ultimate host

[Ryumaru]

All the crappy didn't stop it from being a nice painting. :]

[Dennis]

Thank you Ryumaru.

edit/append:
Another watercolor painting with a little bit of opaque white here and there. Same old subject. Is my mind trying to tell me something by thinking about the same stuff all the time?

[Mathias]

When my thoughts default to the same thing over and over I get pissed off, feeling uncreative. Many popular artists have recurring motifs in their art, which I think leads to increasing their "identity" or "style", as an artist, but for my own work I try to avoid it.

Love the second forest scene there. Explore it some more. Paint some views from inside looking out, instead of outside looking in. Just a random idea. Less outlines I'd recommend; rely more on lighting conveying shapes/forms. And keep up the crazy color, dude!

[Dennis]

Thank you for that comment and for the suggestion to add some variation and a different point of view. I'll see what I can do (although now it's starting to feel like an obligation which makes the thought of swinging the brush somehow less enjoyable/desirable; I don't know, maybe I'm just weird and as soon as I think that someone expects something from me my mind goes blank/locks up (could be related to the mental exhaustion I've been diagnosed with a few weeks ago too)).

[Mathias]

No, I typically exhaust people.

[Dennis]

Hehe, no it's just me. My mind has already started thinking about the "from inside" view and I think I'll try some of the other brushes which came with the 15(edited,previously said 20 but counting them revealed it was only 15) brushes for 1,99 ? set I grabbed along with the 4,99 ? 12 watercolors plus opaque white set. I'll also try a different rendering approach, starting from the far back to the front this time, which means it will take longer because I will have to wait for the individual layers to be really dry before I can put on the next one. The watercolors appear to be not pure water colors (which are normally not opaque) but a bit different kind of colors which still need water to dissolve them and to be able to apply them with a brush but they seem to be opaque when applied over an existing (dry) area of another color.

[Geti]

New tablet just testing the waters last night, haven't done large pieces for a while.
Edit: just fyi, I'm well aware of the anatomy issues (flat face, borked right eye, etc). Criticism is welcome, but don't go too overboard as it's more of a doodle than Serious Business.

[Atnas]

The only problem I have with your work is that you always seem to misplace shiny anime eyes on top of grizzled veterans quite a bit. The colors are very nice in this, however! Very warm and earthy.

[Dennis]

inside out forest border, watercolor on printer paper, attempt one: epic fail



observations (some of them seem like no-brainers in hindsight):
* rendering back to front is a lot of unnecessary work (large areas get painted over three or more times)
* rendering back to front does not agree well with the paper (get's very soaked very fast)
* watercolors are only opaque when applied with an almost dry brush
* watercolors appear darker and more saturated directly after application
* sometimes it feels like a "good" combination of color clusters is more important than their individual shape
* painting without planning ahead results in muddy areas which are hard/impossible to fix
* cheap effects like "shinies" can not save poorly rendered flat shapes
* I can not wing perspective properly (should construct it carefully next time)
* crude brushes are crude and should be used for large color patches and not for details
* an even number of anything does not feel natural at all
* to make the forest appear dense there should be a third layer of trees in the front and the existing trees should be horizontally closer together and there should be bushes and fern-like plants below them
* to break up the monotony in the ground, some rocks and shrooms should be added and some twigs and leaves
* the sky should turn gradually brighter towards the horizon
* there should be some details (single trees, rocks) in the background to give a better sense of the endlessness and depth of the plains
* painting non-digitally is harder but feels more satisfying than dragging a plastic pen over a tablet
* brush strokes should be planned and executed one stroke at a time and they should follow the surface volume of the subject being painted
* the image in my head before applying any color at all to the paper is altered by the process of painting it and adapts to limitations in tools and skill
* the longer I stare at an area in the finished painting or even the whole one, the more I like it, even if at first it looked hopelessly poorly done (must force brain to not accept shit)

[Geti]

The only problem I have with your work is that you always seem to misplace shiny anime eyes on top of grizzled veterans quite a bit. The colors are very nice in this, however! Very warm and earthy.

Hahah, perhaps. Eyes are pretty shiny in my experience though, just perhaps a little less than I tend to portray them. Glad you like the colours, I was happy with them too

edit; oh yeah also


Lazy but pretty fun to put together.

[Dennis]

I'm starting to feel a tiny glimpse of a sense of control over the brushes and the colors. I've also noticed that mixing any of the watercolors with the opaque white not only makes it brighter but also opaque (yes, this reads like a no brainer too) which is how I managed to apply the lighter spots on the trees this time (in the previous image I tried to do that without opaque white just by placing layer over layer over layer of the same color which lead to some very uncontrolled color patches) and also for some of the grass.



I've also started to create a 16 color palette based on those watercolors I got (picture of them is here) with the intention of using it for some pixel art. The watercolors I got seem to be the standard 12 industry norm (DIN 5023:1989-02) colors used in basic art education classes in German schools plus opaque white.

[Ai]

Dennis: Ever done Spectrum pixel-art? Cause your paintings *and* that palette remind me a lot of a less saturated, more painterly spectrum-ish style.

[leroy]

I'm starting to feel a tiny glimpse of a sense of control over the brushes and the colors. I've also noticed that mixing any of the watercolors with the opaque white not only makes it brighter but also opaque (yes, this reads like a no brainer too) which is how I managed to apply the lighter spots on the trees this time (in the previous image I tried to do that without opaque white just by placing layer over layer over layer of the same color which lead to some very uncontrolled color patches) and also for some of the grass.

[img]http://www.dennisbusch.de/shared/2011_08_14_scan_resized.png[/img

I've also started to create a 16 color palette based on those watercolors I got (picture of them is here) with the intention of using it for some pixel art. The watercolors I got seem to be the standard 12 industry norm (DIN 5023:1989-02) colors used in basic art education classes in German schools plus opaque white.

[img]http://www.dennisbusch.de/shared/dbPalette.png[/img

Excuse my crudeness but these are fucking awesome! Makes me want to try it myself, would you mind taking a picture of the brushes you used? I can't remember the last time I did watercolor, probably art class in the eighth grade. Also what kind of paper would be ideal for watercolors?

[Dennis]

Dennis: Ever done Spectrum pixel-art? Cause your paintings *and* that palette remind me a lot of a less saturated, more painterly spectrum-ish style.

No, I've never done any Spectrum art. Maybe the Spectrum engineers took inspiration from some standard paintbox as well.

Excuse my crudeness but these are fucking awesome! Makes me want to try it myself, would you mind taking a picture of the brushes you used? I can't remember the last time I did watercolor, probably art class in the eighth grade. Also what kind of paper would be ideal for watercolors?

Thank you for being so crude.  These are the color+brushes I used. In the top magnification are the ones used in the last painting. The ones in the bottom magnification I haven't used yet. They look like pretty standard brushes to me and they all came in a set of 15 brushes. All together I think I paid 7 Euros for the brushes and the colors. Those are my first watercolor paintings since probably 14 years ago. As for an ideal paper, you'd probably want "the heavier the better" because when it gets soaked with water it deforms a bit (gets all wavy and stops being perfectly flat). I'm currently using only standard plain office printer paper (80 g per square meter).

[Mathias]

OH yeah I'm lovin' those alien colors. Could you crank up the fantasy design feel to compliment the color theory?

In PS, try Image > Adjustments > Vibrance to boost the saturation of your scans, with two very intelligent sliders. Don't use Hue/Saturation.

[Dennis]

OH yeah I'm lovin' those alien colors. Could you crank up the fantasy design feel to compliment the color theory?

In PS, try Image > Adjustments > Vibrance to boost the saturation of your scans, with two very intelligent sliders. Don't use Hue/Saturation.

It certainly would not hurt to try that in my next painting (making it more fantasy-ish). Unfortunately I can not afford Photoshop, so I can't try that vibrance thing.  The adjustments I made after scanning were done in PaintShopPro8 and XNview and I tried to make the image appear as close as possible to the real painting on a bright TFT screen by holding the painting next to the screen and playing around with contrast and brightness and some auto-correction features.

Meanwhile, I've been testing/adjusting the 16 color palette a bit.

Using the following arbitrary restrictions...



...I wasted way too many hours (progress gif) into this (which turned out quite boring which I think is mainly due to the perfectly vertical tree trunks):
And after that was done I tweaked some of the colors, so they'd look ok on this old CRT monitor here.

[Atnas]

I REALLY liked the brown forground a lot more than this blue one. It changes the whole image to have such a warm and earthy color grounding the trees, and I quite liked it!

Why not use the blue for detailing the front trunks like in the painting? I'm enjoying your exploration of this whole subject, keep it up! c:

[Dennis]

I REALLY liked the brown forground a lot more than this blue one. It changes the whole image to have such a warm and earthy color grounding the trees, and I quite liked it!

Why not use the blue for detailing the front trunks like in the painting? I'm enjoying your exploration of this whole subject, keep it up! c:

I tweaked the palette some more, pulled down the saturation on some colors, made the grays neutral and fixed some brightness issues. Then I changed around some of the colors(giving you back the brown which you liked) in the tiled trees but that's where I'm abandoning that image before starting to detail it like the painting. I had already started detailing the front trunks in the first version but I removed all of that again, because I then would have had to detail the other trunks as well and that would have become nearly impossible under the chosen restrictions (also, the image/composition is too boring to fix and I'm thinking of redoing it completely from scratch with less 2D-ish trees(those are especially obvious in the tree tops, which should actually appear like viewed from below instead of the side view they are in) and more curved trunks).

Another attempt at a painting I also abandoned. The brushes and my skills are not up to do the fine details necessary to make that work at that size. Also, this time I had chosen a really heavy (200g/m?) coated paper meant for inkjet photo prints and the problem with that is that the watercolors don't hold easily on it, due to the coating and it's impossible to paint color over color on that paper because upon applying the next color, the one previously applied dissolves again, leaving unfixable white holes in the painting and the brush just ends up pushing the color away instead of it sinking into and staying on the paper. Another problem is that the pencil lines, drawn for planning what goes where, are too strong and they show through the paint. This whole painting was a rather frustrating experience.

[Dennis]

progress gif

restrictions (changed palette since last one):


tile art:

[ptoing]

Quite charming. Try to make something like a face or a figure with it, and try to make it as representative as you can within these means.

[Dennis]

A challenging task that is. Here's what I've got so far:

[Mathias]

HOLYWHATTHE

[Dennis]

What? Don't tell me you've never seen a "pregnant curly haired lady in a white dress with a brown hat crossing the river". It is a perfectly ordinary everyday scene. (progress gif)

[ptoing]

Hm, I think your workflow is not ideal for this and the form ends up lacking.
I would try to rather make a solid base without caring for the restrictions, as in blocking in the main shapes, get solid form, and then work over that and rule it in from there.

[Dennis]

Thank you for those hints. I'm really unhappy with the result (wish I'd never even started it but I will leave it there as evidence for my failure) and I didn't know where I was going with that image. I started with a face and a hat and then just kept adding stuff without really knowing what I was doing. Now I'll wait for inspiration to strike and I will not try to create another image without inspiration (or I'll go back to practice basics).

[st0ven]

dennis - sweet paintings i really like how they were developing. you could sense that you were definitely gaining more control as each piece progressed.

I dont have much creative juice goin these days, but i tried to push some out anyway :/ Definitely WIPish, will hope to build on it when i have a bit more time.

[Dennis]

dennis - sweet paintings i really like how they were developing. you could sense that you were definitely gaining more control as each piece progressed.

Thank you for that comment. It feels really good to read something nice every now and then (especially now that I'm dealing with mental exhaustion/depression/burnout and I just want to sleep all the time).

I dont have much creative juice goin these days, but i tried to push some out anyway :/

I know the feeling and I hate it but if you keep forcing yourself over a long period of time (years) you'll end up in a very bad state where you might not be able to do anything at all anymore (of course I'm projecting my own experience here) and that's a scary state to be in. Hm... your fish lady looks kind of depressed, vulnerable and broken, coincidence?

[Eggnogg]

Dennis, I absolutely love that kind of technique! It looks so exciting *_* .


I think the edges of the paper make the whole thing look kind of jagged and indented. I drew the cut-out lines on the other side and used a design knife to cut out the shapes. Any suggestions on how to fix that issue? Anyone else here done paper-cutting before? Criticism greatly appreciated. Diorama paper-cutting is tonnes of fun! Because these look so interesting with a light behind them, I'm thinking of constructing a lantern with this technique. Any suggestions on a scene?

[Geti]

Study Break

[Dennis]

I think the edges of the paper make the whole thing look kind of jagged and indented. I drew the cut-out lines on the other side and used a design knife to cut out the shapes. Any suggestions on how to fix that issue?

Maybe draw the cutout lines on the same side which will be seen by the viewer, so that the edges will curve away from the viewer instead of towards him. Either use an eraser to remove the lines or always cut along their inside, so no lines end up on the pieces you use. It might also help to use colored paper to take the attention away from the edges.

[Dennis]

making of: making of 0.1 / making of 0.2 (save/load feature added)

PETSCII paint 0.1:

[Geti]

Working on rendering a bit. Unhappy with the eyes and throat mostly (they look unfocussed and withered respectively), and perhaps the lips a little.
Self portrait.

[huZba]

Had to let out some scifi after a long period of stupid funny cartoon stuff...

[Mathias]

Beautiful!

Hope you post the finished product.

(can't say I like the play on words there though, hehe)

[Ryumaru]

Huzba: very nice :] would love to see it finalized.

I was inspired by some samurai jack animation backgrounds and I had some poster paints I wanted to try and learn to use:

This then prompted me to try some more backgrounds, as it's a weak point of mine. And to further my own punishment, decided to do them purely from imagination. I'm really satisfied with the results:

[Jeremy]

Real atmospheric, Ryumaru. I love the almost cross-hatching effect on the first one.

I did some giraffe skulls (graphite, watercolour, photoshop)

[Geti]

A grungy portrait, intended to be some ageing rocker reflecting on life or something.

Essentially a painting study. The hair was good fun. Ear's a bit low and big. Could have done with a bit less bloom on the light stuff in retrospect.