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Pilgrim in the Woods

Pilgrim in the Woods visiting a Thanksgiving Dinner near you.

pilgrim

 

Pilgrim in the woods is visiting a Thanksgiving dinner near you. Halloween is over but are all the spooks really gone? The ghosts aren’t screeching and the werewolves aren’t yelping but the woods is not empty of danger.

The Pilgrim

How is it this pilgrim is here and what does he want? It’s been many long years since the Puritans first came to America and shared the first Thanksgiving. Was someone left behind or is this would be wanderer plagued with unfinished business? Time will tell when the truth is finally uncovered. I could write horror stories all year round. My goal this year is to come up with a horror idea that ties in with every major holiday. I don’t know if I will ever write a full story or not but ideas are where more ideas come from. Let me know if you have any special requests out there.

About this Design

I hope you are all enjoying my latest design. Please let me know what you think by commenting on this post or dropping a note through a form.

I used 13 different layers to design this scene. I didn’t start with a pencil sketch. In fact, I clicked on the oil paint tool and went right to work painting out the scene. The scene background was painted with the oil paint flat brush tool. The digital oils provided a nice blending affect to build the background just like playing with Play dough. I alternated shades and used the blending tool as well to get the lighting effect I wanted.

Tips and Tricks

Below are some screenshots of layers that I used. The first one is a 33% opacity layer that I drew the trees on in the distance along with some shrubs. I used a very light brown within the pallet that I was working with. This effect created some of the white noise that comes with designing wooded areas. A G-Pent was all I needed to design the trees. A darker bleed tool brush was used for the shrubs. I like to keep things murky and then pull the details out.

Background

background

 

This next section is of just the trees themselves. See how they are on their own layer? I can manipulate the depth of the piece easier this way and control the highlights and shadows without creating digital mud. Using the selection tool helps to keep the overspray from going out of control. I still have a little. Through color discipline practice, it becomes easier to paint in this fashion. The airbrush highlight and shadow tools create nice textures on the tree. I selected where the light was coming from and then I just stayed consistent until I got the trees completed. Additional texture was created by using a darker pencil to enhance the bark.

Foreground Trees

 

As I go over each part of the tree, I can slowly pull out the natural texture of the tree along with other minor details such as the roots and growth defects in the tree that make it look more interesting.

I used the ink pen tool to design the Pilgrim and then I sketched out lightly what I wanted and then filled it in. I already knew that I was going to use a silhouette so I didn’t worry about every detail with the character.  Extra grass created the mired affect. The woodlands known to be wet.

The Pilgrim Design

 

I used the polygon line tool to detail the parts of his outfit that I felt viewers would need to see to understand he is a pilgrim. I used Google to find a some good ideas for what I wanted the pilgrim to look like. Again, not a lot of serious detail required. Using my G-Pen with white pigment, I colored in some wrinkles and added some buttons. If I did my job well enough, you can tell that it’s a pilgrim.

Some additional details I added were the sun beams shining through. The line tool is awesome to get this detail. I changed the opacity on the beams so they look more transparent and played around with the color. True yellow just wasn’t covering it.

I designed the bridge with just blocks of grey matter that I blended together. I used references for this too because I just couldn’t picture the bridge the way I wanted in my head alone.

Summary

That is all for tonight. If I left some things out that you may want to know more of, please ask. I am always happy to help everyone out.  Also check out my book. You can find it here. Amazon Prime holders can get it for free. It is available in hard copy and E-book format. The book has a lot of these types of tutorials designed to help you come up with design ideas.

 

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Ghosts and Pumpkins

Dark spooky nights and visits from ghosts. Who could ask for more fall fun? Lots more coming your way as my imagination takes off. Stay tuned! Follow my blog!

Something specific you want to see? Let me know. I’ll gladly create a scene and post it to my site!

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The Concept Art Idea Book

Concept Art Idea Book

For a limited time only you can download for FREE some original artwork from my new book called The Concept Art Idea Book. You can get both Wizard Spire and Space Station in both Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint formats to use as a companion with my new book.

You can find my book here and on Amazon.

 

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Spirit Falls

Spirit Falls

Good evening everyone!

Spirit Falls is my latest concept piece that I have developed tonight for your viewing enjoyment. What do you see moving through the waterfall? Ghosts? Spirits? Magical energy? These all are components for the theme that I followed so you are all correct.

This piece took me four hours to put together from start to finish. As usual, I started with a saved template that I use to build my digital artwork. It is a grey matted “paper” that I use for all of my images. I find that it is much easier on the eyes than when I start with all white. My screen tends to get a bit bright as well so the grey background helps a lot…also nice for helping me to measure my highlights and shadows. The template I use is 2894 × 2039 pixels.

I found a generic photo of a waterfall that I embedded into the piece and then blurred over a dark lavender fill. I blew it up to twice it’s size so that only the texture of the water shows through. I then removed just the fill that I needed so that the waterfall would show through. This manipulation of generic photos saved me some time.

I created a new layer and penciled in the warrior. I drew him much larger so that I could get the pose the way I wanted. As a side note, I don’t use any programs like poser or anything else that would generate a 3D model. This will probably change in the future as I do like to save time. I think the freehand pose gives it more freedom of movement.

I then used an ink wash to color the body and clothing. I can blend and build color very fast with the inking tool. I have always loved ink both digital and contemporary. Using my air brush tool, I placed shadows, highlights, and details in the skin where I thought it was necessary.

After all this was complete, I then shrunk the figure down and placed him in the foreground. With a little blending I was able to make him part of his surroundings…especially the ground.

Lastly I added one more layer for the ghostly movements you see starting up top and moving toward the bottom left…..or do they start bottom left and move up? Due to the lack of signs to tell them otherwise, I’m sure the spirits made up their own minds.

I hope you enjoy and happy blogging!

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Ghostly Orb Forest

Ever walk into a forest and see ghostly orbs fly around you? This is what it might look like if you do. I imagine a lot of activity all at once as if an energy burst is suddenly being released until finally pulsating out of existence.

This piece was designed in black and white to create a spooky mood accentuating the darkness and shadow of the night. The orbs are a bright contrasting white so they are able to communicate their presence, movement, and let everyone know they are there.

This piece was designed using Clip Studio Paint and consists of four layers. The initial pencil layer was later converted to detail layer toward the end of completing the piece. The other layers are an ink layer, background layer, and shadows layer.

To create a more 3 dimensional appearance, elements of shadows and highlights were placed throughout all of the layers with a proper amount of blending where needed to fuse the elements together.

The trees were created with a thick inking brush with fine detailing afterward. A tree texture tool was used to give more of a bark look to the skin of the tree. This also allows for more interesting shadows as they were placed with an air brush tool.

The bushes in the foreground were created with an ink wash set to a grey tone much like taking a sponge to a piece of paper with ink. Just enough texture to provide the look of bushes without much more but it helps to frame the piece together.

In the background I placed a slow moving mist moving throughout the trees again to provide some more depth and make it seem as though the orbs were traveling through the woods.

The far background has a number of different tree and grass designs making it seem dark and very difficult to find your way through.

Hope you enjoy this piece…be sure not to get lost should you enter the woods alone and unafraid.

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Wave Rider

 

 

This was inspired by the increased size of the waves as a storm approached. It was easy to visualize someone riding the top of the waves (not me) as they pushed to the shore with ever increasing momentum. The sky was dark and the air was hot and muggy as the storm grew closer.

This image was created with only three pens. One was a brush pen filled with India ink and the other two pens used were a medium and thin black prisma pens. The two smaller pens provided just enough detail for the piece while the thicker brush pen helped create the weight of the clouds and the water.

Contour lines were used again to create the sense of movement across the waves as they moved toward the beach. Where the waves were the fullest at the top, shadows were filled in to give the appropriate weight they needed.

Some speed lines were added at the end to give the surfer the appearance of speed as he moved through the waves.

Total time spent creating this piece was about an hour and half. I used very quick broad arm strokes as I drew not worrying about each individual line. Both the water and the sky was developed at the same time so that the piece was equally balanced on top and bottom with dark shapes.

The sky was developed also using horizontal lines to give varying degrees of mass to the clouds. Some clouds were more transparent than others so by spreading my lines apart, I was able to give more of a translucence to the clouds. The closer lines help provide the shadow.

 

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Bunker Response Team

This is an image design I put together recently which can be easily applied for T-Shirts and or other options. This was created using Clip Studio Paint with a multilayer process. I find that Clip Studio Paint is my choice for drawing almost anything digitally. I like the flexibility that it offers.

I began the design by building the frame of the shield first using a curve tool and polyline tool in tandem. Once I got the lines where they needed to be, I then locked the layer so I didn’t accidently select and change it.

The next layer I made was the text layer which was created first in Microsoft PowerPoint and then exported into Clip Studio Paint as a .jpg file. I was then very easily able to manipulate the text where it needed to be within the shield. While I think Clip Studio Paint has a lot of capability for script text in comics, I have a hard time using the text tool for anything else.

After my text was layed in, the next layer was the skull itself. I drew it using a pen tool and specifically, the for effect line tool. This gave the skull a nice thick to thin line and added nicely to the character of the piece.

Now for the colors. The last part of the project was the colors. I did these as separate layers as well. I should have created layer folders for each but I instead gave each layer it’s own layer in one large folder.

The first color I applied were the flats of the shield. These were then saved and locked. I then selected the flats after creating a new layer to do the fine lines, detailing, and shadows. The selection tool allowed me to detail these areas without having to “go outside the lines”.

Finally, I did the same process for the Skull and added a generic flag. the glow on the Skulls eye was creating using the urchin tool. Prior to having the client approve the piece, I added a 35% fade. This is a cool effect which allows the shirt design to better blend into the color of the T-Shirt. It helps to know what color shirt you will place this on prior to colorization though. A quick background layer also provides the blending necessary so you don’t end up with a box around the design on the shirt. I save my files as high resolution 6000 x 6000 350 dpi .png files.

If you have any questions, please let me know.