RIP Carrie Fisher! (Princess Leia)

2016 takes another. My humble tribute to Carrie Fisher, who played one of the most badass princesses in Star Wars history. You will be sorely missed!

One with the force.

Schoolism Assignment 1!

 Hi guys!

I've finally signed up for Schoolism! What a kickass education platform! I'm taking the Painting with Colour and Light course with Dice Tsutsumi and Robert Kondo! :) I hardly get the time to work on the assignments at a stretch with Totem, but here's no. 1 and no. 2.

Please note that the colours in the photo may be different because of my phone camera settings. These are live paintings, not done with the use of the reference photos. Critiques are welcome! 

Assignment1_1

Assignment1_1

This week, I have to study diffused lighting. I started with this challenging view of our office exterior in the monsoons - too many details! Took about an hour and a half for this one.

Assignment1_2

Assignment1_2

After the previous painting, I realized I should pick a simpler subject and focus on the 3 details they mentioned - Contact Shadow, Soft Shadows and Local Colour. Definitely helped.

Mikki Ekko Study

20th Nov 2014

Haven't done a speedpainting in really long! Felt totally out of touch. :( Anywho, this is Mikki Ekko from the 'Stay' music video by Rihanna ft Mikki Ekko. I loved this frame, the balance, cam movt, lighting was just gorgeous. Crossed the clock by 30 minutes. :(!

Critiques greatly appreciated!!

Total time taken: 1 hour 30 mins

Sitting Nude Painting

18th July '14

Shiftin' Shade Cover art!

15th April 2014

So this is a project I took up for a friend who is an awesome musician. He has recently started Electro-Jazz. His name is Darren Pareira, a.k.a Shiftin' Shade. You can follow him and his upbeat fresh music HERE. I made a cover art for him which may/may not appear on his first Vinyl Album. Here is the entire process with the final results. ;) Enjoy.

Initial explorations that I showed Darren

The final painted artwork. I just went blank when it came to the background, but then I thought I'd leave it that way.

Tried out some filters. I actually liked the last one a lot, Darren even tried an ACID filter which I've tried really hard to find but failed.

Mal Cobb (Marion Cotillard)

23th Jan 2012


So I spent about 3 hours on this and I'm very happy with the results. I love Mal's character in Inception (and I recently watched it on TV for the 4th time) and got inspired to paint her. She is so beautiful and she has such great features. And yes I love her accent.

After really long I understood how to use color on the face. How to use greens, blues, yellows, pinks and browns. I think I amped up a few steps since my painting of Kate Beckett. Not only this, but I think I got the likeliness pretty close as well, and I haven't got a character right for a long time!

Hope you guys like it!

 Digital painting

original reference

Hibiscus

22nd Jan 2014

I challenged myself to make an illustration of a non-stereotypical body type and convey beauty. I don't know if I suceeded, but that's what I wanted ideally. After watching Official Laci Green's video on women as objects rather than subjects, I decided to work on drawing girls in different proportions that the usual voluptuous women.

Birthday Rock n' Roll Darren!

27th Dec 2013

Finally I can upload this coz I just gifted it to my friend Darren for his birthday! Hope he liked it! It was so much fun painting this one. I took reference from his profile pictures like a creepy stalker for his character and his epiphone guitar. Everything else comes from knowing him! XD Done in 5 wee hours of the morning!

done on Painttool SAI
You can listen to his music HERE

Day 32 - Kate Beckett 'Speedpaint'

21st Dec '13

Only 10 days till new years and I still have to make a lot of resolutions! I finally got my ass to paint 'speedpainting' of kate beckett from Castle! I love her character, and I tried really hard to get the likeness right. It looked kinda okay until the sketch stage but then it just went haywire during the painting.

Also I tried really hard to do it under 30 mins, but the first 15 mins went into the setup and the sketch, and then it even exceeded 1 hr. :(

 Reference:

 Beckett Speedpaint
Total time taken: 2hrs
Points awarded: 50

Painttool SAI, Sherlock and Shagun!

17th Dec 2013


Well after SOOO long I made some 'artwork' and not practice unfinished drawings. One of my favorite deviantartists named Barukuri said she uses painttool SAI to paint her artworks, so I decided to download the trial and mess around with it. This is an absolutely GREAT software for painting. There are only a few presets and brushes and textures, but they're absolutely wonderful!! And it's got the same shortcuts as photoshop, but things are def. a little different. The colors and the brushes just look amazing! I didn't spend too much time on it, but I came up with this..

The resolution isn't great because I hadn't planned an artwork when I started. I just wanted to paint something fresh and it turned out to be this! It's actually inspired from the BBC Sherlock. I can't wait for Season 3! I'm so glad I did something for myself, and I started a new beautiful software today! XD XD

On the sidelines, I noticed I just got 111 followers! In India that's a lucky number, it's called 'Shagun', which means giving more than a hundered (more happiness than desired); generally a sum of 111 is given as a gift during weddings and other celebrations. It's hard to translate it. So thanks guys!

xxx

Daenerys Targaryen - The mother of dragons

16th May 2013

This was long overdue. I was dying to make some fanart of Dany (a.k.a: Daenerys Targaryen/The mother of dragons/Khaleesi). And my awesome friend Sid had asked me to do a kickass drawing of a female lead. After learning he's a GoT fan too, I didn't need another reason. This one's for Sid and the years of delay I caused to gift him this!

I absolutely LOVE this character from Game of Thrones and I love the HBO version as well! Hope you guys liked it. Need to learn better anatomy and foreshortening! Explored some brushes as well with this one.

PS CS5
Time taken: 5 hours


Additionally: I gave the piece to Sid, framed. He did expect something, his VALKYRIE. I was hoping he wouldn't be disappointed with Dany, and luckily, he wasn't!! The dude hung it on his wall straight away! And I was worried I'd chosen the wrong colored mount but it looked kinda awesome on his chocolate wall. This is the first artwork of mine that I've framed! ^__^

            After framing before gifting                            After gifting

Day 26 - Speedpainting #06 - Alisha's seesaw

20th October 2012

Did one after really long! This is a photo of my friend Alisha and her friend in her garden. I wanted to learn how to capture daylight's effect on grass - it's almost florescent! Even the light on the skin is high in saturation, and the contrast of the unlit bg has pale tinted shades.

Original photo

 Speedpainting #06

Duration: 1 hour

No. of layers: 3

Feedback and criticism needed on this one and will be greatly appreciated!

Day 21 - Speedpainting #05 - Ring-tailed Lemurs

24th July 2012

Another day gone in planning of my movie. Thanks to my best bud Alok's constant push to do a speedpainting just minutes before 12 am, I managed to churn this out. Since my friend Ankita was watching while I painted this (I dunno how she had the patience for so long!), I comfortably finished it in 1 hour 25 minutes. Learned mainly about rim lighting and back lighting, although I need to do more of these studies!

Two ring tailed raccoons, coming right up!

Original photo

Speedpainting #05

Feedback and criticism is highly appreciated!

The big jhol that happened with this one is that a guy had copied the original photo, copyrited it, and put it up on google. That was the one I painted from. Then I see the original on deviantart, and it seems so that it is different in its lighting and color!! So after I was done with it I had to tweak its colors to match the original. Sad story. :( Anywho, learnt a lot.

Day 20 - Speedpainting #04 - Sunlit kitten

14th July 2012

I was beginning to get worried if I could keep up with this speed painting stuff. I missed two days of it thanks to my obnoxious laziness, but here's tonight's speed painting. 

I had a lot of fun doing this one. I really thought I could stick to the one hour deadline (30 mins seemed impossible), but I exceeded by 20 mins. :( Still need to know how to resist from adding details and keeping it basic. Figured out how bounce light works and how sunlight saturates color.
Enjoy!

I think this is the best one so far coz it very closely resembles the original. Criticism is most welcome. :)

 

The original photograph

Speedpainting #04

Day 19 - Speedpainting #03 - Emma Stone/Gwen Stacy

9th July 2012

This one was supposed to done in 30 mins, but I've royally exceeded the time limit, nullifying the whole purpose of a 'speed painting'! :( I'm happy with it, except her face. I tried my best to make her look as cute as she looks in my eyes, but her eyes needed to be lower. Her jaw was super hard. I took 30 mins just to make a rough sketch!! :( 

I loved Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy! I love her no matter what she plays!! She's my latest favorite actress. Here's the result of 2 hours of backache. Need to be much much quicker and just catch the masses. I guess this is a proper digital painting.

 

 Original photograph

 

Speedpainting #03

Day 18 - Speedpainting #02 - Morning Light

8th July 2012

Phew, I was hoping I'd finish today's speedpainting. I really wanna keep this up no matter what work comes in between!

Today I tried to find a good image to study morning light. the process of finding a photo took really long. :( Maybe I shouldn't be so picky - anyway, I am pretty happy with this. In ten minutes time I was so frustrated coz I'd just finished a few basic patches. :( This stuff is so hard. But I think I can come to terms with the mood of the painting, I think I nailed that. :) I learned a lot about hard light and soft light here. Also I got a reminder of how badly I suck at draweing drapery and cloth. :'( Will work on that as well.

 

 Origial photograph

My speedpainting

Criticism and feedback is highly appreciated!

Day 17 - Speed Painting #01 - Sunset

7th July 2012

Finally!!! it's been so long but I finally got myself to do my first ever 'speed painting', or rather, what I THINK a speedpainting is, although  I have no idea why it's called that, coz it takes forever. I took exactly 1 hr 6 mins, but from now on I'm gonna have to set an alarm. When it rings, I will stop, no matter how finished the painting is or at what stage it has progressed. Tomorrow it'll be 45 minutes and then I'll try to stick to 30 mins. It hurts! :-s I learned so much by doing this. Lighting, understanding color, tones and values. I think I can proudly say I'm pretty happy with this one, especially since it's my first.

 

The original photograph

 

 My version in 1 hour. 

From this I conclude two things - I need to have a better control on tones and saturation especially.

I constrained myself a lot. I have used only the brush tool to paint this. No burn or dodging, as much as it itches me to do this. And no color correction. It is also painted on only 2 layers.

Day 3 - PJH - Kapil Dev's in coll!

30th Nov 2011

Phew.. that was the most jobless and tiring day together! I basically wasted the whole day, (almost), playing adventure world and refreshing the page again and again when my energy got over, waiting for it to refill. (It's a really nice game with great colours and design! Love it. Go zynga!)

Later I went to the canteen (all together I went there 5 times between 10 am and 7pm). Now you might wonder how I'm so jobless so suddenly. Well, basically I am going through the i-hardly-care-phase which happens just before the juries. I'm not tense, infact on the contrary, I really stop caring about all the incomplete work. mind you this happens only at saturation point, and I'd already hit it. I was sick of Maya. And to top it, I hated it. Hated every bit of it.

En went to sleep at 5pm in the old studio and I decided to dig up Red (our plant)'s soil to keep it loose. After it was all loose it felt like meditation to touch it. And we din do gestures, or play frisbee. People don't have time for fun now. Why? Because they're preparing for their juries 1 week prior, something they should have done ages back. My poor friend Alok is having a hard time with modelling. He's on the verge of commiting suicide - and before I got there I had to do something. ANYthing. That's one of the reasons Project JH happened, and happened now, that.

Before I was to leave for hostel en was at the peak of a swing. So I decided to stay and start his rigging for him. Din wanna leave him grumpy. Then I had the worst food EVER ordered from Aswad. Salty uncooked noodles with no vegies and no chicken. The chicken lollypops were like rocks on sticks. Guhh! So after 2 bites I couldn't take it and threw them out. No wonder it was just 50 bucks.

Anisha called, and then Akar. This was just before I left, at 10pm! They urgently needed a caricature done, and they decided to ask me! The amazing cricketer Kapil Dev! He was gonna come to coll. today so they wanted to give him something. I was overexcited. Kapil Dev! Recieving my caricature of him! I could probably get a photo and a signature! Here was the catch - 9:30 am sharp with the dean! and it was to be kept a secret (for some reason)!
Anything to dump maya and do some 2D stuff!! That too with color. Little did I know that I was expecting so much from myself that I took a whole 6 hrs to finish it. 6 HOURS! It's 6 am right now, and I'm finally going to bed. I'm pretty happy with the results, and I hope you all like it too!

Christina Yang

She's one of my favourite characters from Grey's Anatomy. I love her, I love her confidence, her competitiveness, her stone-heartedness, her determination, she is just amazing. This is the first time I've attempted a digitally coloured portrait.. It's not exceptional, but I learned a lot, and I'm trying to use as much as I know so far. :) Pretty happy with the result. :)

She stood in the Doorway

This was my third entry for sketchoholic's 'sweet silhouttes'. The thumbnail looked better than this, and I was hoping I'd make a good job with the colour. Colour is still very difficult for me. Luckily in the silhoutte contest there was less to think about thanks to the majority of the space being dark.