The digital painting is done using GIMP and Wacom Intuos3.

See a larger view, and print,  see Phoenix – Painting at devaintART.

For those interested, I had take a couple of intermediate screenshots. Head over to CGPainting.com thread to read through it – Phoenix – Painting thread.

For a wide screen wallpaper version, download it from ClipArtLog.com.

This is a brief walkthrough on drawing a Phoenix. I will give the download links for XCF and PSD at the end.

Basic Structure

Though Phoenix is a mythical creature, it still pays to study a bit of bird anatomy and work on other birds like peacock. Examine the above concept – though it is a bit complex, it is a bit easy when you break it down to simple structures.

Sketching

If you are drawing on paper, make sure that you are still sketching lightly using the pencil. On software, at this point in time, you can actually think of increasing the resolution to get crisp lineart in the next step.

Lineart

In GIMP or Photoshop, it becomes quite easy to switch to another layer and start ‘inking’ to get he line art.

On paper, consider drawing the line art first in a darker (softer tip) pencil, and then going over it with a black inking pen.

Download the drawing in XCF (for GIMP) or PSD (for Photoshop), and examine the different layers. (I have only the lineart layer visible – so you will need to turn them on).

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See larger view at deviantART – Phoenix.

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• Software: GIMP (or Adobe Photoshop)
• Level: Advanced
• Subject: Mecha Dragon – Comic Style

Dragon Workshop: Chinese Dragon | Medieval Dragon | More…

This would be a walkthrough on doinig a comic style illustration and coloring of one of my favourite subjet, dragon. Mecha Dragon or armored dragon to be specific.

Brainstorming And Sketching

I do some brainstorming, directly into GIMP. I want a A4 size colored illustration at 300 dpi at the end of this. Hence, I create a new canvas (GIMP has a preset), and then scale it down by 25%. Then I start off by drawing compositional lines – a spiral composition with the eye at positioned at one of the one third point.

I actually do a couple of these and choose one of the designs that I liked and start detailing it a bit.

Once I am pretty confident with the sketch, I scale up by 400% to bring it back to A4 at 300dpi, and start with a lineart in a new layer.

I reduce the opacity of the sketch layer, and use the inking tool (new in GIMP 2.6) to create the lineart.

Coloring

Applying the background gradient and the flat colors on another layer is pretty easy.

Use the gradient tool for the background, and the selection and fill tool for the flat color layer.

Cut Edge and Gradients

For giving depth and detail, as opposed to digital painting, I opt to go for Cut Edge + Grads to get a comic book feel.

Using the selection tool and the gradient tool at low opacity, I markout the different segments of the dragon’s armor and detail them.

Again with the selection tool (lasso tool) and gradient tool, I bring out the stark highlight and the deep shadows to finish up the colored illustration.

Check the deviantART entry – Mecha Dragon – for a larger view.

If you liked this walkthrough, please subscribe to KalaaLog.com feeds or use the email subscription form to get updates.

Dedicated to the lives lost, those of the civilians and the public service personnel like policemen, firemen and armed forces of India, in the Mumbai attacks of 26 November.

An A4 size painting at 300 dpi in portrait layout, done using GIMP and Wacom Intuos3. Check out the deviantART entry – Mumbai Firemen – for a larger view.

• Software: Inkscape (or Adobe Illustrator)
• Level: Advanced
• Subject: Peacock

In this tutorial, we would do a walkthrough of illustrating a vector artwork of a peacock. Much of the techniques mentioned in the other peacock tutorials here would be used.

Drawing

I used GIMP to do a rough work, but you can use any other tool that you find comfortable sketching. See Drawing A Standing Peacock for a detailed tutorial.

After we get the form of the peacock, a little work on the details is done to get the idea of how much detail we want to put into the vector artwork in the end.

Basic Form

At this point in time, I import the PNG file into Inkscape and get the rough outline form of the peacock. If you had done the sketch/lineart on paper, you can scan it in using a scanner and import into Inkscpae.

Make further shapes, to block out the different areas and depth using the lineart as a guide. Take extra care to layer them from back to front. A little bit of planning goes a long way when the amount of detailing is going to be quite complex.

The blue outlines are at the same level. The green outlines, three of them are layered one over the other.

Plumage

After giving some basic flat color and gradient to the whole body, zoom in towards the center and use the pen tool to draw details of the plumage.

Further apply gradients to these detail shapes. If the form feels flat, create shapes of lighter blue color and change opacity to 10% or 20%.

Head and Beak

Apply gradients to the blue outlines with a pale yellow-brown color and you get the head detailed.

There is no need to give a lot of attention to this part, as the area is quite small. In full view, much of the details would be lost.

He looks a bald due to lack of the crown feathers – we will be adding that later.

Feathers

Now we get to the identifying feature of a peacock – his exhuberent feathers. Have a look at Peacock Feather Vector Art post that has a detailed walkthrough on creating vector art of a single feather – we will not be going to that amount of detail, but it helps to know.

As mentioned above in the basic form, this particular angle has three layers of the feathers. Start with the lowest layer.

Get the basic shape fo the feathers end that looks like an exotic eye. Concentric blob like shapes, with colors ochre (yellow), orange, cyan and deep blue will be the template.

Reduce the opacity of this to around 20%. Since it is the lowest layer of feather, we make it dull by reducity the opacity (increasing the transparency). You do not need to draw them all, just make copies of them, rotate and scale to get them in the required positions.

Its feathers have sparkling highlights. Even on the lowest layer, they would be visible. Use the pen tool to mark out couple of these in each section.

You can even put in some stray strands of the feathers and merge them with the main shape, to give volume to each layer of feather.  Thsi makes it look less flat.

Cut (not copy) and paste in place the remaining green outlines and start detailing the same way as you did the earlier layer. Make those eye like shapes 40% opaque this time.

Take a little more time when doing the upper layer. Add darker shadows to make the highlights standout more than the other. Increase the opacity of the circular patter to around 60%.

Finishing Details

Draw a couple of the crown plumage. Make copies to create the full set.

For the rest of the body, add some stark highlight shapes.

You can download this artwork as a desktop background over at ClipArtLog.com – Peacock Wallpaper.

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It can be quite daunting and for those of us who are modest, it may see feel narcissistic. But trust me – I just tried it out. It is a challenging task yet a good creative exercise. As an artist, when you are trying to portray realism to the faintest extent, you would want to be able to capture what is called familiarity. Even when the ‘portraits’ of people (or even things) are distorted like in caricatures (see Tom Richmond’s works for example), the key is to capture the familiarity.

We have been observing ourselves from the day we became self aware. There will be very few who have not noticed some of the features of themselves in the mirror. A Self Portrait is just an attempt to capture the familiarity of oneself.

Here is my first attempt at a self portrait. I believe I have caught some of my features – I can see a lot of changes required, but I am going to let this one slide. I would do more attempts in future.

This was done in GIMP, using Wacom Intuos3, over a span of roughly 15 mintues. Before attempting this, I just peeked at myself on mirror, and tried to take a mental note of the features. After that, I opened up an new canvas in portrait layout and started with a new dull brown layer. This seems to be a better approach than face a blank white canvas. Then, I started out with rough form and kept refining it on new layers – going through with a smaller brush each time.

I grossly under-estimated the amount of effort this would take.

With the amount of detail, and my choice of color palette – added to that the two sources of light, takes up quite a bit of effort to paint.

As you can see, I have approached this from back to front. And on each of those level/layer, I detail them with a fat/large brush to a fine/small brush.  Stay tuned – I will finsih up painting by detailing the two main characters, and perhaps adjusting some color levels.

Too late for Halloween, perhaps. But I really enjoyed working on this illustration.

After doodling with GIMP’s new inking tool, I had this urge to try it out. After some seasonal inspiration, and several concepts, roughs and sketches, I felt pretty confident to do a illustration over them. This was created completely using the Inking Tool of GIMP 2.6 and some use of the upgraded Selection Tool.

Visit the devaintART entry page if you want to try your hand at coloring this (do link back), or if you would like to see a larger image to see the details.

Too Old for Halloween? – Illustration

For past couple of month, Chazlynne Deguair and I have been working on creating a website/blog dedicated to clipart. The drive for this was the great feedback and traffic driven at KalaaLog.com through searches containing “clipart” in them.

Chazlynne and I have been posting there regularly and it has more than 50 new clipart, available for download, free for personal and non-commercial uses.

Head over to ClipArtLog.com and do subscribe to its feeds. (You can subscribe for an email update too).

• Software: GIMP (or Adobe Photoshop)
• Level: Advanced
• Subject: Kitar – Potion Assassin

Starting off from where I left, I start to detail the different parts of the character.

Details

Using the palette from the last part, the mid tones are painted in the bottle. Note that I plan to make this bottle quite a bit more opaque than the earlier study – Painting A Potion Bottle.

The face and the rest of the parts are detailed.

Highligths

The bottle and the face are given strong and near white highlights.

Finishing Up

A backgroudn is quickly painted and using the darkest tones from the palette, some deep shadows are painted on the character.

Check out the deviantART entry for a larger view.