PRACTICE

     Before I started entering competitions on cghub I wanted to try my hand at a couple of pactices first, as digital ainting is something I am pretty unfamiliar with. I was advised to start buying the digital art magazine "ImagineFX". In  my first copy one of their main articles was explaining how to make a portrait style piece of work so I thought I would try this first.

      I decided to use a photo of a friend who I knew wouldn't be too offended if the end result was slighty dodgy...

      Which was probably just as well. I am aware that there is a lot wrong with this image; however it was my first time trying anything of the sort and with this in mind I think it could have been a lot worse. The main thing is that I learnt a lot from the experience and it set me up to try another.

     My next practice session was to create my own character completely from scratch. This was something I hadn't tried before with digital painting. My previous work had all been guided by images that already existed.

I started out with a quick sketch of a character idea, once I was pleased with its basic form I scanned this to my computer. (Havn't invested in photoshop yet so I am still currently using GIMP).

      The next picture is some way in to my work. I was advised beforehand to use an alternative background to white when creating my image. Something else I need to focus on is learning to work without excessive use the smudge tool. Again I have been advised that this is not the thing to do and that it would be worthwhile to practise blending technique. Otherwise I could become somewhat limited in the visual style of my work.

    This is my work in its finished state. Again it is not fantastic, especially in comparison to some of the phenominal work I have seen online. However this is the first time I have completely created something from scratch and brought it through to a completed piece, for that alone I am happy with what I have created here. Once again I have learnt a lot from this process and look forward to developing my techniques further.