the giger complex

[sargonuspa]

A3 pencil sketch, redrawn in Photoshop and sketch refined and painted in Artrage using oils on Cintiq 13HD.

I have attempted to paint this picture several times over the past two years with no success to the point where only inadequacy and frustration emerged when i looked at the sketch and failed painting attempts. Thankfully doing a colour and value study like i did for the "cutting the liiight" painting really helped and i really had fun creating this image. Still a long way to go but i look forward to the next stage. As usual, what i learn, i take to the next.

[sargonuspa]

I have edited the original post.

[sargonuspa]

Any comments?

[D Akey]

Yeah, it's very intriguing in a sci-fi, other worldly sort of way. Looks good. You'll learn as you go, as you've stated and it's true. We all do.

I think something that might prove interesting to you is to think in terms of hierarchy of importance within the composition. This insures the eye will go first to the most important place at the outset, and then other things come into play relative to the star of your image. You can control that with lighting. If your guy in the chair is the main thing, you can drop the surrounding background back a bit by having it fall a little into shadow -- like you're spotlighting your guy. etc. By shadow I don't mean black, I mean that it gets darker and less saturated in those areas. But that's something you can work up to. Cartoons on TV or sometimes in games it's lit like this, but they have the advantage of movement to pull the eye to their main guy. But in illustrations that want to make use of depth and drama, illustrators will often employ these kinds of tricks.

Looks good though. You may want to save this as it is and work what I mention on some test versions that you can screw around with and not lose any of your good work.

Good stuff!