Skya

Woot! The guy who hosts my website rocks. I didnt think he'd be able to do anything till he got home from work, but one email and 20 minutes latter and viola!

And yes apparently the server is down. I cant get at anything else on shadowdragon either. Why does this only happen when I update my stuff? *sigh* @Hinton: Dude, I'm more then a month ahead on the scanning and I finished the letters/editorial pages for the Original Quest yesterday as well. I think I'm allowed to get some actual work done. @Moa: The secret to winning Iron Painter? That's easy. Do the absolute best work you've ever done every time and let the theme inspire you to try something new that you wouldnt have otherwise. I think you've got potential, but it's a rough contest. You've got to churn out top notch pieces every three weeks, but if you can keep up it makes you into a damned good painter. I've improved more in the last year specifically because of Iron Painter then I had previously in the three years before.

:banghead:

It's been some ridiculously long time since I've updated my webpage so I finally got off my ass and spent the day on it. I have to say you guys here have seen a lot more of what I just updated then anywhere else, as Iron Painter entries make up a good chunk of it. You tell what I've been spending my time on. I'd really been hoping to do do a major overhaul instead of just an update, but the couple of people who offered to help me do that have been rather slow, so I figured I might as well update it. I will note that I currently cant find my copy of the Baskerville Bold font, so some of the newer award listings and the title on the Diorama page are a bit odd looking at the moment. Here's hoping I have it on my old hard drive and can fix that problem shortly. I've been debating pulling down some more of my older pieces that aren't representative of the quality of my work these days, but I'm not sure. I'd love input on that. Skya's Website

Some good techniques listed. The harpy I did for the metallics theme in the first Iron painter was done with the Valleyo Alcohol base paints and a little chestnut ink and some German Camo Black Brown for shadows. I really like their golds. Unfortunately mixing alcohol base paints with water based paints doesnt work so it has to be done in layers and glazes. For silvers I really like the RMS silvers. The pigments are almost as finely ground as the alcohol base paints and they do mix well with other acrylics.

The skintones do look good. The leathers could use a deeper shadow as could her hair. The brown ties across her chest need sharper shadows to clean em up, give em a bit more definition. For the golds I dont know what you're using for the shadow color but something with a richer color would make them shine better. RMS Muddy brown or GW dark skin. Something with a bit of a red tone to reflect the reds in her dress. As for where to put them that ends up being the hard part. I'd do some heavily on the collar piece at the shoulder where she's bending her arm. Then you have to take what is essentially a straight up and down piece in the back collar and add curve to it. Darken down from the corner tip to about the middle of it and then go back and pick out the upper edges with your yellow. Do the same on the sleeve edges where they curve in, and then on the bottom trim where the fold curve in. Hope that helps.

I'd say from what I can see in these pics, the hands could use some more shadowing. Knuckles should either be redder of brighter then the rest of the fingers. Given the overall coloring I'd lean towards redder.

Neat. Like a bizarre mix of a skexis and some whacked out kind of dragon.

And now I want one even more....

Sweet piece. I'll definitely pick this one up. Is it actually available yet? I didnt see it on their website.

My little brother does a get together with some of the guys from his company for Cubs opening day every year. He was so bummed about being out of town on business for it this year. I havent seen him pout like that since we were kids.

For plastics that "nothing" sticks to I have a can of Rust Oleum plastic primer that works minor miracles. It also has the advantage of being flexible enough to handle the fact that plastics tend to bend. Mind you, it mostly gets pulled out for painting plastic toy soldiers, but I don't see any reason it wouldn't work on aquarium plants as well.

The face in general could use more shading, on a flat you really need to add your own shadows to create the shapes. I dunno, you could go further on the highlights on the costume, but I dont think it would add a lot anywhere but on the arm that's coming at you. Without more highlights it recedes a bit into the background, but given the foreshortening you really want it to pop forward out at you, and the extra highlights would help with that. Painting flats is a very different beast from painting minis, it's a lot closer to 2d illustration, and many of the techniques illustration uses are helpful. All in all though a pretty cool piece.

WoooT! I've been waiting for these for forever.

I love the soft richness of the colors. My main critique of the painting would be the highlighting of the oranges on the hair. It's almost too soft, a further highlight to create sheen could add significantly. In fact it almost looks more like you're trying to paint fire then hair, toning the reds with a rich brown might help that. "Red" hair is very rarely actually red. It's more like a brown-gold with red tones overlaid. Even those described as carrot tops have very orange hair with very little actual red in it. I do agree with the consensus on the snow, it's a bit jarring next to the rest of it. You might consider making it muddier on the edges so it doesnt go from pure white starkly to brown. Usually when the snow is spotty like that it's because it has been melting. If it's warmer out it will be muddy at the edges, if it's colder, and the melting was earlier, it will have a layer of ice spreading under it. Either way the snow is rarely pure white and can be shaded lightly with browns, blues and purples to add depth to the transition with the ground. Overall though a great piece. I certainly look forward to seeing your stuff in the future.

Theres some pretty nice stuff there. Some of it's a bit freaky for my tastes, but I really like the gobos, and I never like goblins, so that's a good sign.

Bout time the Aicom stuff finally got released.

Hmmm how to say this as opposed to showing it. It's so much easier to just show... Metal is reflective. it pics up shadows and highlights from things around it. A slightly more stylized geometric way of painting can sometimes get that across better then an ultra smooth blend. Sharp toned probably isnt the right word. sharp edged maybe? I know, think of it this way. If you take your nice ultra smooth blend from deep shadow to bright highlight and then lay geometric patterns of shadow and highlight over that you can define the shape of your object better. Basically by a sharp toned shadow what I mean is one that has a hard edge on one side that transitions into a smooth blend on the other side. You know what, screw it. Let me show you. Hubbabubba, I hope you dont mind me messing with your picture to give an example.

The shadows on the trenchcoat are fine, if you add another couple of highlights to the folds instead. A bit darker in a couple places would help, but dont go overboard. My recommendation would be to take your next darker color and put it on the underside of fold of fabric that is over his shoulders and work out from there with it. Do the same thing directly behind and under his travel bag as well. Your glazing technique is working well on the clothes, but not as well on the skin tones. Your skin tones seem to have a shadow and a highlight but no midtone, and the underside of his hand seems to be the same color as the top of his hand where it's being hit by the blue light. This loses you some of the osl effect you're going for. Osl isnt just about casting the light, but also about casting the shadows. For the little spider dude it looks like mostly you need to work on blending. As with the skin tones your lighter colors just dont have the same smoothness that your darker ones do. Overall though I'd say the composition of the piece works well and you've got a good basis to build on.

Point by point: The face looks great, the transition to the hair look weird though. you'v got darklining all around it. If you look at someones face you'lll see shadows where the hair is hanging over teh skin, but not where it's actually growing out of the skin. Given that his hair is pulled straight back I'd recommend ditching the darklining and instead feather your hair color over your skin tone, and glaze a little skin tone in over the edges of the hairline. I cant really see the cloak well enough through the light reflections to give a good critic on it, but what I can see has interesting textures that I like. The buff color looks good and smooth but appears to be in need of sharper highlights. Not brighter, just sharper. The ones on the backpack look good, the ones in front with their rounded surfaces need the same touch. My main complaint on the metallics would be with Vike that they are too uniform. You've shaded the creavases, and the underside of the blade, but you havent gone through and defined the shadow areas. there are no sharp toned shadows next to bright tones anywhere except on the blade. You could instead go through and add sharp highlights and if you wanted to go through and make your sword look like a different metal then your gun you could even do them in different styles. Defining the shadows on the gun without adding any more highlights, while adding a sharp set of highlights to the sword. I hope that was helpful.

Welcome to Wyrd. Havent played Eve in a while, but it's a great game and the guys who design and run it are pretty cool too. Race for the Galaxy I was just introduced to last week. Solidly impressed me. It's like San Juan, only much more complex. So are you mostly a CCGer or what? Myself, I'm mostly a board gamer these days, but I used to be a hardcore CCG tourney player. I find minis games to be interesting, but honestly painting them is more fun.

I *so* want those bots!

We call that behavioral sciences.

Mini games day eh? Last time I went in there I got accosted by a Mr. Enthusiastic... Send me some info and I'll consider it if you promise to be my body guard.