ArtOrder Story Extraction Challenge: Fireaxe.

Well, it's finally finished, and I have to say I really enjoyed doing this one. I've learnt heaps again...more so what not to do, alway trying to fail better next time. ;D
Anyway, I hope my works in progress has enlightened you in some way and that you've enjoyed the journey as much as I have. Cheers!

ArtOrder Story Extraction Challenge WIP 6-7

I have finished off the womans details and I have let it dry for day or so. Now comes the interesting part of adding the stars. Knowing that the white paint that I have is slow drying and the deadline was very close, I decided in the end to use goauche. I had a brush that had some thick bristles, I think it's used for craft glue. Anyway, I masked up my painting with some ordinary baking paper with cut away areas....see below. I then watered down my gouache a little dipped in the brush and used the handle of another brush to fling the paint around. Have to say it was over in no time and the effect looked really good. I then used a soft make-up brush dipped in water to clean away any unwanted stars. I used a really small watercolour brush to add in the blank spaces to eleiminate any black holes.

ArtOrder Story Extraction Challenge WIP 5

I put in quite a few hours on the weekend and got alot done on the womans face. There's still much more to go on her and the mans face before they're done. I know it's not a very good shot of it but hey, I'm not a good photographer ;) The deadline is approaching fast and I think I'm going to invest in some cobolt drier to speed things up next time round.

ArtOrder Story Extraction Challenge Flesh Pallet

I thought I'd show you what I meant in my last post about the paint strings. Here is the photo of the pallet I'm currently useing for the male head. On the right is my value stick, something I made for myself some time ago. On the left is the globs of Grey, Yellow Ochre, Terra Rosa. In the middle is my paint patches to try and get the values right. The left paint patch is of Indian Red which I'll most likely use for lips nose and ears later on in the process. Trying to find the value of a colour is something that I've yet to achieve with remote success. With my reds above I have found I'm a little off the mark after looking at them through photoshop, my Yellow Ochre appears to be right....at least that's something I guess ;)

ArtOrder Story Extraction Challenge WIP 4

So here's the latest update. As you can see I've done quite a bit on the insect-like ship. I decided to go with a green metalic colour scheme. I'll wait 'till the ship is totally dry before I attempt any further painting. While waiting for the lower part to dry I started painting in the males head. I laid out globs of paint in value strings of 1,3,5,7, and9. In those strings I have Yellow Ochre, Terra Rosa and Grey.

ArtOrder Story Extraction Challenge WIP 2 - 3

At this stage I bended the background more trying to ease the space into the sky, I'm still not satisfied how it's going and will work on it more once it's dry.

I've decided to add the the snow in and play around with the elements that make up the lower scene. I added Magenta, Cyan mixed with 50/50 Titainium White and Lead White for the shadow of the snow.

ArtOrder Story Extraction Challenge WIP 1

Here I've started laying in the first layers of colours. First off, I cover the board in Translucent Cyan and rubbed out the areas I wanted to show white. I'm useing Cresent illustration board whith a few coates of gesso. Next I started the really dark areas with Ivory Black and Prussian Blue. I still need to lay in more dark areas so that it merges with the sky better.

ArtOrder Story Extraction Challenge

Over at ArtOrder there's a challenge which interests me to the piont of giving it a go. I've chosen to do the sci-fi Fireaxe challenge, which I might add will be reviewed by Irene Gallo the art director of Tor books. So I did quite a few thumbnails to flesh out an idea. Below are some of the ones I did for this challenge.

And finally I arrived at this sketch. I droped the idea of the helmets as I have no reliable prop or reference to make it believable.