What happened to the paper, you lazy git?! ( July 6 )

[Calle_]

groovy, post some more pencil drawings, they are wicked

[Matt Dixon]

Just a messy DSG effort. Thanks for the comments.

sOltan - I wish there was a method I could share with you, but I'm ashamed to say I don't really put much thought into my palette choices - I have an idea which hues I want to use when I start but in the early stages of a painting, I'm usually just throwing around any old colour within that range. Of course, an understanding of basic colour theory is a huge help and I suppose experience does have a part to play but I'm quite often driven by spontaneous happenings on the canvas - 'Ooh, I like that colour! I'll use that over here...'. If I want a particular hue, I'm more likely to 'mix' it against the existing image than go for a specific value in the colour picker. Sorry if that's not a lot of help.

[Summer Pudding]

Great work again Matt. Love it.

It's good to see I'm not the only one with a shambolic, haphazard methodology.

Five stars from me.

[van]

Wow, that last one is just amazing. I just cant love your paintings enough. :p

[Matt Dixon]

Thanks, boys. You are my friends.

[Yina]

wow, im digging that 2nd last dsg! i really like your choice of colours, great

[buzzz3d]

Solid gold.

[DavidCousens]

Matt, your DSGs rule. Fact.

[The Iconoclast]

Mmm... sweet stuff. :chug: You seem to churn them out rather quickly. I like your looser painting style in some of them. And you get much praise for Mr. Munster. I used to love that show...

[van]

Oh my god, thats fucking awesome. Pardon my language...but crap. That rocks.

[xia]

Originally posted by Matt Dixon

Holy Cow superb!!! twenty thousand thumbs up!

[Hunger_Artist]

Matt, These are SUPER SEXY!

You work with such vibrant colors in your painting I can see how drawing could get boring for you.. but dont stop, because they are awesome too.

[Yiako]

Your colors are amazing. Maybe you're daltonic in the _right_ way... umm.

[Matt Dixon]

Blimey! Thankyou all for such kind comments - they make me very happy..!



See?

[xia]

Holy freaking smoking Robinson!!!! U are one awesome painter!!!
How long have u been doing this!?
Seems like you nail a pretty dramatic lighting and composition really well. I want your painting hand.
U must be good with oil painting too huh!

Would u mind sharing with us your process how to go about it to achieve such look u have?

[van]

Im with xia! We need a play by play....PLEASE. With LOTS of plays.

[spok]

it's been such a while i haven't visited.....magnificent, but my favorites still remain the pirates!

[Matt Dixon]

Some process pics for 'Tuesday Afternoon on the Scrapyard Moon'. I'm not very comfortable showing stuff like this because I don't have a 'process' as such, but what the hell.

I think it's fairly obvious what's going on in each pic, but I'll try and explain a little of what's in my head...



Just slapping down colour. I have an rough idea how I want the final image to look, so I'll throw around a big brush to obscure that intimidating white canvas and provide some colour and texture to work against. Very little of this remains in the final pic, but it serves to help establish the overall composition - I'll be picking up colours from this mess later, so it's also part of my palette. Once I'm done with the background, I paint in the rough form of the robot. I know I'm not going to spend too long on this pic, so I'm working out of shadow because it's nice and quick. Starting this way also helps to encourage dynamic poses and compositon - if your pics reads well as a silhouette, you have a strong framework to hang your rendering on.



Modelling. I'm scrubbing over the silhouette with a single colour to define the forms, teasing the background where I need to. When I know where things are going, I'll begin to model those shapes further with some different values and hues. Things are still very rough and ready. I'm leaving the bottom left corner at the moment - can't decide quite what to put there yet.



More of the same. Continuing to layer on gradually brighter values . I lit up his eyes at this point - I used green to contrast with the hues in the rest of the pic, which should hopefully make them a focal point. Touched in some subtle greens against the robot's body - the light from his eyes probably wouldn't reflect in those areas, but it helps unify the colour scheme a bit. Now the pic's starting to take shape, I'm also fiddling with a few extra details. Considering what to add in that corner - maybe a box of spares or a little kid with a spanner, fixing his metal pal?



Tidying up. Painted into a few areas with a big brush to lift them out of the shadows. More details and a final round of highlights. Decided on a pile of scrap in the corner ( the kid would have taken too long to paint in ). In the final stages, I'm working up the background adding some distant piles of scrap and adding some final detailing to the rest of the pic. The jackdaw is a nod the Foster-esque design of the robot, and the tin heart in a limp attempt to give the pic some sort of meaning.

Finished pic

In the finished pic, I made the canvas a bit taller - partly to allow for the moon and tall pile of scrap to make a bit more sense of his environment, but also to help offset the rather confused composition I ended up with.

All done. Just over two hours of rough and ready robot fun. All painted in Photoshop CS using custom brushes.

Hope it was interesting.

[xia]

Awesome! thanks for sharing them with us. Very helpful and very comprehensible. Thanks a whole lot Matt.
Looking forward for more...

[Jaded]

thanks for sharing Matt! Very helpful! Your awesome and inspiring.

[young paddy1]

Always loved your dirty (not muddy) style and that is one of the best procedurals I've seen on this sight, almost totally self explanatory and a joy to behold, Props to the man with my first name.

[DNA]

:clapping2 just G R E A T :clapping2

[van]

YES! You rock. Thank you very much for letting us take a peek at your process.

:blue:

[Matt Dixon]

Thanks, guys. I'm glad you liked the process pics - I rarely spend any time analysing the way I work, so it was an interesting exercise for me, too!

Anyone fancy a friendly drawing challenge? I'm quite busy at the moment, which really drains my inspiration - having a little task to focus on would be a great help. Nothing too serious...

[Groover McNab]

awesome awesome awesome awesome. thanks for posting your process. cool stuff!

[Matt Dixon]

Thanks Groover and Troy. No takers on some good natured art duelling, then?

[DavidCousens]

*right click, save, right click, save*

Sorry, where was I?

If you haven't found anyone to draw with by Monday, I can come out and play if you'd like, Matt. I've got too much on this week though. PM me sometime if you're up for it, but if you find someone else, I won't hold it against you!

[young paddy1]

you gotta whole freaky scrapyard thing going on here don't ya, have the robots been making idols or is it just my imagination, that thing on the right looks like a forlorn face, love your stuff probably always will, the lighting kicks some serious ass.

[Groover McNab]

No takers on some good natured art duelling, then?

oh I didn't even see that. I'd be up for it. I'm definitely not up to your skill level but pm me if you want.

[Matt Dixon]