By Crom!

[Velocity Kendall]

you know youre making progress when the newest version batters the older ones!

[J.R.Hollis]

you know youre making progress when the newest version batters the older ones!

Hell yeah.

That was one hurdle, but now I'm on to rendering and values. Which I'm willing to admit that I have absolutely NO experience with photoshop/corel. And it frightens me because this will make or break this piece. I need to create an exercise for myself to practice these skills. I see the values involved with the forms, maybe I don't know exactly where the light would fall down to the science but I think I have a good idea. I also did some sort of color study/render.

I want the color to be rich and well placed. I don't want this piece to look artificial. I'm looking at very painterly artists like Brom, Todd Lockwood, or this one guy named Daren Bader.

I'm not at their skill levels, they've had decades. But damn it do I want it bad enough.

[Griffonnage]

I'm okay with your black and white study, but for the colors, try not to make "lines" like what you did in the sky that will break the colors blending. Try to use a very very big brush (it's not important if you cover some part with the "wrong" color, you will adjust later), it's better to have a quick idea and it will cover large surface.

If you are beginning to work directly from colors, try to find some pictures that have the colors you want, look at the light, shadows, brightness (value) of these. Do not pick one color in one image and one shadow in another ! Create a palette with the major colors you want and start working with.

Do not forget to add a black and white layer on top of all your image if you want to check your value while working in colors that help a lot. You can check if your palette colors have a good value gradient too !



Here : the first value study miss some dark tone : try to have some dark grey, the more contrast you have in one image, the better is or you will have something flat or very very smooth (not really fit our favourite barbarian he ? )
The color value miss the white values, everything is too dark and will result in a big difficulty to "read" the image and create point of interest.

A mix of these two would be fantastic !

[J.R.Hollis]

I took your pure color approach and used some of Conan's pigment in Brom's piece. I switched to Corel Painter and its working out pretty smoothly. I need to figure out that almost glowing approach to skin that Brom uses, its definitely the look I want for this piece.

[pauloricardo]

Hello man, in a lot of aspects, this piece is better than the former pic you posted here...

Well... sometime ago, I saw a comic made by Richard Corben telling the history of Conan's grandfather, besides he is a good artist, I think his style on that comic did not worked. Well, your piece remember me of that comic, due to the emotionless faces

I think you could improve it by working in the emotions of the characters.... at the links below, you can notice that the artist(s) shows Conan always screaming when in battle. By studying some barbarians from Europe, some people theorize it is a try to intimidate or to make the enemy loosing the concentration.

http://www.strangekidsclub.com/2011/...conan-artwork/
http://loscomics.wordpress.com/conan/
http://inthemouthofdorkness.blogspot...ghter-and.html

best regards

[J.R.Hollis]

Thanks for the advice pauloricardo. This is a good suggestion, whats better than Conan chopping a monkey and screaming at the top of his lungs? But I was just thinking that Conan wouldn't be screaming like a beast at some punk monkey. Since he dominates the canvas I was just thinking that his expression should be of one of control/disgust. So I redrew the line to one of control/disgust, I'm going to have to incorporate it into the painting layer. I think its going to work out better, thanks for the advice!

And thanks again for the Diagram Griffonnmage.

If I where to ask for any kind of advice, it would be on how to paint this sucker. I read up on some color theory and I've incorporated it in another wash. Since the light is warm, the shadows are cool and complimentary. I know these rules aren't set in stone, but I felt like going from a lighter brown to a darker brown took some emotion out of whatever I made.

Thanks for all the advice up to this point, trust when I say that I really am considering the critiques I receive.

[cfhd]

I think you really need to darken those darks and not just use line work to define your edges. Right now there is not enough overall contrast between light and dark.

Also, your darks and shadows don't have to be just darker shades of the skin colour on each character, you can use dark blues and purples like real life for the shading.

[pauloricardo]

Hello... you are right... he doesn't need to screaming while punching the monkey... but a open mouth and some wrinkles on his face make the action be better...

best regards

[J.R.Hollis]

I think you really need to darken those darks and not just use line work to define your edges. Right now there is not enough overall contrast between light and dark.

Also, your darks and shadows don't have to be just darker shades of the skin colour on each character, you can use dark blues and purples like real life for the shading.

Great advice, I darkened the background too. He definitely pops.

[Griffonnage]

Take care at your values, again you changed them

And when you work in colors, do not be afraid to go for some saturation. I'm definitly not the best at colors (I'm a beginner with colors in paintings) but try to use theses references you have to create a palette and stick with it

Here is an exemple, but take that with some pinch of salt. The main idea was : dark value on foreground, middle value on middle ground and background very light. Tried to make a contrast between conan and the monkey, one is in blue/shadows, the other is in light/hot colors. That's maybe not the best colors or the best choices, but that just to illustrate my point

[J.R.Hollis]

Thanks for the PO man, that definitely changed the perspective.

I scraped that last paint job and tried blocking in shapes, I need practice, ill come back with a few more.

[J.R.Hollis]

Thanks for the PO man, that definitely changed the perspective.

I scraped that last paint job and tried blocking in shapes, I need practice, ill come back with a few more.

Another I made. I re-made the upper right back lighting, I woke up to take a second look at it and it needed some major overhaul. I'm probably going to go with this view after a few more iterations of the lighting. Thanks again for the suggestion Griffonmage, it really brings out the focal point in Conan's eye.

[J.R.Hollis]

I kept the front lighting. And I'm excited.

I went to my first figure drawing class ever, and a man that worked in the industry for 13 years told me that values are 100 times more important than color. This place screams this to everyone, I feel sorry I didn't truly click that in my head from the start.

Here is what I did:
- I took the third "color sketch" thingy and turned it into grey scale using Photoshop magic.
- duplicated it on another layer and turned it on multiply to darken the whole image.
- I erased the sky on the copied layer to keep the lighter values to pop Conan out.
- Pretty much repainted the monkey totem, using some Hindu god reference images.
- Worked on the sword using reference from Google.

I have to get some work done on the monkey so that the whole image can come together smoothly together.

I did plan on going to the zoo, where there is a gorilla exhibit. But its too cold down here, so ill have to settle for google again.

And I realized after I posted that the facial expression was lost. Ill work on that, but it is quite the sardonic look, don't you think?

[Griffonnage]

Wow ! You maybe lost Conan expression but you did well for all the other parts

And indeed, values are the most important thing, but do not forget colors are value too. Finaly, everything go to value ^^
But when it come to start using colors it's not easy to figure that while working. You find your way with this greyscale, keep going !

[J.R.Hollis]

I worked on the expression.

The first toothy grimace didn't look right, and I tried to use as much teeth reference as possible. It made him look really young and crazy looking. Which wasn't what I had in mind.

So I opted for a closed mouth expression, which looks a lot more Conan than a toothy grimace. Controlled, almost disgusted. Pursing the lips together, you can see that he feels no sense of valor or victory by butchering this monkey.

But the chimp started it.

[J.R.Hollis]

Took a big brush and worked on the monkey. Gave it a really thick coat.

I thought that the highlight sheen leads up to Conan nicely.

Edit:
Smoothed out the fur, closed the monkey's eyes. Add fingers.

Now I'm wondering how to add color to this thing now that the values are all put down. I see grey scale to color compositions that look awesome and have about the same range of values in my piece. But I can't seem to get very luscious colors when I make a multiply or overlay layer.

Do...do people just paint over? Can you do that?

[J.R.Hollis]

I've been struggling for the past week trying to add some color to this thing. I broke down, and now I'm crawling back to you guys.

Throw some abuse my way why don't you.

[J.R.Hollis]

I went back to the golden hour color scheme that I lost while adding pigment.

[Griffonnage]

Very nice improvement you have someting nice in term of mood !

[J.R.Hollis]

I think....I'm done! Unless anyone has something to throw my way.

Looking back at what I had before, I think that this is a step in the right direction. I know that a month from now that my next finished pieces probably won't look like this. I'm going to have to look for a more elegant technique then what I ended up using since early February up to now. But if anything I think this is me creating a process for myself, a ground work. I've never made a full piece on the computer before, feels like I leveled up a little bit.

Moving on from rats to wolves now.

Thanks for the help you guys, its been fun figuring this thing out with some guidance.

[Griffonnage]

The only thing you can do now is adding refining details, and refining and refining... I don't think that will help you more to do it on this piece. You worked on it a lot of time, now fresh air will be good !

You achieved something really nice, you found a way to create a full piece from sketch to final, now it is time to start a new one and think about what you want to improve/understand more. You maybe want to work more the values steps, or the composition steps, or the colors...

Currently I think your big issue is that you are a little "in hurry" you go quickly forward and sometime do not take enough time on early steps. That's something we all do, we want to go as soon as possible at the rendering phase because it's the one that look the most funny. If you just continue to improve your process and clearly create "steps" for yourself to work, I'm sure you will improve super fast.

Anyway, really nice piece, I'm looking forward for the next one