Summer Scribbles

So, after a very long and relaxed summer it's time to get back into the swing of things. Today was the first proper day back at uni, in which we received our new assignment brief, based on music and concepts.

Over the summer I spent some time trying to figure out 'who I am' in terms of where my passions and talents lay. I played a lot of video games, went to the gym and worked to earn a little pocket money. Video games have always been a keen interest of mine and I've always admired the art style both in and out of game; World of Warcraft has always been a favourite and the splash art of League of Legends is something that really inspires me too. I enjoy painting digitally using a tablet and Photoshop but I also like using traditional mediums such as pencils, charcoals and water based paints.

This led me to come to the decision that my career should be in videogame and concept art. It's something I have a real interest in, playing games on anything from an Xbox to a Pc, and is a wide industry that's constantly growing. It's also somewhat of a 'niche' industry as not every graduate that comes from an illustration background will focus on this aspect of the art world- most want to go into narrative, editorial and freelance or agency illustration.

Lunar Goddess Diana- League of Legends Splash Art

There is a big focus in digital art in the gaming industry (although of course many artists produce sketches, scribbles and experiments like we all do) and a lot of finished images have been either completely rendered in Photoshop or at least touched up in a similar program. For this reason I spent my summer working on improving my digital painting techniques, the subject of which is a trotting bay horse. I did this because I know the anatomy of horses quite well having spent time in the past studying and drawing them and I wouldn't have to worry about that so much and could really focus on improving my shading.

Unfortunately during the show and tell of last Thursday it was hard to see the more delicate shading on the legs (especially the black ones). This is because my laptop screen is actually a lot lighter than that of a Mac; Windows monitors cannot usually be universally calibrated (which is a shame, I think) which resulted in the image looking quite different when shown on the university Mac screens.
This is an issue which will be resolved come Christmas time when I can afford a Mac, but until then I need to be mindful that checks will need to be made that my work isn't too dark or an ugly colour.

To add tone to the horse I used a 'paintbrush' brush on Photoshop with a low opacity depending on the colour and with less flow. This allowed me to build up the colour and add light or dark depending on the shadows and highlights. It was a good exercise, I think, to get me into the practice of using a graphics tablet again and getting used to working in preparation for the next year.