Intermission - Super Acrylic Nebula Finished

Holy smokes, it's alive!  I will resume posting here in about a month.  There will be changes.  Things will be better.

In the meantime, I have finished the acrylic painting of the Orion Nebula.

I started this painting nearly a year ago (last October, to be precise), when I was painting several variations of the Orion Nebula.  What inspired me was a false-color image of the Nebula's "tracer bullets"–globs of stellar dust shooting across space–colored in bright orange and blue.  You can read more about the tracer bullet phenomenon in this article by the Faulkes Telescope Project.

There was some pre-planning to this painting, but not a lot.  I was afraid I would procrastinate on it and end up not doing it out of various fears, so I pushed ahead as fast as I could.  The lack of pre-planning made certain stages later on more difficult.  Even so, I do not regret starting it so quickly.

This was not a complicated painting.  I had the blue-and-orange Nebula, and the astronaut and his spacecraft.  I went back and forth painting layers for the Nebula and the dark blue of deep space, and the spacecraft.  Halfway through the painting, the orange and the blue were mixing together and becoming a muddy green.  I went back, whited the muddy parts out, and repainted them.  The final stages of the painting were lighting up the blue nebula bullets, and adding the off-white highlights on the astronaut and spacecraft.

What I learned from this painting:

• Prime the canvas the main background color.  This prevents the bright white canvas from throwing off how colors appear to your eyes.
• Develop the underpainting as much as you need to.  It is the foundation your painting will stand on.  I did not develop it for this painting, and it made finishing the spacecraft much more difficult.
• Don't leave your wet palette alone for weeks on end.  The paint becomes runny and useless for painting.  The palette gets smelly and moldy, and you have to delay working on the painting in order to clean the paper and sponge.

With these lessons in mind, I can do that much better on the next space painting.

Engaging Hibernation Protocols

This blog is going to go silent for a while while I work out what I want to do with it.  I still want to make science-fiction art, and write science-fiction stories...however, I haven't focused in on what I want beyond that basic desire, and that's not doing this blog much good.  It's too unfocused, mechs one week, astronauts the next.  I don't know if it bothers anyone else, but it bothers me, because I feel like I'm not doing it right.  I'm just taking shots in the dark, instead of presenting something worthwhile to look at.

So I will be back.  No question about that.  It will likely be a few months, maybe more than a few, but I will return, and when I do, I will have a purpose and a focus for this sci-fi blog.  I'll see you then.

Fighter Patrol

Hashed this out quick, two heavy starfighters on a casual patrol.  Based off a photo of a pair of F-14 Tomcats in a similar formation.

Sketch 1/18/16: Fast Landing

A quick experiment.  I started with abstract watercolor shapes, and added the ships in ink afterwards.  It was only when I was laying the water texture down that I realized, "Wait a minute, the main cruise spaceship is accelerating towards the ocean..."

I've got it.  The captain was a washout from the local starfighter-force program.  His cruise ship's passengers forever suffer (or enjoy, depending on temperament) him living out his inane fantasies of piloting the lumbering starliner like a nimble starfighter.  Yeah.  That's it.

Sketch 1/11/16: Demon Guitar

Short on time today.  Here's my take on a heavy metal sorceress, complete with a leather vest, dead dragon, and demon guitar.

Mercenary Mechs: Sunspot Crusher

Continuing the theme of gouache-giant-robot-paintings, I present Sunspot Crusher, the sniper-mech.  It's mostly elbows and knees and looks a bit goofy, but when you're packing the most power anti-armor laser this side of the Rockies (mounted in the right-shoulder wedge), you can get away with looking goofy.  The laser is, however, temperamental and expensive to maintain, meaning Crusher has to work all the harder to 1) land contracts and 2) avoid getting hit.

I was a little looser with this painting than the one for Challenger Jax, I tried some blending in the initial stages.  It wasn't 100% what I expected, but I liked part of the final result, and learned something.  Worth it.

Like Challenger Jax, Sunspot Crusher used to be unreasonably huge.  Crusher now would be a little taller than Jax, because it was built lighter, and could be built taller, all to give the pilot a better field of vision, and the laser a better field of fire.

Sketches 12/28/15: Mecha Fun Time

Soldier mech.

Casual sketches for possible Mercenary Mechs.  10% "serious consideration of role of mech in world" and 90% "this looks cool, let's try it".  It is by far the most enjoyable of any sketching.

Samurai mech with lightning/EMP super-sword-weapon.

Gunslinger mech, with extra targeting radar in the "hat" and shoulder fins.

Knight lancer mech with rockets.  Lots of rockets.

Stealth mech with its only (albeit extremely powerful) weapon stuck in its torso.

Super Acrylic Nebula, Part 2

Made some more progress on the acrylic rendition of the "tracer bullet" nebula, I darkened the interior gases of the nebula and the open space beyond it.

Mercenary Mechs: Challenger Jax

This is Challenger Jax, main mech of the Mercenary Mechs story I'm currently working on.  Piloted by a crew of two, it's built for assault operations and for taking on and repelling enemy mechs.  It is armed with reinforced fists and frontal armor, two laser apertures (one in each forearm), and twelve missiles, set in packs on either side of the head.

The original design for Challenger Jax was a little more ridiculous in size, as in 14 stories tall.  Like this:

Mercenary Mechs started out as "giant robots vs giant robots".  I developed it and thought things out for a while, and scaled the mechs down to 3-4 stories/15-20 meters high (capping one story at 5 meters tall).  It works better, and fits the setting better...but if I had the chance, I would paint the original pose again in a heartbeat.

Reaper's Moon

Going for that atmospheric, bleak feeling only black and white ink can provide.  Not a whole lot else to this one.  Death is my go-to subject when I'm bummed...maybe not the best idea, but it's what I do.  You've got to grab the emotion while you have it, and get its form down on paper.

Dragun Knight

Credit for this idea goes to my friend Zach.  He had an idea for knights who were awarded or armed with pistols or rifles which had been spelled with the powers of dragons.  The resulting creation he termed "Draguns".

I like the idea, as you can see by my sketch of it.  It could fit a variety of scenarios.  The knights use the power of hostile dragons against them; the dragons have lent the knights a portion of their power; the mages stole the dragons' power and gave it to the knights, and the dragons are greatly aggravated because of it and declare war, and on and on.  Silly, but fun enough that it's worth the silliness.

I mean, it's a knight with a magic pistol.  What's not to like?

Infantry Mech, Finished

So here is the finished Type 21 infantry mech drawing.  I've got more of an idea what I want for this mech now, and the characters associated with it (pragmatic, blunt, mercenary, survivalist, suspicious).  It's not the final design, but a step in that direction.

I started it with a ballpoint sketch, and colored it with Prismacolor colored pencils.  The lightest tones, from the primary light, feet, and reflected light were Cream, Beige, and Cloud Blue.  The midtones were mostly in Warm Grey 30% and Cool Grey 50%, with Cool Grey 70% helping out in the areas to be shadowed.  The dirt splotches and dusty tone around the legs was with Light and Dark Umber.  The secondary light was done with Blue Slate.  For the darkest parts, I used additional Cool Grey 70% and Black, and used Ultramarine to hint at the secondary light on the dark parts.

Infantry Mech WIP

This is the "Type 21" (working designation) mech from Mercenary Mechs.  While not literally an infantry mech, it is much less flashy, cheaper, and easier to produce than the other big (i.e. main character) mechs.  It is meant to be fielded in numbers, and to take losses in place of more valuable forces.  In this way, it is an "infantry mech" of a sort.

Medium is colored pencil over a pen outline on Strathmore smooth Bristol.  It's more of an experiment than anything else, I wanted to see how the two went together.

Sketches 11/9/15: Sniper-Mech

Not much to tell this week, testing out a new sketchbook that can fit the scanner.  This is the sniper-mech from the Mercenary Mechs story currently under way.  I hope to have something to present in a month or so, story-wise, stay tuned.

Super Acrylic Nebula, Part 1

Yep, I'm taking one more shot at the Orion Nebula and its "tracer bullet" nebula bits.  This time it's acrylic on canvas, and much larger than the previous two paintings.

It's going to take a while to finish, with work and other projects taking up my time, but it's good to paint in large scale again.

Synthashredder

Crashed this out in about an hour.  I call him Sythashredder.  He's a deadly combination of keyboard musician and cyberpunk warrior, and travels the undercity searching for dive bars with the proper auras to play his groovy tunes.

That's all for now, folks.

Heroes of A Thousand-plus Faces

You know what happens when you let old, dear characters you made up years ago stay around for years?  You get too many ideas for them, too many to fit in one story, maybe (probably) too many to fit in all of the stories you could ever write.  Too many sides to their personalities, too many possibilities, too many storylines, too many character developments, too many endings...you get the idea.

These four are some of my most dear, and most troublesome characters, with all of the issues mentioned above.  From top to bottom: Victor, who has been a jet/starfighter pilot, villain, military-pal-in-reserve-or-on-leave, and general amusing chinstrap-wearin'-party-animal.  Xavier, who has been a trucker, an adventurer, also a starfighter pilot, a bush pilot, and nominated Most Likely to be Main Character Someday.  Reyna, the leading lady, close friend/sidekick/romantic interest for Xavier, sometimes a waitress, sometimes an adventurer, and sometimes a starfighter and mech-suit pilot.  And Jasmine, Reyna's younger sister, who was the jack-of-all-trades support character, cute freckled redhead, and once was an evil overlord (overqueen?) commanding a space dreadnought.  And now I'm considering merging her with another character (a vaguely defined commando or cop) to make a totally new Jasmine.

Long story short, I have my beloved, dorky-teenage-years characters still hanging around, and if they want a story I've got to decide what to keep and what to prune.  On the bright side, whatever gets taken off can potentially be used for other characters...and the cycle will begin once again...

Super Gouache Nebula

Take 2 on the orange-blue nebula idea, and I am pleased with the results.  Instead of towers that look like Dr. Seuss-themed gummy snacks, the pinpoint glow effects and stars are sharper, the streams of gas and dust are more defined, and the contrast is much greater.

Gouache is a step in the right direction.  For a truly proper rendering of a nebula, I believe acrylic on a large canvas would be the most appropriate method I have on hand.  Oils would be the best method, except I don't have any oils and have zero experience with them.  I appreciate the masterpieces done by other painters, but I myself am sadly impatient, and so use faster-drying mediums.

For comparison, here's the watercolor nebula painting.  I discovered that my reference photo was of the Orion Nebula, and that the blue "tracer bullets" are globs of nebula material shooting through space.  They are described in detail here.

(The gouache painting was scanned with my new scanner, the Canon P-208II.  It's a tiny portable scanner, it got the colors almost exactly right, it can scan up to 600dpi, and the only downside so far is it can't scan anything wider than 8.5 inches.)

Scythe Aesthetics

So this guy happened to my old scanner, which is now dead and gone.  The new one should be arriving any day now.

Death, as "the Reaper", gets a lot of variation in treatment in artwork.  The angle I find most compelling I would describe as realistic, solemn, and with careful elements of high fantasy added here and there.  Realistic and solemn I choose because Death is kind of a Big Deal.  He's the end of the road, the gatekeeper to the next world, the law no one escapes.  He should have an air of gravitas, solemn and grave (pun not intended, I swear), because of his position and responsibility.

Elements of high fantasy I choose because that's me, I enjoy coming up with fantastical things.  I specify "elements" because one of my pet peeves is a cartoony Death with a cartoony, overly ornamented scythe.  It's not the ornamentation I take issue with, though, it is the degree to which is it applied.  I would depict Death's scythe with a degree of decoration similar to a sword, or a wine goblet: it's polished enough or has just enough gems to show you're a person of importance, a knight, a noble, whomever, yet that polish or those gems won't get in the way of the sword or the goblet fulfilling its intended function.

Death I imagine as someone who wears the uniform (or robe) and tools and accessories of his position, and leaves it at that.  He wears them.  They are just ostentatious enough to show he is Death, the Reaper, and that is all.  He doesn't flaunt them or show them off, he goes about his duty and that is that.

A last note...if you take Death's scythe literally, as a farmer's scythe, it would be curved out to one side to fit around the farmer's body, an element which I incorporated it into the picture here.

Climate Control/Telescope Dish

The scanner died this week, so it will be digital art until I can get it replaced.  I busted this out in about forty-five minutes, just goofing around with an idea.  The big dish there is a kilometers-wide climate-control device, the world's most ambitions radio telescope, or some combination of both.  And something's gone wrong with it, otherwise there wouldn't be a fleet rushing to take control of it.