will's NOT sera art. nyeh.

[williamthebloody]

just so we're absolutely clear, you will forgive a guy after he drew THIS:

http://robliefeld.net/avengelyne10.htm

there are SO MANY things wrong with this illustration that my mind wants to eat itself. and he was probably paid giant gobs of money to make this "art"!!

also i'm taking a vote for the WORST HERO COSTUMES ever forced upon female characters, and these are at the top:

http://robliefeld.net/xf30.htm

seriously, rob?? looks like he shifted his focus from useless pouches to useless straps.

aaaaaaahhh!! see? i'm easily egged into bitchin' about the liefeld.

[alphatroll]

aw, c'mon guys, without that stuff we'd have SO much less to make fun of!

[williamthebloody]

new comic strip!



thankfully, it hasnt quite come to this. but, you never know...

[Squeek]

been there.

Great comic! I really like how you're starting to change up
the composition of the panels..it's working REALLY well!
and really funny too!

[alphatroll]

wow, that one's so familiar it barely registers....... i'm *sure* it's funny, maybe if you stand back a bit......

fin'ly checked out the archive..... i never saw the "tracts of land" one before! it's my new fave

[williamthebloody]

thanks, guys!
yanno, my own sense of humour is so... off kilter that i never know whether or not any one else will find them at all funny, or even if they're too inside-jokey.
good to know when i get one right!

[Squeek]

I have that same problem..

[williamthebloody]

the august 2009 The Monthly Gargoyles Art Contest is "back in time: the 1800s." this made me think of the character Demona, as she was actually alive and running around during that time. then i thought about all those old portraits with titles like "a portrait of a noble lady" or "potrait of a girl with flowers". so i went around checking out clasice pieces of art with titles like that until i came across

"a portrait of a woman" by ivan makarov



which i turned into
"a portrait of a demon" by ivan makarov c.1851
pencil



final coloured



i really put forth some major effort on this one. those dress fabric folds were an evil bitch. in case you can't tell, i coloured this entirely using layers, 9 of them. this pic stands out for me because you actually cannot see any of my original pencils at all and all you see is the work i did digitally.
overall i really like the final product. i hope that i actually win this time around because if a piece where i put in the amount of work that i did on this thing doesn't do it, i don't know what else i can do.

[alphatroll]

that is bloody awesome. you have now graduated to "does things I *wish* I knew how to do with layers"!

(ok, i could prolly figure it out eventually, but ya beat me to it)

also, nice job on the canvas texturing.... noticeable & effective without being overwhelming. I'm guessing the "less textured" parts had different layer transparency settings or something like that?

[The Flying Dracula Hair]

Wonderful detail on the dress!

[williamthebloody]

Wonderful detail on the dress!

thanks! i think the dress really makes the picture meself!

[alphatroll]

it occurs to me that it kinda reminds me of the one in the background towards the end of 28 Days Later...... & i have *no* idea how relevant that is.

[Squeek]

I really like her! I do quite enjoy that dress, I do.

Only thing that bothers me a little is the filter applied over top of her..
I think it works really well in the background, and I understand that
you were going for a textured-canvas feel..
but it kind of distracts from the colors and detail when applied over-top of her.

What if you tried selecting/ masking the background
and applying the filter just to it?
Might make her really pop out against the background, as well!
Either that or making more of a contrast between the lightest-lights
and the darkest-darks/ adding more highlights and shadows
would perhaps make her stand out a bit more..

Either way- very nice job!
man I miss this show...I should buy it.

[alphatroll]

I thot he did a nice job of toning down the canvas effect on the "picture" parts..... tho prolly there's *something* ya could do with contrast & hilites to make it even more subtle, relatively, yet still there.....

one trick i've used lately involves a blank layer, masked down to just the parts i'm working on, set to a "color burn" transparency, then airbrushed with black on 1% opacity..... it gives a really rich sort of shading, almost looks a little "oily" or somethin..... i used it on those "Aaron A Coloring Book" pics in my thread; i forget if i posted the goblins eating cookies, but working on those made me *really* hungry......

& you can also do the same with white and a "screen" or "dodge" setting for some real nice hilights.

[williamthebloody]

re: the canvas texturing.

on the background layer i used a depth of i think 4 and on the rest i used a depth of 1.

what i was TRYING to do was mimic the texturing in the background on the original painting. as you can see, it looks as though the artist used maybe a knife or summat on it and as a result, it experienced a little bit of cracking over the years, whereas the woman in the portrait in pretty well not-cracked. i searched and searched the various tools in Adobe, but could not find anything to achieve *quite* the effect for which i was looking. therefore, i defaulted on the canvas look because i felt i needed SOMETHING to jazz up an otherwise only gradient backdrop and it also helped to smooth out the striping that can occur when using gradients to cover a large area.

so that's why that happened.