Mountain

Mountains are not my favourite thing.
They are tall, and proud, and pretentious.
If mountains could drive, they would drive a SUV.

However, there is a lot to learn by painting snow.
The shifts in hue and saturation are subtle, and require a lot of observation. There are strong blues on the surfaces untouched by direct light, and warms, and highlights.
And I love the randomness of snow scattered on rocks and cliffs.

Anyway, this comes from one of the lunch break sketches I did a while ago.
With all the freelance work I’m doing at home after my day at Jagex, I have to confess that lately I don’t have much brain energy left. This means I can’t focus on studies and proper practice as I normally would, and developing an old sketch like this can be a way to relax while still being productive.
It also means I struggle to find creative names for my files, apparently.

As usual (yes, doing something twice makes it a habit), I’m also posting the process.

by Paolo Puggioni

The Stone

This is the first environment I painted in a long while.
I had been drawing characters for a few months and I kind of needed some relaxing, loose painting to work on.

I did this without nothing particular in mind, so well, you can;t find a story in it.
If you have a look at the process I’m posting below you’ll also notice I overlaid some textures pretty soon, then I painted over them, then I added some other textures, then I painted over those as well.

Not exactly the canonical approach, but what the hell, I have been watching series through out the entire process, this was just for the sake of painting.
Hence the highly creative name I managed to find for this city carved in the stone.

by Paolo Puggioni

Catelyn Stark

Another drawing from the first set I made for the Game Of Thrones RPG.
This one was was quite hard, I have to confess I have some troubles at drawing horses.
Horses have stupid legs, full of knees!

The Catelyn I depicted here is not the same you see in the Game of Thrones books, or in the series.
She is young here, not yet married to Ned Stark, her face void of all the troubles she would face in the future.
Or, well, of all the prodigies I can’t spoil!

For some reasons I set the scene in a snowy landscape, thinking of Winterfell rather than Riverrun, where Catelyn would likely have been during her youth.
However, despite Riverrun being further south, it gets some snow every now and then, so I figure it doesn’t really matter.
Neither the Art Director at Green Ronin nor George R.R. Martin complained about it, so here she is.

by Paolo Puggioni

Painting Black Skin, A Shaman

Painting black skin can be quite tricky, at least for me. Dark skin gets highlights in a completely different way from White or Asian, and can go all the way to white. It’s difficult to get it right.

I started this painting a couple of days ago, as nothing more than a doodle. I had just finished a freelance assignment, and after the incredible amount of refinement and detailing I had put in it, I just wanted to paint something just for fun, as loosely as possible.
So I randomly got a sketch from the series I posted a while ago and started to develop it a bit further.
Then I got stuck, I had just painted an Oompa-Loompa.

I started again, and managed to paint someone with an orange artificial fake-tan. I was getting close.

The third time I removed most of the reds and got the base colour almost right. After that, most of the work was done. By looking at reference pictures I noticed that dark skin bounces back a lot less light than white skin (duh!), apart from some areas around the eyebrows and nose, which are more reflective.
Painting the rest was just fun, and since I kept the layers I also exported a gif of the process.

I couldn’t help noticing that most of the creative part (the fun bit) is done in the first two-three frames, the rest is pretty much polishing.
I must ponder on that.

Towards the end – hey, all this took less than two hours, that’s unlike me – I felt the urge to think of a more creative name than “untitled1.psd”, and I just didn’t want to call him “Black Guy With a Fuchsia Headscarf”.
So I painted a few tacky ornaments on his head and there you go, a Shaman.

by Paolo Puggioni

Sketches, Just Some More

I’m up to my knees into my freelance assignment, which is kind of cool because I’m quite enjoying it.
Plus – I know I shouldn’t be the one saying it – but what I’v done so far is also pretty cool and I can’t wait to show it around:)

On the other hand, for a week or so I won’t be able to post anything other than my warm up sketches, I’m afraid.
So there you go.
Again, some of them are just scribbles, some others might be transformed into something.
Next week hopefully.

by Paolo Puggioni

Sketches, Again

It’s been a hectic week, both at home and at work.
Actually, since I’m still working on a fairly big freelance assignment, I can’t really tell the difference between home and work.
Apart from the ugly, extremely comfortable fluffy grey trousers I can shamelessly wear at my own desk.

Despite the lack of time, I can still manage to sneak in a few warm up sketches here and there, usually first thing in the morning.
It’s good practice, and in the long run it pays off in making your proper work faster. And hopefully slightly better.

by Paolo Puggioni

Digital Painting Tutorials

For some odd coincidence today I’ve been asked by three different people if I knew any nice digital painting video tutorials.
The answer is yes, I have a bookmark folder full of them, gathered over the years.

I’ll just post just my favourites for now, if you want something more there’s a thread on the Hub with LOADS of other inks to non-only-video tutorials. Most of them are for beginners, some others are for traditional painting, there’s something for pretty much every taste.

Anyway, if you start from the following and explore the Youtube suggestions you’ll have about a month worth of viewing.

If anyone knows of something important I missed feel free to comment!

FZD School of Design. This is probably the best known. Awesome stuff in there, plus Feng seems a pretty nice guy.

Mike Corriero.

Bugmeier.

Sinix.

The Art of Daarken.

Drawing Tutorials Online.com

Marco Bucci. I remembered there were more tutorials around by him. If you make a search you might find some more results.

Genn Vilppu. Not digital but very informative.

Noah Bradley. Just discovered, I’ve watched only a couple of them, really nice!

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