Buoy & Boat

I painted an image I made a long time ago on a paintBBS. This time there's no fancy border or lines. The background doesn't really lend itself to lines.

East of the Girl West of the Bear 5

This is the title page to the book. I didn't notice at the time but I switched around "Bear" and "Girl" but it doesn't really matter. I couldn't really think of a better name. I don't like the title "East of the Moon West of the Sun". I think it is supposed to conjure up thoughts of a mysterious place beyond reality, but it depends on a misunderstanding of how the moon and sun move in the sky. This book isn't about moons or suns at all even. It's about a girl and her werebear billionaire.
This image is the last of the full sized images without any text in. The remaining images will basically be made to become assets to be digitally assembled. I'll still post the smaller paintings as they are made though.

Head

I drew a face. It is a French philosopher from the 19th century, but it just looks like Liam Neeson. I'm starting to get a hang of this pen tablet. His face still looks a bit scratchy. I'm not quite sure how to get it much nicer. I think more faded brushes and more blending. It's not terrible though. I made this by doing a line sketch first. Maybe in future something like this won't require it.

East of the Girl West of the Bear 4

These took a while longer to complete compared with the last couple because I had to pause for a commission set of paintings. Those will be up sometime in the near future too. These paintings are showing when the girl goes to the troll castle and solves the bear's curse. This represents a big departure from the original story. I think it enhances it and makes it more palatable to better morals.

Sculptris Test

I haven't really done much with 3d software. Strike that, I've done a whole lot with 3d software, notably Simply 3d 2 for Windows 98 when I was a kid. But it wasn't a very powerful software, but I did manage to use it far, far past its designed boundaries. Apart from that one, I hardly touched 3d programs.

When it finally stopped working with Windows XP being unable to run it, I tried to look for an alternative. I did try Bryce 3d during the same time but it wasn't even as useful as Simply 3d 2. I tried 3d Studio Max and Lightwave but they were really difficult and alien. I was amused that it took me literally 30 minutes to figure out how to input a cube into Lightwave. There was another software, an indie one that my dad bought me for way too much money. I forgot what it was called, it was specifically designed for amateur animators. I think it was called Hash 3d. I made a couple of small things, but I couldn't really animate very well. It was a whole lot of work.

Later on when open source software was a thing, I tried Blender and was old and patient enough to follow tutorials and make a few things. It also included some sculpting options, but the version I tried way back when, the sculpting only effected the parallax occlusion on the bumpmap. Maybe not? Trying to build things in mesh was terribly difficult and time consuming.

So now software has advanced so they are much more understandable to an artist. We didn't got to art school to learn how to use complicated scientific tools like Lightwave. I found this new program called Sculptris, a free one from the Zbrush people. I think Zbrush's sculpting is similar too. But this type of 3d sculpting program is much much more intuitive. They do have their limitations. (It's impossible to make a hole for example.) It's very easy to make something that will break the software. You can make a lumpy claggy mess in 2 seconds that will crash the software. But anyway, I had a go and made these things!

Some sort of scull, a green frog and some sort of spiky red frog. They all took an hour or two, without any references.

Minenhåndværk Slot

This is a building I made on a non-cheat vanilla multipayer Minecraft server. I'm using client-side shaders mods to take nice pictures. I took inspiration from Danish castles and palaces, although I couldn't really replicate the colors due to resources. The inside is mostly hollow though. This is something artistic right? Should I be too embarrassed to put it on my art-blog? Maybe.

East of the Girl West of the Bear 3

This is more images from the same book. I've gone for fully rectangle images without paper showing through. The other ones had different shaped edges, because illuminated manuscripts would often just be ornimentation without any backing color or image. But it is difficult erasing pencil instead of painting over it; it just gets gummed up in the sandier paint.

Diver & Mermaid

I started this painting in 2013. I left it unfinished for a long while. I'm not sure exactly why, but I think it is because I was using a large watercolor paper pad cover as a backing board, and when I painted it the board went all bobbly. After that I bought a proper panel board for painting and this one was left there. I noticed it and thought I could finish it in a day so I did! It's a painting based on a sketch, found earlier in this blog, where a guy in an old timey diving suit is improbably jamming music with a mermaid under the water. She does have one tit showing, but I don't think it's too risqué. Although, she is enjoying playing that old timey woodwind very much. Anyhow, enjoy.

New Fonts!

I created two fonts for the book. I couldn't find a font that was quite right. Usually the spacing in each font, even ones based on illuminated manuscripts, are too large and modern to look similar to originated illuminated manuscripts. The kerning and spacing is particularly hard to get correct, and there are probably a few errors still remaining. But the result is still pretty good. I made this by writing on paper with a calligraphy pen. Then I scanned them in. Once in digital form, I used Inkscape to trace the bitmap image and turn them into vector shapes. Then I used Birdfont to turn the vector shapes into a font! Voila! C'est me font neveaux! I don't know how to speak French.

East of the Girl West of the Bear 2

Here are more images I made for the East of the Moon West of the Sun book. On the Heron image, something strange happened. I was using a neon-orange paint in the sky and water to mix and the scanner was unable to pick up the color! It just came out as off-white. The Heron's sky should look a little more like dusk. I might be able to adjust the image digitally to look more like the original.