Art Practice: Mike Mignola’s Hellboy (Part 3)

From Part 2:

009 Photoshop image layered for painting & fills

010 Paint Whitespace

011 Paint Background

012 Paint Uniform colour

013 Adjusted brightness level

014 Selection Brush Tool to copy signature & caption

015 Add border – Over-paint w Dry Media Brush on Transparency settings

016 Practice 1 Completed

Quite happy with this practice session. I’d say it’s a pretty decent replica of the original:

Check out Hellboy, vol1: Seeds of Destruction.

Art Practice: Mike Mignola’s Hellboy (Part 2)

From Part 1:

Layering Practice1

Layering Practice2

Layering Practice3

Photoshop Colouring Practice 1 – Fill w 20% Transparency

Photoshop Colouring Practice 2 – Overlay 2nd colour 85%Transparency

Photoshop Colouring Practice 3 – Add whiteBackgd Layer for actual colour tone

Photoshop Colouring Practice 4 – Recalling colours

Photoshop Colouring Practice 5 – Create own Colour Palette

Photoshop Colouring Practice 6 – Colour Palette w Whitebackground

Next: Part 3.

Art Practice: Mike Mignola’s Hellboy (Part 1)

Back in 2007 (or was it 2006?), I picked up a copy of the Hellboy “Seed of Destruction” comic at Central Lending Public Library. And I was hooked. The illustrations and storylines simply blew me away. I was an instant fan.

There’s heavy use of shadows and contrast in Hellboy (lots of black).

At one page, I saw this particular panel and decided to use it as art practice. I took a digital photo for reference (From “Hell Boy: Seeds of Destruction” by Mike Mignola & John Byrne):

Sketched it on watercolour paper (not traced). It was a practice in observational skills:

When I was happy with the sketch, I proceeded to ink the outlines (alternating between Indian Ink applied with calligraphy pen, and a marker — in the end, I was happier with the Indian Ink as was more vibrant):

Here’s a shot of how I referred to the digital image (on a laptop) and inking on paper:

This is a scanned image of the completed outline in ink:

Then I filled in the spaces with more black:

Inking completed:

At this point, I wanted to apply watercolours, but I suddenly felt like doing the painting digitally. So I scanned in the image and retouched it in Photoshop by filling in with black and white (this definitely improved the picture in terms of smoothing out the uneven tones in the hand-coloured picture, and the black and white areas more defined):

Next: Part 2.

Technorati Tag: art practice, hellboy, photoshop, inking

Cooking Class

“Cooking Class”
March 2006.
Freehand sketch. Pencil/ Pen on sketch paper.

Drew this while waiting for a cooking class to start. The cooking oil, container, vinegar bottles were in front of me. I had my sketch book so decided to capture the moment. Sketched using my mechanical pencil and finished it in pen.

Rijeka city canal

Thanks for showing me your beautiful city. This one’s dedicated to you, Verena T.

Ink on sketch paper.
Dec 2008.

Painting with acrylic: Still Life

From this post:

Acrylics on canvas.
Ivan Chew. Nov 2008.

I donated this painting to my colleague. It’s now hanging in the office of the Choa Chu Kang Public Library manager’s office.

Painting with acrylic: Still Life

[From 3rd warm-up exercise]

This was the “real deal”.

Stage 1: Pencil sketch on (pre-primed) canvas.

Stage 2: Applying the first coat of paint. At this stage, I was focusing on adding a single base coat, so to speak. Not blending any colours.

Stage 2.1: After the first coat, I decided to fill in the darker tones, as a base.
Frankly, after the first layer of paint, I was winging it from then on. Didn’t really know what to do. At this stage, the painting didn’t look good. But the trick was to continue adding layers, blending.

Stage 3: By now, I’ve got maybe 3 or 4 layers of paint (I figured that objects nearer to the front should get more layers, hence more details and textures).

Finished work: Final touches are the highlights for some of the objects.

“Still Life”
Acrylic on canvas.
Ivan Chew. Nov 2008.

The perfectionist in me isn’t happy with the colour tones and blending. But I can’t complain and have to be realistic. It’s been 10 years since I last attempted painting with acrylics.

Overall I’m happy with how this painting turned out, considering it took only about 4.5 hours to complete.

I gave this painting to my colleague, who manages Choa Chu Kang Public Library. She says she’ll hang it up in her office

Rain in a Bamboo Forest

[From 2nd warm-up exercise]

This is the 3rd and final warm-up painting.

I wanted to create a Chinese Painting effect. Didn’t quite make it though. Everything looked too blurry and ill-defined.

In the end, I applied acrylic paints to give a stronger dark tone. Then flicked some green and white paint. That seemed to work. It gave the painting more substance. The blurry background now seemed like some misty backdrop, rather then the previous mass of green stuff.

And so I called it “Rain in a Bamboo Forest”, heh.

Watercolour and acrylic on sketch paper.

Next: “Painting with acrylic – Still Life“.

Butterfly Dreams

[From this first post]

For my second warm-up painting, I opted to experiment with

Watercolour on sketch paper.

Next: “Rain in a Bamboo Forest“.

Still Life

I went for a one-day art instruction class today. Kinda like a refresher.

For warm ups, we did a few quick paintings in watercolours.

This was the first one. We were given an option to do a Still Life, or imaginary picture. I decided on the former, as I wanted to see if I still remember the finer points of watercolour painting.

Watercolour on sketch paper.

[Image taken with my Handphone camera. The focus is blurred, for some reason].

Next: “Butterfly Dreams“.