Of sea and sky...

I've completed a couple more pieces since last we parted...  Both are a bit experimental for me in different ways and therefore out of my comfort zone.  But I'll just post them and then explain.

Urchin test (test is the name of the "shell"), Photoshop and Illustrator

So this one was very experimental for me... I've never done a rendering entirely in digital media.  Up till now I've only colored in drawings that I scanned in.  This however, was done in Photoshop almost start to finish, I say "almost" because I did the line work that I used in the initial drawing in Illustrator.  The assignment was to light an object with 3 different light sources; this style emphasizes volume and gives a lot of "drama."    I'm generally happy with the outcome.

Then we had the final colored pencil piece:

Treron calva (African Green Pigeon) on Ficus sansibarica, Colored pencil on Duralene

This was an interesting and difficult endeavor, much more so than I anticipated.  We were tasked with doing a "spot" illustration that was meant to fit a quarter page and that might theoretically sit in the corner of a page of text.  So the bottom right sort of comes to a "corner" of sorts and that's why.  It's a bird I was introduced to when researching articles for an upcoming project and I fell in love with him because of the gorgeous blue-greens covering most of his body.  It was difficult because I decided to go with a very "idealized" kind of positioning of the bird, and no photo is an "ideal" so I had to create it.  I put this guy together from 6 different photos sources, after studying as many images and videos as I could find (it helps too that it's a pigeon and we are fairly familiar with how they look and move).  So I'm glad that ultimately he looks "natural" while still having that sort of "idealized" look about him.

I've made some modifications to the image since having critique today and I'm much happier with it now, though oddly, not as much as I'd anticipated.  Oh well, it works and since I have to move on to the next thing I can't spend too much time dwelling.

This post is kinda odd though... those two images together -- one a completely digital rendering and the other attempting to evoke an 1800's aesthetic approach to a bird portrait (albeit with colored pencil).  It's kinda strange.  

Anyway, back to work.