Monster Art Design Gimp Colouring Effects

Attempting to work out the many features of Gimp with this monster art design, I drew the first drawing which was a pencil drawing that I inked the lines and then shaded the image here:-

Notice that the drawing just looks like a basic drawing that really cries out to be computer coloured and given the Gimp treatment, now what I did was to go over quite a few of them shaded pencil lines with a black paintbrush using Gimp, so that later I could blend them into grey and have the jaw line and the whole of the side of the monsters face stretch away to the right and this I did quite well, even though it took me time to zoom in and fix the smaller details that I couldn't reach at the normal viewing size.

Next I coloured the tongue with a light red using the airbrush tool and again I just went over the main black lines and some of the shading in a random way and this was smudged to blend the red further and then I added a large size airbrush of a light yellow to highlight the monsters face and a bright blue to give the eye of the monster a sense of evil power or something.

I also made the background black and blended all of the edges of the monsters head, so that it would look cool enough. Adding a light source to the front of the monster also helped the lens flare look more brighter and added a contrast to the whole monster design.

You can see a few more examples of my Gimp software adventures here - Gimp Art Design Software

Here's the finished drawing....

DickBlick A Superb Art Supply Specialist

For years now, I continually hear about how DickBlick is the best art supply store online and off with it's superb customer service, although they do supply internationally, it is generally the best if you live over in America to recieve the full benefits of getting the art products delivered to your door.

Find out about DickBlick and see what you could buy for your art projects as I wrote a small review about them here - Dickblick art supplies

Fantasy Blog Header Undergoing Some Computer Graphic Magic

I drew the header graphic for this blog awhile back with the intention of adding a little photoshop magic, but my computer crashed and took with it the best part of £400 worth of photoshop software installed on the computer and so I've been experimenting with Gimp the free art manipulation software quite alot lately and one of the first drawings I played around with was this blog header.

And I knew I could make it better somehow with just the blend tool and adding some deeper reds to cancel out the flet tip marks on the original art and so that's what I did, although I would like to draken the background, so that the flames illuminate the darkness and create more depth to the shadow side of the demon.

My first attempt at using the Gimp software seemed to turn out quite well I think and I will keep you updated about finishing the graphic design on this top header graphic.



Here is the working version as you can also see right at the top of the blog, but it will change in time as I want to deepen and improve the depth of the design.

Art Drawing Book Reviews

There are two art drawing books I've read recently and they have some really good information in them when you apply them to your fantasy work, the first review I did was this one Drawing Still Life By Barrington Barber and in the book he explains the best expert techniques to draw still life and how important it is for artists to observe and sketch interesting objects aswell as visually appealing subjects.

And the second book Draw Like Da Vinci is a sort of case study of the sketches and art of Leonardo Da Vinci and in this book the author Susan White attempts to guide you through the drawing processes as Da Vinci would have done and how he would have approached his compositions and drawings in a way only he could.

I hope you like the reviews of the two books, because they are two that really stuck in my mind and I have started drawing from both of them and continue to be inspired by other artists work quite frequently these days.

I will try to review more art and useful drawing books as time goes on, as it could prove quite good for any artist who needs to learn a bit more and decide what book would be great for their art to improve.

Experimenting With Gimp On Photos: Castle Photo Transformation Stormy Clouds

Over the last few weeks I have been experimenting with the free software Gimp, to see what I could do and also to learn all about the digital side of computer art, because that's what I feel my art needs, a digital edge to make it look professional and so I urge all artists to learn about computer art early on, or do a course about it.          

So here we have a castle ruin photo that we took in the summer and thought I would have a go at editing it so the sky looks kind of stormy instead of a nice summers day, bare in mind that I am totally new to this and I'm having fun too, first I uploaded the photo into my Gimp control panel ready for editing and I used the pipette tool to select a good grey colour from the castle ruin structure and this would be the grey to use for the sky in between the clouds.

I then used the colour fill tool to fill in the blue with the grey, obviously it didn't fill the whole blue colour with grey as there was bits of blue still showing, but I tried to use some of this to show the calm under the storm, then I picked a darker grey to the first grey colour and airbrushed on the underside of the clouds and this would later be blended using the smudge tool which is amazing by the way.

And so it was just a case of softening the edges where I'd been and the end result was a decent but quick art piece....

Of course as a first attempt, I know that I can't just use the smudge tool all the time and that's it, as there are other features and tools that are more advanced, so I'd recommend Gimp for anyone who draws and ants to take their art to the next level, it's free, but if you already have photoshop then you've already probably done a bit of digital art here and there.

I'd like to do more of these Gimp blog posts to show you the features and stuff you can do, so hopefully I'll get better at it.

See some more examples of my Gimp Adventure ( I'm not a gimp!!)