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!!)

How To Draw A Wizards Face Video

Drawing a wizards face is something that I have done recently as I wanted to get a few ideas on wizard characters and so I thought of doing a video whilst I drew an example of a wizards face, it's drawn in a comic book style this is a quick 4 minute video of me going through drawing a wizard head.

Here's the video!



Or if you're reading this in a feed - Drawing a wizard

How To Draw A Flaming Skull Video Series

Another skull drawing video series that I created on my youtube channel and in this one I go through drawing a flaming skull, and I'll certainly add to it with a colour video and maybe later on down the road doing some computer colouring which would be quite interesting.

So if you want to see the 5 part quick video series, then you can here - Drawing A Flaming Skull

Enjoy the videos and if there are other types of things you would like me to draw on video then leave your comments below.

Cheers now!