Viking Character

Wow! its been way too long since my last post here on blogger...most of my work these days goes on FB. More feedback and comments than what I receive here, I think I will update my blog from time to time but whatever gets more exposure is what I'm going to shoot for.

Anyways here is a Vkining character that I did a few years back, I did while I was working a night shift as a guard. It wasnt devloped much, but I did it as a practice on a comic style penciling (I included an inked version, also from a previous post).

I wanted to work more on the costume so I went ahead and did roughs on his: helmet and battle axe, silhouette, and a rough of his overall concept/look. Here is where I am at the moment....

Vulcan

This particular character I have been working on (what seems like forever) was one I made my last semester in college for my portfolio class. He's supposed to be an alien mercenary....

Fast forward to 2006, this time I changed him around and really made this little piece as a color study and to try my hand at digital painting...

Then I made this digital inked piece in 2008....

Which I then colored....

So yes this dude, has gone to his many phases, now I'm determined to give him a final look and add him as an addition to my portfolio :) so far this is what I have....

Demons!!

Remember this guy? Yes I inked him, he looks slightly different from the original pencil drawing but some of his proportions were off and I felt like I had to adjust them a little, BUT I like the way he came out....colors are soon to follow.

Cheers!

*Update 5/8/12*
 Color rough, not sure what to do with the background?

*update 5/11/12*

Another color revision, I thought it needed more warm colors...

Patrick Kane Painting

Well, well, well...its certainly been too long since my last post. And now I'm ready to keep you kids updated. Awhile ago I did a quick study (off a photo) of one of Chi-towns sports star....Patrick Kane of the Blackhawks...

 Its was meant more as a practice in digital painting techniques, but recently a relative of mine liked it and asked if I could make a print of it for him.

....I thought this was a chance to improve the art and make it look better. So I decided to paint over the original to keep it closer to the original and really make this 'summbitch' pop! hope you guys like it.

*update 4/12/12*

*update 4/13/12* 

I changed the compostion to give him some more movement, added a background and gradient to finally call it a day for this one!

E

Busy, busy, busy

Sorry guys about the recent inactivity. Its been a crazy couple of weeks but I will try to upload recent work as soon as I can. Stay tuned. :)

Bill the Butcher Caricature

One of my fave characters from the movies is William Cutting a.k.a. "Bill the Butcher". Daniel Day-Lewis' portrayal of the villain from Gangs of New York is nothing short of AWESOME! He made the movie for me, as would any good actor in a major motion picture. In short, I picked him to paint because his character is so effin' well known, and a challenge. To capture a familiar face and get his personalty in an illustration.

I have only gotten to the initial "smoothing" phase of the coloring, still some passes to go but I like the start :) ....to be continued.

*update3/6/12*

I smoothed out the rough colors from the one I previously uploaded and added some textures to the characters clothing (shirt, vest, and tie) so far so good....next is to go over and smooth it even more in PS and add highlights and all that jazz...in other words so far so good.


*update 3/14/12*

After spending a couple more days on this one, I think I finally came to a point where I' m happy with it. One thing I feel like I missed was the characters hair, it still feels somewhat flat and I worked it a couple of times over but nonetheless this one really Im content with. See for yourself.

E

Self Caricature Color

I did this one for fun, and for practice in coloring, so I liked it enough to share with everyone...Its pretty much a self caricature (yes I've been called a lot of things, but a teddy bear is always one of them) lol.

E

D Rose portfolio piece

Because I'm at meat-headed as any Chicago fan will be, I want to add Mr. #1 himself (yes Derrick Rose) as a part of my portfolio. I originally did a sketch of him last year in May. And since we are in the middle of the season and hes as big as any athlete here at the moment. I thought "why not"?

So at top is the original image I found on google, there are a shit load of D Rose images so this one didn't take long to find. Then is my bad 2-D rendering of him, I think I did it under an hour but for a finished B&W version I needed something with more punch...so I took the original, scanned it and.....

Voila! A digital drawing of D Rose!...as Stacey King would say...HOT SAUCE!! Colors to be added soon. :)

 *update 3/8/2012*

So here's where I'm at right now, this one really kicked my ass for a couple of days because the original inked version didn't pan out so well once I laid color on top. But! I did rework it enough where I'm preeeeeeeety satisfied....so still have to smooth out the lower half of his jersey to call it a day. Also I was conflicted with his face, I worked it over and over and over...so I had to settle on something similar to the source image, but like I said I have to stop at one point, right! ....Well anyways, check out!

 E

*update 3/10/12*

Yus! finally done....hope the time spent on this shows in the artwork. Onto more coloring :)

E

*BTW!!*
I notice this particular piece has gotten a bit of traffic. If any one is interested in commissioned pieces. Feel free to ask!! just email me.

eman_macias@yahoo.com

'Tristan' digital painting

Peeps,

Heres is where I am at for this particular piece. I'm still working out tones and trying to keep em soft (to a point) this is really an attempt to settle for a 'bread and butter' technique of coloring. So I probably should have settled for a simpler subject but this has been a character I have had in the works since my college days (yes I'm an old man!) So I wanna show this dude some love and give him a little bit of LIFE!!

More to come :)

Cont.

Ok,

So I continued to refine the black and white version of the character and then added flat color on top (all in PS) one thing I am struggling with is whether to focus more on realism or stylized version of this character...I'm going with it though as I go along, almost as if I'm letting the character define it for itself.  I'm guessing it might be a hybrid of both but lets see how it comes along? Right now the colors are very unsaturated and it needs more color, but its a comfortable start for me to move along for improvement. Check it out yourself?

*Update* Here finally is the final color, after weeks of reworking my color technique and workflow (about 3 and some change) I came to a point where I was satisfied with my character. The only thing missing is aome textures plugged in to give detail but I really want to get started on the next one and will try to incorporate some textures in my workflow.

Hope you like it!!

E

Tristan portfolio work...

My latest work has involved me working on an old character from my website...his name is Tristan, a pirate in witchdoctor face paint. Its not the most fleshed out storyline for a character but I always wanted to do a pirate, so any story arc or background I would rather get down visually. So I began on another pose to be eventually painted (in photoshop) .

Top Left: This pose is my work in progress, I like the silhouette of the reference pic for this one so I went with that one, I originally did a rough in graphite and scanned in to detail in photoshop I kept the line work light before I really go in with hard brushes...so far I like it, what do you think? Next to it is the original piece...this needed a makeover, with my constant development on technique and what not I felt this time was as good as any for another revision.

Bottom Left: this was I originally had in mind (done in graphite) I was really going for a stylized look...somewhat comic booky with some realism to it. Once I was done and took a look at it I just wasn't feeling it and thought that painting this one would prove to be hard since I didn't use reference for the pose....next to it is an older piece I did in photoshop as well...it was one of my first attempts at doing an inked b/w drawing entirely in photoshop. I still like it, but I have since changed the character somewhat, I'm thinking of revising this one as well once I finish the static pose at top left...

Well that's it in a nutshell, how you guys like it so far? next is b/w tonal values and then rough colors, I'm really excited about this one :)

E

new year, new work....new agenda!

 So! what a better way for an artist to start a new year other than to put up more "trabajo". I usually have a bunch of different ideas that I like to sketch or observational drawings or what not, this time around I found myself working on a couple of personal projects outside of the usual sketches....

One was a drawing I did for my nephew's birthday, the idea was to have Harry Potter fly around Hogwarts in a griffin. The good news was he loved it! :) the bad news was I didn't get a chance to scan in the final :( BUT I do have the sketches for it below....

Next up! only the most awesome mini-series on TV (in my humble opinion) Boardwalk Empire...I couldn't help but do sketches of James Darmody and Richard Harrow, two of my fav characters.  For James I used a black colored pencil, it was something different but i like that I can get broader lines for the buildup to the detailed stage in my sketches....also I did a sketch of a tree, I love to draw organic shapes.

 Finally an illustration I did for my brother for xmas...he took this photo of the Eiffel Tower while is Paris. Im not too thrilled on the proportions or accuracy of the photo in my art, but I decided to put it up anyways just to show how much observational/practice "stuff" I do on my own time. Hope ya like it.

Now that I uploaded this stufff....I hope to put more portfolio work, ESPECIALLY colored work, I have way too much b/w on my blog/portfolio. So hope you guys can join me in getting a new portfolio out there with feedback and critiques, my page has been getting traffic which is awesome. So thanx guys for checking out my stuff and hope to hear you all continue to check in. On to another year of  'art hustlin'!

E