Parallel Parchment Worldbuilding (1)

In the past few weeks I've been working on expanding and developing the setting of the Lost Library, which I originally created for my webcomic Parallel Parchment. It's been an interesting exercise, as I refine some of the older concepts and discover new ones.

Here are a few of the first pages. I've done quite a bit of work since these were scanned, which I will have up later.

There are plenty of notes, which is pretty typical of my brainstorming process, really; a mixture of writing and illustration.

The study started out as an attempt mostly at practicing environments and architecture, as I don't have much in those areas, mostly due to my dislike of complicated perspective. However, the more I've sketched the more obvious it has become that what I'm really enjoying are the character studies, and that doing architecture is a bit like pulling teeth. So for future studies I will be moving in a slightly different direction, doing more to draw scenes, rather than either architecture or characters separately.

"Celebration" process

In the last year or so, I've started a habit of keeping work-in-progress shots for most of the major paintings I do. It can be a very interesting way to look back on the process of painting, especially for someone like me whose sketches often start out very rough; in some cases being little more than a thumbnail with basic composition. The rest is in my head.

I'll provide as an example my most recent piece, a contest entry for ImagineFX magazine, which focuses on digital sci-fi and fantasy art. The winner gets their art showcased on the subscriber-only cover of the magazine. Pretty nice! Of course, I happened to find out about this less than a week before the deadline.

No problem, I thought. I can definitely paint something in a week. And I sat down to sketch.

I actually sketched this piece entirely in Photoshop; which is a rarity. Generally I work with pencil for the sketch phase, as I still find that it gives me greater control and precision. When I'm sketching digitally I always feel like I'm trying to draw in crayon-- unless you zoom in and lose sight of the piece, everything is very thick and ungainly. But for this piece I needed to be able to erase and rework quickly, so digital it was. At last I settled on something I was more or less happy with.

I knew I wanted the lanterns against the fireworks, that was key. The choice of Izeli as the character was a bit last-minute. But I thought she worked best, with her odd coloring, to signal the scene (which is otherwise fairly ordinary) as "fantasy."

With the sketch complete and a quick check to make sure the anatomy was okay, I sat down to paint.

When working fast, it's always best to knock out the easiest things first, so I did the fireworks (which were loads of fun) and established the three poles and the lines supporting the lanterns.

Work continues-- I started on the lanterns, and worked a bit more to establish Izeli's facial structure-- something I was especially concerned with as not only was it the focus of the piece, but also at a difficult angle I'm not familiar with painting. You can also see the ImagineFX template laid over the piece.

Hey, it's starting to look like a real piece! The lanterns and light are established, and the figure is largely blocked in.

The finished piece. I added another green firework to balance out the composition, and moved a few others around slightly. There are still little details I could tweak, but with a short deadline I was less than inclined to argue. Overall I'm still very pleased with it. I got the colors and the composition about where I wanted them, and I quite enjoyed painting it, especially the fireworks. I must do another piece with them sometime.

And that, in short, is the creative process-- at least for me. I generally don't do much more than this; like I said, I usually jump straight from thumbnail to painting. But I do sketch when I'm fishing for ideas, and I should have a few of those up, shortly.

Welcome!

So I had a sketch journal several years ago, and it was rather fun, but never went much of anywhere. In need of an "art blog," though, and not being nearly knowledgeable enough to talk intelligently about techniques and such like some awesome people I know of, I have decided to go ahead and put up scribbles once again.

We'll start off with some of my favorite sketches from 2009 thus far:

At the start of the year I came up with a character named Meztli, who was working as a sort of magical researcher/librarian when she got pulled into an adventure (isn't it always the way?) There was a rather hostile government takeover and while she managed to get out in time, her husband and son did not. So of course, she went to rescue them.

Meztli and her son, Kuei:

And a family portrait with her son and husband:

 

 I'm not sure if I ever properly came up with a name for her husband or not, come to think of it. It might be in my notes somewhere.

Next up is my ever-popular Space Turtle, and his nemesis the space octopus, He'e:

The next few are revisits of some older characters. First up we have the protagonists from my old webcomic, Parallel Parchment (from left: the Guardian, Elli, Morwenna, Cael):

 
And then there's an older character of mine named Izeli. I'm... still not really sure where the inspiration for this sketch came from, but damn if it isn't a fun costume:

 

And I think that'll be it for this post. Stay tuned for some more recent stuff next time, including some of the work I'm doing for my ongoing world-building concept project for Parallel Parchment.