Hey Dudes & Dudettes
The August Image solocitiations are out on CBR, so I can share the cover for VIKING # 3. http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=21229
I also added some process shots I took while painting, maybe someone will find them interesting/usefull.
here is the finished cover, the title logo is placeholder right now. The great Tom Muller will have another look at it before printing and make it look good.
here is what the whole thing looked like at the beginning. I took the sketch I had and printed it out on large thick paper, then I gessoed it with clear gesso. The reason I do this is A) it saves time of redrawing the same thing twice and B) it keeps the dynamics of the smaller sketch which gets lost for me alot when I redraw things at a larger scale.
A detail shot of Brams face while Im painting along.
the almost finished painting, all that was left to do at this point was paint the blood on the sword, and take it into PS and do some tweaks to get it look just how I want it.
Sweet! I like this a great deal! I have my LCS preorder the book for me.
Love seeing the process. Keep the posts coming!
I second that, learning how some one else works helps to reevaluate my process. Keep on posting my friend!
Hi Nick, thanks for taking the time to blog ! Love your work.
Cheers.
Nice work man! Good painting. Have you tried painting on matte medium instead?
Really nice. Thanks for the progress shots
Looks great nic.. I love the fact you do an actual painting rather than digi. fantastic as usual.
your pal jake
Good to see you starting a blog ! That’s definitively something to keep an eye on. That Vicking cover is epic, Nicolas. Be sure I will buy all issues during my next trip to the US. ^^
Best,
Julien
Ooooooooooh you have a blog now. So soooo nice to see the process.
Hello, a terrific image to look at. I am intrigued by the fact that most U.S. illustrators have the time frame to produce work in traditional media – here in New Zealand it is very rare indeed.
The traditional approach ( even finishing off in Photoshop or Painter ) does create that certain feel and depth which is often missing in digital work, but if the deadlines don`t allow for it !!
Thanks for sharing this – impressive !
Wow, you’ve got an enormous talent out there.
Keep doing great job, I’m pretty sure you’ll go far.
Damn sweet! Glad to see you’re bloggin!
Great! another mandatory morning blog!.. geez. I’ll never get ANY work done! LOL
Looks great man! Is this oils or acrylic? and what size is this?
love your work man.
-baker
Thank you all for the replies!! Its great to get some feedback. And for those who read VIKING, thank you even more ^^
Alejandro – Im not quite sure what you mean by “matte” painting medium, the only thing I can think of is gouache becuase it has a matte finish. If you mean gouache, I have used it in the past but switched to acrylic…cant remember why, maybe the fact that gouache is water soluable annoyed me after a while.
Brian – well, I wouldnt know, I’m european
BUT I agree with the look of the work, traditional work is much more prone to happy accidents as well, where as digi work is much more planned, imo anyways. It can be a question of time as well, but there are ways to get around that in traditional work, it gets problamatic when there are alot of revsions to the image by client or editor, that is where digi work has the upper hand because it is far faster to make changes on a file then on paper. So there are ups & downs to both.
Adam – this is all acrylic, I dont have the space to work with oils, and Im not sure I know how to any more… the piece is about 16 by 23 inches big.
cheers
N
this is the pic that popped up over the others to me this month.
I love how the typo gives your art another point of view. Tom Muller is a crack.
great to see you have a blog btw. Good day my friend.
JS
Great stuff. I enjoyed the first edition very much. Does that mean the second is out? Wonderful.
Zephyr — a superhero webcomic in prose
http://wereviking.wordpress.com
great man realiee cool!thnx for sharing.
I love the painting, but not so much on the PS tweaked image. Why the change, the painting looked great.
Hi nick just wondered when you said that you print it out and stuff do you use a digital camera or scanner to capture the image I suppose its size depending ..maybe you have both! And also do you have any thoughts on what books to buy if i wanted to use photoshop as a refining tool for illustraions/paintings etc is there one which stands out which would be usefull …. your blogs cool man keep it up its encouraged me to do more work and try and do more of a traditional/digital fusion..cheers monner!
Hey Rob, well I have an A3 oversize scanner, and I use this for almost everything when I work traditionally. I tried fotoing the work, but I dont have the right rigging to get rid of glare etc. If the pieces are too big I piece them together in PS after scanning in parts.
I dont know any books on PS I am all self taught. I still pcik up alot of tricks from talks with collegeus etc. But if you know how to paint tradtioanlly you should be able to do it it PS as well, everything else other then the basics is just getting more speed/shortcuts.
Its great to see this blog continuing, as there are always interesting comments. Rob, if it helps, I can happily suggest the Photoshop Wow books, published by Peachpit Press, as a good source of advise, especially for those using Photoshop as a painting medium. After illustrating traditionally for thirty years, I moved to a Mac platform, taught myself everything, and found the Wow books an excellent teaching tool, very visual, which was a big help.
Hope it helps.
Thank you for that recommendation Brian! Very cool of you.
Hi Nick just wanted to say thanks for answering my querries and thanks Brian too ! keep on painting awesome work.
Fantastic write up, I will be sure to save this in my Digg account. Have a awesome day.