Ranarh's Art Blog

It's a good idea to just get out some ideas. When the morning had started with a blue feeling, I enjoyed how easily these sketches came down. Maybe some of these are worth pursuing to a full painting as well. I really like doing landscapes; I think it's rewarding exercise (and much more forgiving than portrait art). 

A pirate bay I sketched out a few weeks ago. I had watched loads of video tutorials of the Feng Zhou Design School from youtube and wanted to try the techniques.

Some of my pictures recently appeared in the online magazine Emerging Visions . It's subject is mostly surreal art, and the pictures are beautifully combined with poetry. Take a look and enjoy!

Study painting of a fashion model. Idiot that I am, I choose a girl that was made up like a doll and halfway through started wondering why the painting wouldn't look like a human... I gave it a washed out look, and I think it's only half as creepy now than it was. All done in Painter.

Concept of a cybernetically enhanced agent, complete with sensory upgrade and harpoon gun; I was actually thinking about centaur concepts then. I've recently finished reading Advanced Painter Techniques by Don Seegmiller. I think it is quite a useful book; I thought I could handle Painter rather well by now but the book shows some of the often overlooked features in action, like fractal patterns for water reflections, or locking the layers I don't want to paint on (not so overlooked maybe, but I never thought of that before). Nice and easily understandable, if a bit repetetive at times (but I'm a bad judge here, I don't like being told things twice in any case). So, if you are new to Painter, it's a useful book to have.

My second guest gift sculpture. This is Ahmet - called that because of the fez, of course ("I wear a fez now. Fezes are cool." :D). As before, made of Keramiplast; wooden base with a fiberglass stick, a custom made tassel, and two snail houses, all painted with acrylic paint. The hula hoops are glow-in-the-dark sticks, things we had a lot of fun with on New Year' Eve (try putting them inside balloons).

Family members had been asking for a while for some roleplay experience with us. So on a visit, we quickly made some characters and went after some thieves, and possibly an ancient monster.... that's next session ;) I took the opportunity to depict our characters in brown and white chalks. I've always loved the look of these drawings. You almost can't tell they were done in Painter and not on paper (the new real brushes are so awesome!).