Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Art Process: Under the Wire (Photoshop & Textures)


One of the things I hope to do with this blog is explain my process. In other words, how I get from idea, to, hey, that actually looks like something. What better place to start than the project I'm working on right now?

I started out with a grand and complicated comic idea. The protagonist, an ambiguous, amorphous, androgynous character living alone on the top of a hill finds a rope that leads upwards forever. Should she/he take it and climb it? Or not? The character is lost in the midst of indecision and stays there, thinking about the potential horrors of each option until she/he dies.

The idea was a bit too... soupy... for me in the long run, and I hardly have time to be entertaining the idea of another comic, even a little one. So, it turned into a single frame, which then turned into an ongoing photoshop exercise, tentatively titled Under the Wire.

(The imagery here is probably based off my current obsession with Myst V...*coughs*)

  • First I started with a sketch that I did on some scrap paper:
  • Then... (because my sanity is apparently in question) I redrew the whole thing in Photoshop... (Note: redrawing the entire thing is not faster than going to the trouble of finding your scanner) Redrawing things from scratch may take longer, but it's also a really great way to make sure your tablet drawing skills are up to snuff. :)


  • I had my lines, a basic idea of what this was going to be... and then I did something I don't normally do: play! :)

I have no idea how this is going to turn out. It's not finished and it probably won't be for a while. There is no "plan" here. I can say one thing for certain, though: I'm having a blast incorporating textures and weird visual elements that don't normally show up in my drawings or paintings. I actually like running around in Photoshop like a headless chicken. It's very cathartic. :)

Next up:
A quick and dirty tutorial.
Is there anything you would like to see explained? Let me know in a comment!

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