Wired 2011 Together 2011 painting

A week or so ago I was invited by Wacom to paint a picture live at the Wired 2011 Together event. With only few short days I was advised to deliver something simple so I knocked a quick portrait together - saving the image halfway through so I could paint the image to a finished stage at the event.

So Wacom tablet (Intuos) and Photoshop CS5:-

Pre-production paintings for unreleased Oakenfold project

These are some 16 x 9 concept paintings for an unreleased Paul Oakenfold video project, painted in Photoshop CS5 with a Wacom graphics tablet. I use images like this to guide colour-keys and focus scenes I feel are important to capture in a production. The images in the desert are more colour keys than concept art but the first image I wanted to shoot and splice into the beginning of a show to increase the drama of the opening.

More CS5 Painting

Inspired by a creative mashup session yesterday (more on that later) I put another painting together in Photoshop CS5, the brush tools really are incredible with quick buttons on the menu to force complete control over to a Wacom tablet, I have been a big user of tablets for about 10 years now, working my way through the Intuos range, with a slight detour into a wireless Graphire at my time at Apple (awesome for presentations) and cannot recommend them more for digital creatives, the fluidity of a pen interface cannot be matched in photographic, illustrative or even video work.
































This image started life as a few blocky colours on a page before being shaped into a coherent painting, I don't often remember to take stages pictures (when free hand painting I usually just draw on one layer..) but I did snap a before image:
































Plus a quick shot of the brush tool overlay - this accurately maps the positioning of the Wacom Stylus over the tablet and if you watch the screen closely while you work it allows you to see how your making brush strokes, coming from an analogue painting background - it was great to see my motions with a brush were the same in a digital environment.

White Rabbit - Photoshop CS5

I have been Beta testing Adobe's CS5 Master Collection for a while now, with the embargo up (as of 7.00am this morning) I am able to share my finding and feelings about the new features. My first post will cover the new brush engine in Photoshop CS5.
As an illustrator I have always been a fan of painting in Photoshop, early versions had customisable brushes and later there was support for pressure sensitivity via a graphics tablet input - all great features for those wanting to use the program as a digital canvas. Digital painting has one major drawback - the fluidity of natural media is lost in Photoshop, the painting is almost too precise and there is very little room for creative mistakes.

Until now.

Adobe's latest edition of the tool includes a fantastic new feature for painters - a "bristle" brush. This added level of brush control (in addition to pressure sensitivity) allows the emulation of bristles on a surface - the brush even rotates to match the rotation of your pen on the graphics tablet (something that really has to be seen to believed..) this really brings in some of the randomness back into drawing and painting - I have been using a variety of Wacom tablets for about 10 years now and I have never seen the level of control and natural feel of Adobes Photoshop CS5 and a Wireless Wacom Intuos 4 - its a fantastic combination.

So I have done a few doodle's I would like to share - I set myself a task - a one hour speed paint using the new toolset.































I hope to get some more of these up on the blog in the next few days.

More as promised

Here is some more concept art from the same project, I imagine I'll be doing this until I get a real freelance job through... :P

Concept Painting

Something a little different... before I did commercial work I used to paint in Photoshop, I still dabble with this from time to time and after a rather long hiatus I have produced the following painting for a personal concept project I am working on with a friend called: Orion



This painting was designed to get the colour keys and atmosphere of the environment and inspired by some local art seen in a shopping centre in Wycombe (!?!). more to come....