Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

The 2014 edition. Inspired by Rockewell.

Schumacher WIP-age 03

Smouldering Beckham

It's that time in the world cup cycle where all I paint is David Beckham...he's fricken retired!

Clay Sculpting

Clay sculpting from a live model over the last few weeks. No matter how many times you draw/paint/sculpt a portrait, it's amazing how many new things you discover. Progress sculpts after the jump link.

Storm's a-brewin'

Sketchcrawl 42

Sketched on a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 And a process GIF. Trendy.

Young Love...

Sketchcrawl 42

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas, Happy 2013 and all of that. Catch y'all again next year!

Worldwide Sketchcrawl 37 - Flinders Street

Holbien Watercolours + LAMY Safari pen

I have a new LAMY pen... yeah those ones that exist inside a glass cabinet signifying that they are somehow more superior-er.

The flow is really something else - I'm guessing catered for connoisseurs of calligraphy. It comes out dark, and stays dark even if I applied watercolours on first.

Not to mention, I sat in the rain doing this. The drops splattered my page but it gave it a nice effect.

Here are some other sketches from the day after the jump. Started off at Starbucks (as you do) and then some heads on the train back.

Sydney Town Hall - iPad Plein air

This was done on the iPad again on the Brushes App in front of Sydney Town Hall. I was lucky enough to get it on a gorgeous day.

Sydney isn't a bad place at all. Great weather, beautiful landmarks lots of inspirational places to sit and draw. Here I sat inside the Kinokuniya book store opposite Town Hall painting for about 2 hours. The security guard was sussing me out every 15 minutes trying to figure out what I was doing. Although it's on iPad advertising now, I guess painting is not what normal people do when they visit a bookstore. Looking forward in seeing what else Sydney has in store.

Video here:

Nadeshiko Japan - Women's World Champions 2011

This is Homare Sawa and Nahomi Kawasumi of the Nadeshiko Japan soccer team who are the current FIFA Women's World Champions. I also thought that they had my pick of goal of 2011. This gigantic, split-second lob:



Art wise, this was done fully in Painter, again trying to use new brushes. In this case an edited Oily Bristle. I tried to mix it up by not only caricaturing their faces, but shadow patterns and designs to try to make it appealing. It was a fun study and process.

The Innsmouth Look

Inspired by HP Lovecraft's description of 'The Deep Ones', this is my own take on the ever popular Innsmouth Look. These are hybrid human's who, as they age, get consumed by fish or frog-like features and seep back into those murky waters of Innsmouth. Little creepy for my tastes so he has a bit of my weird spin on it.

This was sculpted in Zbrush 4 R2, rendered in Zbrush 4 R2 and composited in Photoshop. Although it's been awhile since I used purely Zbrush to composite out a render, the process has improved a tonne using BPR. No more accidently shifting things, forgetting focal settings, painting in cast shadows etc. Just render separate passes and plug into Photoshop. It feels as if it's not a hack anymore but a focused streamlined process that more and more people are taking advantage of. Fun indeed.

The Karate Kid Painting Montage

Going through my hard drives made me stumble on some old WIP files of my Karate Kid painting I did awhile back. What a joy it was too.

Although I still watch the movie on a religious basis, artistically it was the European Masters exhibition held at the NGV last year that really made me want to stick with this painting - it was a study.

It was a real privilege to see such works at that exhibition - but what amazed me was the artists' richness, variety and control in their darks - things you'd never notice on crumby scanned or photographed images on the internet. Works like this one by Edgar Degas were one of many inspirations for the Karate Kid painting that I should credit in the video above.

Hope you enjoy it anyway!

iPad Painting from Live Model and video

Keeping things fresh by changing the process for this one. Colour is one of my favourite subjects and I saw a technique by Jeff Watts where he'd first lay down 'abstract notes of colour" - ie anything he feels like. I guess it harks back to Harley Brown's book where he talks about making sure you aren't timid about your painting from the get-go.

Mucking up the painting up from the start did relax me, I must admit, but since it was on the iPad there was always a thought in the back of my mind that I could undo this. So...not as brave as I could have been.

The video of the process is below. I firstly did a sketch before a 2 hour live model session and scanned it in, Placed it on a layer, and went ahead.

Done with the Brushes App.

Seascape Plein Air with iPad inc video

Yet another iPad finger painting using the Brushes App which STILL remains the most responsive and simplest painting app out there.

People often ask me about the glare off the screen. Although, yes, it does exist, if you crank up the brightness to max and paint under some shade there really isn't any problem. Which got me in thinking, how great this thing will be for night plein airs with a back lit screen? Next time perhaps.

Hope you enjoy the video process too.

Baby Lionel Messi

For such a beast in the game of football, Messi has one of the most softest faces, kind, cuddly. Hardly someone to be feared on the pitch. His likeness has endless possibilities though, and this one somehow ended up like a 3D baby version of him...with stubble.

Hugo - Street Fighter IV remake

Hugo. The one and only Street Fighter character post 2 era that deserves to make a comeback. He's made cameos for sure, but after the long list of names to appear in Street Fighter 4, Capcom decided this lovable, dopey, burly bloke from Germany wouldn't make the cut. For shame!

31st Worldwide SketchCrawl for Japan

The 31st Sketchcrawl was dedicated by Pixar's Enrico Casarosa to the victims of the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

He also set up a Sketchcrawl fund with Give2Asia. So please give generously if you can.

The death toll from the earthquake and tsunami stands at 13,700 and even more are missing. It's sad to even think what the surviving are going through.

Not to put a downer on this blog, this is the Melbourne Sketchcrawl once again, and relatively speaking, the weather has been rather kind! In Melbourne terms, it's a miracle. Yes I'll even go as far as saying that.

For this special Sketchcrawl, I wanted to do something cool, so I figured I'd take the iPad out behind Federation square along the Yarra and began painting using the Brushes App. I lost my stylus so this is 100% left finger - It cramped after awhile.

These other sketches are from earlier in the day in a cafe and the outdoor area of Federation square where a month long comedy festival is happening. Lots of atmosphere and a great day to be drawing.

The Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary

Don't know what's making me so incredibly nostalgic these days. Or somehow all these marketing 'anniversarys' coincide with my demographic. Curse them.

Anyway, this piece was done for CGHub's 2D Jam of Zelda's anniversary. The Dark World in 'Link to the Past' was the thing that jumped into my brain. Probably because I spent so long there running around not realising it actually had some relationship to the Light World. I'm reminiscing here and probably not making sense to anybody out there.

I tried to change up my workflow for this one. Colour palette was derived from a Richard Schmid painting that had a similar mood to what I wanted. I 'mosaiced' the image in Photoshop and mixed from there. It's NOT a Nori original idea - I read it somewhere in a magazine and thought I'd give it a shot. It's nice if you need to paint a feeling out there and remain gestural. The rest is drawing, really. However, now that I look at it, you can lose something using that technique and I probably wouldn't use it if I were going for a finished painting?

The other thing I tried to do was stay with a singular hard edge brush in Painter and work from large to small. That way I concentrated on the graphic shapes and how they worked in the overall composition. Bit of a puzzle, and still a challenge.

And here is the theme that sent shivers down my spine when I began working on this.

Happy Holidays from Down Under

I watch the news and I'm not sure if the 'white Christmas' thing is all its cracked up to be. It looks... cold, damn cold. I even feel it through my television.

On the other side of the equator in Australia it's, well, unseasonably cold as well...but hey, you could put on a singlet and survive, for now at least.

Anyhow, while Santa is gearing up and getting ready for his trek around, I would like to wish you, your family, your loved ones, your cats, your dogs or whatever you have, a very merry Christmas and a safe, happy and healthy 2011.

I tried to fit as much as I could in one sentence because I meant it.

Here's to a great year ahead! Cheers.

Nori

Pre Dominance War V

Here's something I haven't done for awhile, game modeling and texturing. Usually Dominance War isn't my thing. I'm not the big, scary dude with sword type. So I tried to put my own weird spin on things, make it funny, but still try to make it look futuristic, sci fi and gritty.

Although the actual future of the competition looks a little shaky at the moment, thought I'd do a little something different for a change. Taking a page from Joe Bluhm's design philosophy, my character is roughly James Earl Jones mixed with a bullfrog.


The character himself, is one of my typical monsters with under bite (I gotta do something about that one day). An old, wizard whose butt shows through under his torn coat. He despises the young generation yet he shows he stills has ticker by helping his fellow CGHub warriors in battle with his low, trusty tech.

That's the gist of the story, ahem.