Sunday 20 January 2013

I am methodical, I am Logical, I am Panduh and this is Aquatical!

Hello lovelies!


I've finally finished the sketches for Primal Aquatica and am ready to share it with you. To explain this, you must get into my head...but beware, things are dangerously cluttered. Since there are numerous components to this first piece, I attacked each part separately.

Part I of Primal Aquatica

Mermaids

Mermaid 1Mermaid 3Mermaid 2


The first sketch of my mermaids will help discern perspective. Since she will be dragging a sailor with her, I'll be setting her within a 'second' field of layers...She won't be in the foreground or background, but in between the two.

Mermaid 2 is swimming up for a fresh meal of sailor. She may be in the distance to help convey vertical depth.

By far, my favourite of the three mermaids! A male sailor clinging to 'his' mermaid, not for life...but for the lustful intentions he has [being a man at sea for so long]. This pair will be in the foreground if only to illustrate the idea that mermaids aren't just beautiful, but deadly as well. With his arms around her, she holds him to her breast in hopes to send him to his watery grave a happy man. On a bitter note, she may then devour the poor man. 'Tis the life in such a twisted chaotic tale as weaved together in my mind.

The lack of detail in these mermaids was purposely done so that I could do all of it when painting. I will not follow so closely, the flow of hair if it is drawn. I feel as thought the hair should be lofty in the ocean; spreading and swirling about. Though I would be able to sketch that, I feel as though it would ruin any visual I have in my mind when it comes to painting the hair. Conflicting visuals of that nature stress me out to the point where I would stop for a little while before attempting it again. I haven't any time to waste, so I will forgo anything that isn't necessary to my process.

The Kraken  


I first needed to understand how I would show the Kraken above AND below water without the entire piece looking odd. Since it would be Kraken who would both help create vertical and horizontal depth, I had to vaguely sketch what I wanted to see. Numerous tries...I continually forgot a basic principle: Refraction.


Refraction  (thanks to shaddybaby for this photo) A perfect example of what all of my sketches of the Krakens tentacles was missing.


Kraken:Basic
Finally, I've figured out the problem and now have an idea of how I want the tentacles to look. I must not forget 'refraction' when painting.

Kraken concept The tentacles were the easy part. I was now tasked with creating a 'mouth' for this demon of the sea. Teeth and a sphincter. The conical curved shape will also help with the perspective. The difficulty I had with Kraken was simply the refraction. I couldn't figure out how to draw the tentacles to give distance. In all honesty, I should've started solving this problem because after it, everything else was easy.

Cthulhu 


Cthulhu ReachA brash figure of nightmarish proportions. Though you may not have heard of him, many underground 'nerds' and followers of H.P. Lovecraft have...and they've paid homage to this obelisk of terror time and time again. The hard part was doing something NOT already done. Needless to say, I had a lot of reference material. I decided to go the route of, 'less is more'. A giant hand reaching out towards the ship as it is being tormented by the Kraken. In the distance, you see Cthulhu's head and shoulders whilst the rest of him is shrouded by mists. 

The ship


ship concept A simple sketch of a ship that will be broken down and torn to pieces. The reason as to why it is whole instead of shattered and splinted in the water, is because things it is easier for me to take away what is there rather than to add what is not. If I had sketched this ship in a 'hole-y' state, with broken masts and hull, I wouldn't know what to add or what it would look like if I needed to provide a more realistic 3D view.

Thumbnails 


Primal aquatic: thumbnail 1  In this first thumbnail, I've arranged the characters on the page just as I had imagined them in my mind [sans land]. It was much easier to do these thumbnails now that I had a solid grip of what I wanted each component to look like. I didn't include the shore as I had previously stated because I think it would take away from the idea of leagues of ocean. To properly play with 'Ocean', I had to ignore the thought of land and focus more on the crashing of waves beating against the ship as it's ravaged by the Kraken. The sailors on board have their minds being tormented by Cthulhu as it reaches towards them with a menacing hand. The gravity of the situation dawns on very few of the men who take their chances in the ocean with the ambush killer beauties who 'save' the men from their hell in Primal Aquatica. The mermaids must avoid the whipping of the Krakens tentacles to get their prizes, but are in awe of the mythical equine created from the white waters as they spring from the ship. The unicorns are the serene end to this sordid tail of fantasy woe. The turmoil each person envisions on their journeys over the oceans come to an end at the tip of a unicorns horn.


Primal aquatic: Thumbnail 2 In this second thumbnail, the only major change is the wave of unicorns. Instead of them coming from the ship and a few from tentacles, they'd all be the result of waves crashing back on the oceans surface.




I chose to roughly detail each character to give me a better idea of how things will look once I put it all together on my 22 in x 30 in slice of 200lb Water colour paper. "Why suck a weight?" you ask. It is because I plan on mixing my media. Not only will I use water colour. I will be using FW brand Acrylic Inks as well as pencil crayon. The reason for this oceanic scene is to encourage questions. "What is that squid?" "Who's that giant hand belong to?" "Unicorns came from waves?!" and so on. This first piece is to illustrate the chaos that ensued in novels before Disney. Nightmares as created by amazing authors whose stories were inspired by reality will hopefully be harmoniously composed in my first portfolio piece done in all traditional media.



Part II of Primal Aquatica: 

I am proud to say the piece is finished. With a bit of help from Photoshop, P.A. is everything I thought it would be! The darkness that is increased with a reduced saturation to the actual glowing of Cthulhu's eyes...everything seems to be haunting. In all honesty, I was a fed up with not wanting to touch the piece after I had painted it. I wanted to keep drawing, even use pencil crayons! I had to stop though. I had to move on and finish since I have more on my plate to devour. Without further ado or words, for that matter- I would like to introduce you...gradually, to Primal Aquatica:


Equipment

Before embarking on this task of painting my chaotic fantasy, I set out my supplies. A set of FW Acrylic inks, Reeves Water colours set, my personal set of brushes, the canvas, and latex gloves for the inks.

outlinedWReproBlue
The first step was to sketch out my concept. I decided to use non repro-blue pencil for this thinking that the marks wouldn't be seen through the layers and the lines wouldn't smudge, thus fudging up the crisp colours I'd be using. It was a good idea until I took a photo. The image I'm most proud of is Cthulhu, the best outlined object in this photo. 

Water+Background
The next step was to do a basic wash. I divided it between the ocean and the sky, choosing for the skies  a green to create a sickly atmosphere. After this wash, I realized the tone was very bright and not as gloomy as I had wanted. I moved on to my next step all the while thinking of how I could 'de-saturate' this without ruining the canvas or the mucking up the shapes painted. It was at this point that I decided I would use Photoshop to fix and add details I couldn't by hand. 

Kraken + Cthulhu
I then began to 'flesh' out the demons. The Kraken, I decided to use inks with the pure thought that the pearlescent quality would give the kraken a rather dull yet shimmering appeal. This creatures colouring 'pops' too much for my liking. Cthulhu was done in water colour. He too, pops far to much. 

Part III: Digital upheaval!

The entire piece was far too vibrant to get the 'gloomy' chaotic feeling across. After I added the mermaids and crashing waves, I took a photo and started my digital assessment and adjustments.


Pre-adjustment
Before I did my colour adjustments. It was dark, but not gloomy enough. I still had a lot of the colours coming through.








Post adjustment
Post-adjustment. I desaturated a bit, reduced the brightness, and a few other things. This was the 'base' for my digital additions.










Part IV: Taking care of my Photoshopping List

2Inkline removalWclonetool

I began with the clone tool and started to remove the ink lines I had first used to define the Kraken. The clone tool was best for this since it kept with the consistency of colour wherever the 'spotter' was and it didn't pixelate the sections like overuse of the 'patch tool' would.

S1. Adding Unicorns

After the line removal, I had to add the unicorns. After googling reference images, I used the brush tool, eraser, masking tool, and even duplicated layers to add the promising unicorns as they were birthed from the waves. I reduced the opacity at points to try to make them blend in a bit.

Adding Mist
I then started to work section by section, fixing up or adding details. I masked out a certain area where Cthulhu's body would be shrouded by the mist and then Filter > Render > Clouds. I made sure to keep my pallet as close as possible to the actual colours of the sky background; picker tool on the green. 

Enlarge tentacle
Reducing the opacity of the mist was followed by enlarging the twisted tentacles of Kraken. I needed to   fill the empty space to the left of the piece without adding anything distracting. After masking and creating a new layer via copy, I increased the size of Krakens tentacles. 

fixing the 'beak'
After lowering the volume of my music...I started working in on Kraken's sphincter. Where the 'mouth/beak' would be, I needed to add depth. With 3 layers, I filled in from light to dark and shaped a 'mouth' where its food would enter.

Cthulhu details
Quite possibly my favourite part of the entire process was creating Cthulhu's eyes. One layer, hitting command+the layer meant I was able to fill in JUST its eyes without worrying about colouring onto the face. This was just colours and brushes. As you can see in the highlighted layer, there are no 'Fx'. 


PrimalAquatica

The final piece. Once all the layers were merged, I added gradients along the edges to help frame the action. Because of the digital additions, I wanted to create unity. Filter > Texture> Texturize. 

Fini!


Though this single piece took me about 5 weeks to complete, I feel as though it was a job well done. I'm happy with the turn out and hope that you like it too! The NEXT adventure springs from Myths. Stay tuned for the follow up to Primal Aquatica! I promise it won't take as long as this one. 

Thanks for being so patient, lovelies!

~Panduh~

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