the portable city

by definition, not static

reprioritizing / replanning / restructuring

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small posts to be enjoyed en masse

  • Style Test – fantastic skyscraper reinterpretation

    Another style experiment, this time done 95% in Procreate. This one has me using a photo I took in highschool of a courtyard downtown that I have painted from many times before – each time reinterpreting it further and further from the ref.

    This one only came into Clip Studio when I realized I had painted it so dark that it only really was legible on the ipad – a mistake I have made before and, I am sure, will make again! That device really does blow out the shadow values a fair bit.

    For this painting I returned to trying a heavier line and less rendering overall, simply making the lines transparent when I need them to fall back. I think the fuzziness and looseness of the lines feels satisfying on the environment, but the people also end up feeling a bit indeterminate in details as well.

    The style quest continues!

  • Digital Style Exploration – Building Fantasy from a Photo

    This was a 100% Clip Studio digital painting, based on a photo of mine from a visit to Hay River in the Northwest Territories; the sun was pretty unbelievable that summer, that far north.

    For this one, I let myself do my rough with the airbrush, and I feel like it really defined the whole image, to the point where maybe that’s a trap I should avoid in future! But I do love how much fun I had with the textured brushes despite trying to protect soft gradients all over the place, and it felt a lot like the same push and pull I have when trying not to overblend and overwork a soft pastel piece.

  • Style Explorations – Landscape with Figures Study

    Another photo study, but I took this one into Clip Studio after doing the first pass in procreate, which let me use the smarter selection tools to grab large areas and push-and-pull them more precisely.

    This piece is a return to the softer, chalky line and using it to add colour as well as clarity, and I love how soft it turned out.

    The photo I am studying is by Justine Kurland, who I refer to often when I need help staging something in a way that transcends the simpler, bolder statements of cinematic staging.

  • Style Exploration – Digital Paint with Dark Inked Lines

    This was reffing a photo on pinterest; I wanted to refocus on how I want to handle stylizing figures.

    I am slowly starting to nail down a process – there’s a rough sketch, a rough colour, inks, and then selection-based painting.

    For this piece I did it 100% in procreate, which means using their slightly jankier selection tools, but I think for the rough expressive style it worked out fine.

  • Style Test – Lineless Film Study

    Another film still study, this one from Snow White and the Huntsman. This piece was done in Clip Studio, with a selection tool approach and no lines, and a fair amount of smudging brushes to get those tile and brick lines to feel distinct but integrated.

    Clip Studio’s reference layer tools is so powerful for selection-based painting processes! If you haven’t tried them, I definitely recommend digging up a quick overview tutorial and testing them out, it really feels game changing every time I use it, and I’ve been using it for a decade.

  • Style exploration – reffing a film still

    Playing around with painting with the selection tool as well as relying more on chunky colourful linework. Screenshot from Space Sweepers.

  • Dragon and Knight Crystal Island

    soft pastels on primed paper, 9 x 12″.

  • Golden Digger Wasp in Soft Pastel

    A small study of my own photo of a golden digger wasp on some goldenrod flowers last summer! I primed the paper with some opaque white watercolour ground to add tooth, and honestly I think it helped a fair bit and allowed me to get a nice blend of soft and hard edges on this one.

  • chalk pastel dragon island WIP – now with more details!

    it’s coming along! while I suspect there’s a limit to how much I can do this, I’ve learned that you can use a paper stump or similar to lift up quite a lot of the soft pastel and redraw – which is really letting me get away with changing things that I should have figured out before I started this drawing.

  • hoark-bleh!

    gifs are so powerful!

  • chalk pastel dragon island WIP

    I’ve painted the paper with opaque watercolour ground to add more tooth and honestly it’s working really well!

  • Bee fight! Bee yeet!

    burst mode burst mode burst mode

  • raven teen begging unsuccessfully

    I am loving making these gifs of my burst mode shots!

  • Testing burst mode on my camera

    Gifs aren’t exactly effortless BUT: they are charming.

  • testing a beautiful prime lens on some euonymus

    my partner leant me his 27mm prime and it is indeed as delightful as promised!

  • neon welcome

    taking my camera on dusk walks has been legit incredible – can’t wait till we get some of those deep blue summer dusks later this year.

  • the shadowy guild

  • red squirrel with opinions

  • solarpunk crystal island wip

    way, way more stuff! and I picked up a tube of W&N perylene black, an inky green-black that is absolutely hitting the spot for me. next up: living creatures? let’s not get TOO wacky…

  • solarpunk crystal island wip

    committing to the lighting and starting to maybe actually solve these values! but shit I really need a darker green than what I have in my palette.

  • solarpunk crystal island wip

    getting a feel for who lives here now… and adding a lot more background interest too.

  • haunted afternoon at the guild

  • solarpunk crystal island wip

    starting to populate this place with Stuff….

  • solarpunk crystal island wip

    starting up a big one on 18 x 24 mixed media paper! the composition has already expanded beyond my original border but I will just have to deal with that when we wrap this up.

  • pink bells at golden hour