Meduso?

A sketch w/o reference to break away from all the studies. Sigh, my values are always so dark... need to work on that.

More Seven Swords studies

Some from 30 mins, others a little over an hour. From these I've learned to paint/draw very small as to get the colors down right the first time. As you can see, the last two images at the bottom are the same. I painted the bottom one first, and felt that my colors and values were jumping back and forth too much so I made a new one, zoomed out really small, and just laid down the basic colors and values from the reference.

I've also began to create a blank separate file to be used as a palette so that I could determine beforehand all the skin tone colors and also to compare the values. Before I would just pick a color and lay them on top of the painting and just hope that that the value and temperature works. This turned out to be really erroneous and time-consuming. (NOTE: in Corel Painter, there is a mixer palette, which would be perfect for this, but Photoshop doesn't have that)

7 Swords Study

Movie directed by Tsui Hark. Great cinematography. This is one of my favorite scenes.

Getting used to the brushes and application in Photoshop more, so my process is moving a bit quicker. This took me 45 mins.

Pan's Labyrinth Study

2 Hrs...

Rift Contest

My entry for the Deviantart Rift contest...

Oil Portraits

A Sargent study, and then a life study of my wife, the prettiest and craziest little woman out there. She was playing Mario Kart Wii and was losing while I was painting her, hence the angry expression on her face.

Alchemy Experiment

Was quickly testing out a program called Alchemy my friend showed me a while back to draw a samurai. The mirror drawing option really came in handy for drawings like these, especially when the designs are very symmetrical. Once I had the rough shapes down I brought it into Photoshop for about two hours to add some dimension.