Principal Areas of Interest in an especially boring location

[snodsy]

Love the title of the tread! Also love the "year in review" - the bottom left with the skeletal dragons is awesome, do you have a separate thread for this one or a higher RES. Some of the others ones are also awesome. You are a true artist, wish I had that talent. Thanks for sharing.

[Chashio]

Thank you thomrey and snodsy
The dragon piece from the July random generator challenge. 'Obsidian outcrop in a verdant forest, smoke hanging in the air.' Addicting thing, that generator. I did a whole bunch of sketches from such tidbits, but most were just scene-type illustrations.
None of these have their own threads yet. As I do more with them I will likely post higher res versions in new threads, but I'm not sure when that'll be.

[ChickPea]

Some lovely stuff here. I particularly like the bottom left pic. I think it's the grey skies. Reminds me of home! With my first quick glance at this image, I thought the green bones were landscaping or maybe ferns or something like that. Then I looked again and realised they were lizard skeleton monsters. Terrifying! And awesome!

Don't wait till this time next year to share your work!! I'd love to see more of your WIPs as you develop them.

[Chashio]

Thanks ChickPea!
I thought you live in Sunny Scotland?

I know, I have been bad about not posting new stuffs. [Hangs head]
2016 was not a great year for me as far as progressing beyond the early sketch and concept phase. Although it did somewhat help me to get a better handle on scratching down ideas more quickly. I will try to work on follow-through and finishing in 2017.

[Chashio]

... You are a true artist, wish I had that talent. Thanks for sharing.

Oh, snodsy, I forgot to say... there really isn't any artistic talent involved; it is simply spending a large amount of time mucking about and experimenting with stuff until it starts to look halfway decent. ... And scaling stuff down so the other half is less apparent.

[Ilanthar]

Wow, great work Chashio! I love your painterly style and sense of perspective. My favorites would be the bottom left, the gray to the right of the vampire bunny and the more pastel mini-map top left to it.

[Chashio]

Wow, great work Chashio! I love your painterly style and sense of perspective. My favorites would be the bottom left, the gray to the right of the vampire bunny and the more pastel mini-map top left to it.

Thanks Ilanthar! I appreciate the feedback and comments.
It is fun to hear which bits people like best. Hmm... Might end up having a semi-subconscious part in which ones get finished first. Maybe.

[Chashio]

Here's a fun little exercise...
Good practice for improving clarity and efficiency of initial-idea-onto-paper. With the timer running, you can't allow getting sidetracked and nit-picky in the early stages... which is often a problem for me and leads me into difficulties and feeling frustrated, etc.

02 01 2017 5mMapSketches KaitlinGray.PNG
This is about 2x the size of the original sketch on paper [across the top of an 8.5 x 11 printer page] so no asking for larger.

I spent 5 minutes sketching each view with a mechanical pencil, then scanned them at hi-res into the computer and applied 7 minutes of rough coloring without much zooming [about what you see here].

I then enlarged each view and did a 20 minute redraw to clarify, a bit, the roughness of the thumbnail sketches so that later I would have a chance of recalling the details of my original intentions of tiny sketchy marks and blobs of color notes. Also an issue for me.
These did not come out cleanly; they're still just a rough layout of ideas and composition for later development.
With 20 minutes I did find myself getting more sidetracked on unimportant detailing... I'd start trying to refine stuff before I should and have to reset my focus... kinda like meditation [never been good at that either].

02 01 2017 5mMap 20mReDraw Mtn-Forest-Valley KaitlinGray.PNG 02 01 2017 5mMap 20mReDraw Hills-Lake-Coastal KaitlinGray.PNG 02 01 2017 5mMap 20mReDraw Cliffs-Isle KaitlinGray.PNG

I started with the Mtn/Forest Valley view, with a pencil brush that was too light and thin and was paying too much attention to certain details... so at 20 minutes I hadn't accomplished much. I adjusted things for the other two.

Hope you find this helpful or interesting.

[J.Edward]

This is an excellent kind of thing to challenge yourself at speed and actually also at the basics of composition and thumbnailing.
As always, these are very cool, even small and not fully done. And of course, you always brings fun and creative ideas with you. ;P

I need to try this myself at some point.

[Mouse]

These are beautiful!

(not that the statement really needs an exclamation mark, since I've never seen you do a bad one )

You have to develop them - all of them.... Pleeeeeease?