Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Digital painting on a 3D canvas ... because I can't get a render for love or money!




I think the title of this post tells the whole story! But there's a saying about gray clouds and silver linings. I've had all these great .abr brushes for six months and have never had an opportunity to get them installed and play with them. So rather than just fight with the computer (which is fruitless, because the computer always wins and you limp away with two black eyes), I've just said, "What the heck, let's paint. Actually, I put it in stronger language at the time...

And it's a lot of fun. What I'm doing is taking old favorites from a long, long time ago and doing a "revamp" on them. They're pictures that were pretty good on their own, but they always lacked "something." They were done about a year ago, when I had a lot fewer models than I have now, and also, not enough processor power to get fancy. I doubled my RAM and added a netter video card, about a year ago as of now ... of course lately I've gotten soooo fancy, even this system is buckling at the knees.

So the painting is like a blast from the past, and it really can be striking. It's well worth having a look at the details at full-size:

And just for fun, here's the process, from the old shot to the new:

With any luck we can get some more life out of this computer ... and fortunately there are three other computers in the immediate vicinity which I can use while this one is having brain surgery, but I shall get withdrawal symptoms, not being able to click that "render" button ...!

Jade, 12 April