Mafia couple

I was inspired by a video I saw a couple of weeks ago about a character illustrator – it's often the case that, despite what we might assume, these top notch concept artists and illustrators use the most basic methods or technology. The video showed how the guy when from paper to pixel with his drawings and it looked so simple.

I meant to just spend 30 mins or so on this, like the guy in the video I watched, but I still had Bert Monroy in my head . . . so I applied minute detail to everything (which you can't see in the image). For instance, if you zoom right into the guy's trousers you'll see a stitching texture! Alas . . . . this ain't no Google Art Project, so no mega zoom will be possible.

Bob-haired girl

I turn my back for two minutes (okay, two months . . or more) and Blogger looks totally different! Still, I really like it, it's much simpler and cleaner. They still haven't fixed the composer though!

This is a recent Photoshop portrait I did using a photo which, sadly, isn't mine. Thanks to the stupidly patient Bert Monroy, who took it upon himself to paint an image of Times Square in Photoshop and spent years doing it, I got a much better understanding of not only painting in Photoshop but also how the software works in general. Lynda.com is the biz! I still find Photoshop to be my weakest area though, so I'm trying to overcome that and make it my best!

I was surprised at how smart you can be with the filters in Photoshop – I was told at uni to avoid them like the plague (a bit like you do with Comic Sans in typography classes) but, in fact, filters can be really useful when used properly (usually meaning in small measures). I could have used a slight texture filter for the skin here, and then painted it back out in areas that didn't need it, but decided against that.