The Goddess of Sun

A little portrait in honor of the sunny, bright, and adorable daughter of some friends of ours.

Painted from scratch in PS, using a photo as reference.

Published with permission.

Into The Forest (selfportrait)

My boyfriend and my older son don't like this painting, saying it makes me ugly.
My 1-year old, instead, recognized me at once.
I must say, I've got a strong feeling of freedom while painting myself as a forest troll, surrounded by (some) of the creatures I meet daily. The art world is filled with pretty girls, so let´s go and fill the room of the ugly ones, instead!

painted in PS from scratch, as usual. (and based on a picture my 5-years old took of me, wearing a fake troll nose )

Woman with Meconopsis

Simple portrait practice, in PS, 1-2 hours max. I need desperately practice again, since during holidays I couldn't use my Wacom. Maybe I'll do something more advanced lately with this reference.
Referenced from this beautiful picture at DeviantArt.
I didn't look for a photorealistic style, just keep it as it was a pencil/ink drawing, to experiment a new style. Used round brush, kept very elliptic.

It's you the Little One

Well, who's saying that? The Little and curious Wild Boy going around so fearless (and always with a stone in his hand), or the Little Flower Fairy staring at this stranger?

Like Alexander the Little, this painting was commissioned by my mother-in-law because she wants a fantasy portrait of my second born, too. As for the first, also this time I really tried to do my very best. Nevertheless, I feel quite disappointed when I realized that, even after three years, I scarcerly notice any improvement in my painting technique.  A big difference is that this time I painted my son directly from scratch, and not drawing a pencil sketch which went scanned, as I did with Alexander.

Hope, she will like it anyway.

Anatomy references for fairies pose come from the amazing Senshistock at DeviantArt. Reference for the lovely child are, of course, my own (after maaany attempts to get a decent shot).

The High Chancellor of T'hara

Although she has formally retired, no minister will dare a decision without prior seeking her advice.

The green peafowl is her pet of choice because "in the light and shadow of power, you can make colors shift the way you want." 

Well, this started as a portrait practice in PS, and I thank Khalahari at DeviantArt for providing this great reference. Peacock from my own resources.

Quite tired of the usual portraiture cliché of beautiful-sexy-young-girls which seems to be so mainstream nowadays, I wanted to depict a powerful and mature woman, in a kind of flemish-style portrait.

The peacock nearly kill me (painting it, not when  took the pic :) ), and I'm still not completely happy with it.

Tangled

This new pic is a commission for the lovely Blossom-Lullabies at DeviantArt. This was especially challenging since this is the first time I got a commission from a Deviant.

She provided me with a picture from her stock:

and asked to be painted as Rapunzel. Because of her two-colored eyes, her request was to depict her as a two-sided Rapunzel, with one dark and one light aspect tangled with each other, which I painted with an opportune choice of different flowers, hair colors, and butterflies. What I found somehow funny is that, when looking at the final result, he light eye seems much less innocent than the dark one, as if the two personalities are tangled inside...

However,  hope she'll like my interpretation of her wishes. Otherwise, I'lll paint one more!

Rita Levi Montalcini - Painter

I found at home a very old disk of Corel Painter Essential 3, so I installed it and tried to see how it works. 

I spent a lot of time trying the different settings for brushes, and fighting against some bugs and mysteries of this program, which works in another way than Photoshop but is somehow similar to Artrage.

I tried to follow a tutorial of the wonderful Corrado Vanelli from the last issue of ImagineFX, but looks like my program version is so old that I couldn't find many of the described tools, ahah.

As practice, I did a quick portrait sketch in honor of the great scientist and Nobel laureate Rita Levi Montalcini, who passed away few days ago. The reference pic is a photo found in Google.

The Lady Faun

In the last time, painting has became nearly impossible, since my evenings are almost totally occupied by the baby-almost-toddler who got separation anxiety.

So, I was very uncertain if participate in the Faun Contest held at DeviantArt by the lovely Eledhwen, whose conditions were to choose one among three of her Faun stock pics, and do a paint, or a photomanipulation out of it. I tried to give it a trial, and chosed this one:

and finished in a hurry in around a couple of weekends, so I had to keep it as a simple portrait, even if I'd like to put more imaginative elements in it. She asked also to not draw the dress to let the faun features be more visible, but I find it beautiful so I decided to keep it.

It's always great to paint from a real model instead of painting stereotyped human characters, as often seen in fantasy illustration, so I really enjoyied it, despite the little time. It is moreover a very useful exercise. (then, I also won, which is an additional pleasure :) ).

I'm still not completely happy with rendering, but maybe I'll take up again later.

Rhaego Targaryen

Well, a little piece of (imagined) fanart. I must admit that I also fall in that Game of Thrones trap.

I was watching Season I while my second child was just few weeks old and, I would say obviously, I felt disturbed by Danaerys miscarriage of her son Rhaego:

“Monstrous. Twisted. I pulled him out myself. He was scaled like a lizard. Blind, with leather wings, like the wings of a bat. When I touched him, his skin fell from his bones. Inside, he was full of graveworms.” - Mirri Maz Dur -

So I decided to change the history and make him newborn, alive and healthy. Just, the scales and the wings aren't really a malformation, but a sign of the dragon blood inherited by his mother. As she saw him in a vision, his skin is bronze like his father's, and his hair are instead of the Valyrian blond type.

However, don't ask me how she could deliver such a scaly child without so much pain. Maybe she just delivered a dragon egg, ahah. It would be easier.

Technically, I experienced some problems with computer screens: with some my pictures are so saturated, then I look in the other one we've at home, and everything is so grey. This pic is no exception.

(Off)Spring

Time with my newborn and his brother do not let me paint so much, at least right now.

Just a little to paint a sketch of the little one, three months old, in a spring-elfish-maybeflemish version. This was intended as a portrait study, many elements are intentionally left rough, to give a painterly finish (nice way to say: "didn't have the time to do a better render" ). 

Painted in PS, 3-4 hours, in and out.

Winged Vanity

This has been made for the contest Wings of an Angel at the Group Digital Art Fantasy, at DeviantArt.

The deadline was quite close and I didn't render as accurately as I would have done, but it's moreless Ok, maybe I'll refine wings and others details in the future.

I didn't want to paint a classical angel (good or demoniac), instead I tried to get inspiration from the Deadly Sins, I though it could be more interesting.
I don't think I'll have any chance to win something (there were already a lot of much more interesting and beautiful contributions), but it was fun and good for me to practice again some facial anatomy, and also a good excuse to paint with the peacock's color palette, which I really love, and also can mean Vanity and Proud in this case.
Used my right hand as reference for hers; painted in Photoshop from scratch as usual.

detail of face:

Fainting Autumn

Making doodles, I decided to go on with this one.
It depicts the spirit of boreal Autumn, as we experience it up here. Daylight becomes suddenly short and golden, the leaves have almost fled from trees, the girl tries to catch the last glimpse of light, but the day is already at its end, and soon snow will cover everything.
Technically, I tried here to work without references, just to give myself a challenge with anatomy.

I'm still not sure if the last version should be the whole figure or a smaller one.

a detail:

Blue, or Violet

I really do not know which title give this one. I began it as portrait practice, then repainted, then I got pregnant and was so tired that I did not could do anything in my free time than sleep. 

Now that the second trimester arrived, tiredness getting better and at the same time holiday, i looked again into the GCTalk homepage and discovered that the call for entries for Exotique 7 has opened. 

So I felt motivated to pick up the tablet and Photoshop, and pick up this image, among the many I began and did not finish because not convincing.

Another subject maybe not very original, but that's it:

closeups:

This, and 'Flora and the Dragonfly' will be submitted to Exotique, will see how it will work, even if there are much better things out there. However, if i do not try, it will not work for sure.

Flora and the Dragonfly

Perhaps this is not the most original subject: a kind of nice girl surroundend by flowers, in a faerie/fantasy environment. Well, a typical maistream stuff. 

Anyway, I wanted to do more portrait practice, so I started to sketch some quick doodles, maybe four or five, just to practice about values and shapes. My boyfriend picked up one and I worked further with it, trying to render skin textures and so on, keeping in mind the beauty of the works of Melanie Delon, Bente Schlick or Linda Bergkvist (well, not at THAT level, I know!). Who has been so kind to look at my previous paintings can notice some similarities with Alexander the Little and the Flemish Flowers. This time I wanted to work fast and effective, and not indulge in a long and exausting detail search (I've learned that, on the web, the most details are lost anyway)

Some close-ups as usual.

have a nice spring!

Lady Water

I don't know if I like this work or not. I thought that the concept could be interesting (water in all her three forms, solid, liquid, and "vapor", let's say, also inspired by the snow melting during these sunny days up here), but during the painting process I realized that the result just sucks, despite the efforts I wanted to put in rendering details, composition and so on. It feels like I'm not able to produce a decent work despite the amount of my free time I'm consuming on painting and practice.

So, I don't feel to go on with this work any longer, and I edit it just like that.

Below I put a couple of details, as usual:

Appearance (selfportrait)

This picture is, apparently, filled with a lot of clichés one can find in several CG works: the mask, feathers, flying birds, a melancholic and soft environment.

Despite that, this is in fact the most personal painting I've done since I've started with digital art. 

The mask with peacock feathers is heavily referenced from the one I designed and made self several years ago, when I used to go to the carnival in Venice. In this picture I wanted to depict the feeling of being seen only for the own mask and appearance one shows to the world, without being able to really reveal himself, and the sense of loneliness coming from this. 

Who knows me personally could see some details which tell that it is, in fact, a selfportrait.

I put a couple of close-ups, as usual. Painting the peacock feathers has been a little tedious, but relaxing at the same time. For obvious reasons, all references used are from own photos and peacock feathers I've at home.
The details in the mask can be appreciated in full view.

Queen Radiolaria

I've not really much to say about this painting, except that I felt almost compelled to draw it after having seen the wonderful scientific images of Radiolarians drawn by Ernst Haeckel in 1904 (look here to appreciate his tremendous works).

For the anatomy reference, I credit the photographer Marcus Ranum (Mjranum-stock at DeviantArt) for using his pic.

I tried, after finishing the picture, to set Vibrance at high values, I think that it gives very nice colors, seen in a normal computer screen, without getting strange saturations effects.

And some close-ups:



Madonna Lois Griffin

Again, I've got a new idea for the contest "From Comical to Classical" in the DeviantArt group The Digital Painter where I already participate with the Barbabella da Vinci showed in the previous post. 

This time is the turn of a much respectless subject, and the Madonna Colonna:

 

from Raphael Sanzio is the innocent victim of my latest work, since She and her Son have been personified by a couple of members of the Griffins family (the one of the controversial Family Guy series).

Given the subject, I had to paint something controversial as well, so I tried to depict their daily family drama in a way that Raphael and other more pious than the Griffin family would almost find blasphemous and surely irreverent.

Just take my painting with some irony rather than the original meaning of the true Raphael masterpiece, and don't forget what the cartoon is about.

Technically, this work has been done in a lack of time, since the contest deadline is very close, so I'm not really satisfied with its quality.

Barbabelle da Vinci

A couple of weeks ago I read that the DeviantArt group The Digital Painter announced a contest among digital painters. The subject is "From Comical to Classical", and, in the middle of two paintings which aren't satisfying me, I decided to take a break and participate in the contest, just for fun since I don't really hope to win something. 

The matter is, in short, to take one or more characters from a published comic, anime, or toon, and paint it in the style of a classical painting.

My son and his books inspired me to use Barbabelle from the Barbapapa family and turn her into the Lady with an Ermine from Leonardo da Vinci:

It had a lot of fun painting Barbabelle, and it went quite fast if compared with my usual standard. Even if I will be far away from getting some rewards, it was a good idea for finding something to decorate my child's room. A challenge was also to paint without color pickup, and also to get a kind of old patina to the painting itself.

Instead of the ermine I put a dog, which should resemble the Lolita dog of Barbapapa. I'm also aware that the real Barbabelle wears yellow flowers, but in this case I used red ones, since they better match the red dress, and, you know, she's a fashionist indeed...

I feel a little annoyed about the necklace not casting a shadow on Barbabelle's skin, but in the original da Vinci I cannot see that shadow as well, and I had to keep the same style as the original, so here is it:

Plus a couple of closeups:

And now I'm going to submit Barbabelle to the contest. Wish me good luck!

Medusinae

I painted this one from the idea I had in the previous post. I wanted a sea creature in human shape, but not the usual mermaid. This character is a sad one, longing for contact with the other creatures in the ocean, but she frighten away them because of hers beautiful, but poisonous and urticants tentacles.

The name Medisinae is an hybrid between the mythologic creature Medusa, who petrified everybody looking at her, and Medusae, or jellyfishes in zoology.

Painted in Photoshop, whith a custom brush for some of the tentacles. This time I tried to be quick, even if I wanted a enough detailed painting. Since she is not a human creature, I wasn't looking for perfect proportions in anatomy and face.

I put also a couple of closeups: