Friday, September 14, 2012

Counterflux- MTG painting

Here is a fun one that was a bit of a blur to produce. I was working on 5 MTG paintings for Return to Ravnica, which was my biggest contribution to the game in years. But while I was doing these I also had to finish the art for Lottie Paris 2 AND do a massive amount of silhouettes for Jodi Picoult's "Between the Lines".

In the end this meant I had to produce 80+ pieces of art in a span of 2 months. I went into full hobo mode, and somehow came out the other end smelling like roses. (Though my family may disagree with me on that score!)

This is the final image:


And here are three stages of it.

1. Like my other Ravnica pieces, I didn't start with a drawing so much as I built it up with lasso shapes. You can feel the silhouette work I was doing for 'Between the Lines' bleeding into all of my images for this set.

2. I don't love doing perspective, so imagine my joy when I realized I could build the background in Sketch-up and riff on top of it!

3.And here is the painted background using the sketch-up model as a roadmap. At this stage I had not even started the figure beyond the rough silhouette you see in the first sketch.


A final detail of the face, which was an exercise in subtly for me. But the truth of the matter is, I kept painting that eye, and not liking it. So I repeatedly blurred it out to paint it again and again till at one point I thought, "Hey that looks better all smudgy!" And left it as you see it.



5 comments:

  1. gorgeous! so much movement. and interesting that the eye was better less clarified... that IS a very interesting thing to learn.

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  2. Excellent! Though I think I see why you kept repainting the eye, it looks like its still slightly off and a bit too small for her skull. Her eyesocket is closer to the nose and higher up towards the bone. I took the liberty of doing a slight change, and I emailed it to you, I hope you dont take offence!

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    1. Thanks Tim! I am always up for feedback, so no offence taken at all!

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  3. Beautiful!

    I like the slightly sad, disconnected expression on her face as she performs the epic spell. Really good!

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  4. Hi Mr Fisher, some of us in the costuming/cosplay world are working on recreating her clothing and I was wondering if you could settle the question of the color of the stripes on her pants. T think its red/blue with the light from the spell skewing the blue, one of us who's further along the process thinks they're two shades of red. Could you please help is out before we drive ourselves crazy trying to figure out the best way to recreate the pants? Thank you!

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