Thomgirl's Digital Ruminations

Thanks everyone for the support, I'm really enjoying this one, I just hope I can bring it justice!

The torso looks much better with the extra shading giving it mass and form, and the balance of lights and dark works now across the whole image.
And the pose and expression on the lion is recognisable to cats of all sizes (and their owners!) Brilliant.

Thank you, Valence! I'm glad I am capturing the lioness well. She's as important to me as the female figure, but since not being in the central scene of the comp, I was worried her presence would somehow be diminished. I am not much of a cat person, but I love the concept. It's good to hear feedback that I've struck a good chord with it. It was very important to me that the relationship between them felt very symbiotic. More like sisters rather than human with pet.

ThomGirl, those are great. I don't know what it is, but I love the greyscale type charcoal feel you have done. Don't know why but I love those types of work. The rest of your stuff is equally as good though!
Looking forward to seeing more!

Thanks, Danny When I worked traditionally, I mainly used charcoal and graphite. Since I'm mostly self taught digitally, I use a similar method. I'm rueing that I did not push oil painting studies further when I was in art school, my color work definitely suffers for it :-/

Well, it's been again... a long time. I had a lot of craziness happen in my life where I last left off. I had a wonderful invite from Gabriella to participate in the Leo Zodiac challenge and I had every intention to with Leo that I've been working on, but best laid plans and such. As it stands, I haven't done any artwork since June. I essentially had no place to work on my stuff with the kiddo crawling around and climbing and grabbing computer cords so I had to go into my shop and build an entirely new desk system. Of course, this thing was going to be located in my living room, so I also needed it to be presentable looking. A project that should have taken a weekend took me a month to complete and then I had to rearrange my entire living room to make it work with everything else.

With persistence though comes payoff and after a much needed vacation to the Southern Caribbean to get my SCUBA itch scratched, I have returned home and have finally started using my new 'art' desk and can watch the kiddo while I paint and she can't yank out any cords. The arrangement has also allowed me to hang up several prints I had made of some of my favorite works I've done. The space feels great and so, in celebration, I chucked out a fast sketch of character portrait I'm working on of a Blood Elf Arcane Enhancer. Been checking out a lot of Charlie Bowater's works, so... yeah... love her stuff.



Hope everyone here is doing well. I'll try and catch up as I can, but sadly, I don't have the kind of time I used to to check out people's stuff. I'll hit up what I can, but if I don't leave a comment for someone, don't feel I've forgotten you! Just life with an 11 mo old is crazy!

Thanks Charlotte! Yeah, I'm still working out the nose shading and I'll take another pass at the lips as well. The character herself is supposed to be... interesting or odd looking. I mean, of course, she's elven, so... it's not like they're really 'ugly' ever, but she wouldn't be considered a great beauty among her people either. It's been a hard thing to pull off, actually and I'm very glad for the feed back on it.

Good to see you back and good to see another picture!

I like the work on the tip of the nose, it's a complex transition from nostril to tip and you've described it well. I'd tone down the dark shading of the philtrum. It looks darker than the shadow side of the face and is very noticable even as a thumbnail.
The expression has a nice haughty, imperious feel to it which always seems appropriate for elves.
Looking forward to seeing how it develops...