These are a series of characters I designed for a film I was developing a few years ago. Creating fantasy creatures like these is a joy for me. When I was young growing up in the Everglades of south Florida I spent a large amount of time out in the swamps and forests drawing and painting. I often imagined that there were creatures there that I couldn’t see. I’d like to add that these were all done well before Avatar.
I love painting gulls. Here is a new step by step of a pair of Laughing Gulls I digitally painted last night.
So, once again I like to start with a textured, toned background. This is several watercolor textures I have in my files layered and set on multiply over a warm tone. |
Next,I played with the textures a bit more and roughed in the gulls. |
I wanted to play with warms and cools in this piece so I next layed in a blue gradient tone. I also added shadow tones in the foreground for composition. The gulls also got shifted up a bit. |
Because of the feather detail, I decided I wanted to tie the drawing down, so I turned the texture levels off so that I could see the drawing layers better and begin to tie down the drawing. |
Tied down drawing with layers turned back on. |
Once again I wasn’t quite happy with the gulls compositionally, so I enlarged them a bit. This I felt was more pleasing. |
Now I’m ready to start rendering my values further. This is where I also start paying particular attention to color temperature. Especially between shadow areas and light areas. |
Here I’ve rendered the feathers of the back. |
Time to get to gull number two. |
Here I just use my eye dropper to grab the same colors of the first gull and I begin to render the second gull. |
Once the second.gull was rendered out I felt the background needed to darken. I wanted to get the gulls to pop better and have a better sense of light. |
As a final touch I compressed all the levels and color dodged the warm areas around the gulls on the ground to warm, and brighten it up. It gives a much better sense of light. |
One of my digital animal paintings, step by step
I first like to start with a textured, toned background. |
I then rough in the layout. This is where I resize and move things around to get the composition right. |
I then lighten that level, and create a new level to start the more refined rendering. |
Once the drawing is done I roughly start laying in local color. I set this level on multiply so that I can retain the texture underneath. |
Photoshop CS6 Sketch – Aaron Blaise
Thought I’d share this watercolor I did a few years ago
Here’s a new step by step approach to one of my Photoshop paintings.
Still not happy with the pose, I changed it again. This time I like it and I roughly lay in some lights on the monkey to get a better sense of how it will sit in the composition. |
Now I just start laying in color. The bark of the Baobob is somewhat shiny and therefore reflective of a lot of the surrounding color. I pay particular attention to changing temperature. |
Torch Tiger
A few years back at Disney we created a book called Torch Tiger. It was a collection of works by Disney artists and the content had to be each individuals interpretation of the title. My wife Karen had passed away the year before after a long battle with breast cancer and I wanted to do something for her. This is what I produced.
A couple of lion paintings.
Some ink drawings I did a few years ago.
A few personal digital pieces…
Here are a couple of new characters done in the last couple of days.
Here is some recent personal work.
Here is a random sea creature/mermaid I created
This was a little elf design I did years ago.
Please look to my King of the Elves post to see many more designs from this project |
So when we were designing our elves, we wanted them to feel as if they could actually be out in the forest. If they had been there for thousands of years without having been seen, how did they do it? We looked at animals that use camouflage and mimicry to conceal themselves. Eventually the elves began to take on a unique feel. They began to grow leaves right out of their bodies! We thought that there are so many insects, lizards and birds that match the foliage that they live in then why not the elves?
Bird Concept Art for Untitled Film Project
Gull Paintings by Aaron Blaise
I love painting birds! They were the first animal I ever painted, and from the time I could hold a paintbrush they have crept into my work continuously. Gulls are a particular favorite of mine.
Here are a few random gull paintings of mine:
watercolor |
oil on canvas |
oil on board |
oil on board |
oil on board |
oil on board |