The Rabbit Hole

Porno Bunny

2011-07-29T16:39:00.003+02:00

I was listening to Dog Fashion Disco when painting this, so to those who know the band it may explain the picture. It's quite rough, but I think I'll leave it like that. Unfortunately a lot of my rendered paintings lose a significant amount of freshness. Something I still have to work on...

Desert Mech + Armor Study

2011-07-27T09:20:00.003+02:00

A 1 hour speedpainting I started yesterday at work. I continued working on it when I got home and added some finishing details today in the morning, so I think it took me about 4-5 hours in total. Got influenced by references a bit too much, so I it ended like Iraq 3000 or something... was great fun to paint though!

I also attached a small study I painted recently. Nothing fancy, but worth to show I guess...

Fairy Hunter

2011-07-11T17:38:00.002+02:00

A speedpainting done for a small workshop I organized today. My colleagues wanted to see some of the techniques I use for creating my artwork, including the use of photo textures, custom brushes, alphas and clipping masks. It started very random, without any real goal, so there are issues, but I guess it served well for demonstration purposes.

Hamburg Dockyard

2011-07-11T00:17:00.004+02:00

Today I joined some friends to paint in the local dockyard. I was working with watercolors and it was a lot of fun, but unfortunately we had to relocate several times, so I'm stuck with 3 very unfinished paintings and when I came back home I still wanted to finish them. So I scanned the watercolor sketch and painted over with Photoshop, using the color information I had on the canvas, combining with photos I took and memory. There are two other paintings on the way, which I will upload in the following days. Enjoy!

I'm also posting some of the photos I took. I thought they are worth to share, even though my camera is crap and so is the quality. Some photographers may say the photos are too... :)

Studies'n'Shizzles

2011-06-25T23:22:00.004+02:00

Study after Beaux. What a master of stroke economy! (Which I utterly failed at to emulate.)

And a selfportrait. :)

Speedie

2011-05-25T00:19:00.003+02:00

I was in the mood for painting something free after work, so I started very rough and uncertain about where to go. Simply having fun with shapes and textures. When I got home I continued working on the sketch and voila... quite generic and not well resolved on some parts. Probably should have used some reference to gather fresh ideas, but I think it fits the purpose: Having fun. :)

Pintor Doze

2011-05-17T00:52:00.002+02:00

I downloaded the new Painter 12 trial and decided to use a recent commission for learning the new tools and features. So far I dig the new interface and the few new brushes. The mirror function is great and I wish Photoshop would offer something similar. Unfortunately the performance is bad, at least in comparison with Painter X, which I used until now.

Still, I had fun and made this sketch for the book cover I have to paint. I'm surprised by the analogue look I achieved...

Rusty Suit

2011-05-08T19:04:00.002+02:00

Hello world! This is me, posting stuff once again. I just continued working on one of those countless unfinished digital sketches and doodles and decided it's good as a speedpainting and worth to show. (And it helps reviving this blog.)

Hamburg

2011-02-24T19:10:00.002+01:00

Some time passed since my last post. I had quite a turbulent time recently. A lot of changes and a lot of good news. One of them is I got hired! I just moved to Hamburg to join the Bigpoint team. This is my first time being employed and I'm sure it's going to be a great experience, even though I'll miss those freelancer times, when I could wake up, grab a cup of coffee and start working in my underpants.

I'm still keeping myself busy with those studies, so heres a bunch of more. The black and white is a value study of a Serow painting.

Namasté!

2010-12-08T13:16:00.005+01:00

A photo study again. :)

Study Nr.2

2010-12-07T12:50:00.002+01:00

A new day, a new morning study. Spent a bit more than an hour on this one, but it's a calm day so far, so no need to hurry.

Keep on rollin'

2010-12-06T11:33:00.003+01:00

So here I am. Nothing extraordinary going on lately. Had 2 flus in one month, did some storyboard work and kept on working on my portfolio. Still looking for a fulltime position somewhere and trying to get in touch with studios. I'd really like to end the freelancer status. Hang out with colleagues I can learn from, be involved in a studio workflow, learn some 3D, etc. Hopefully it will work out soon... :)

For the sake of keep on being busy I decided to set up a strict time plan, so I can follow a certain daily system. It includes doing a 1 hour study before starting with work, which is actually not only good for warming up, but also keep evolving technical things. Still so much to learn within photoshop and it's tools.

It's Monday, what a grace, and here is my first and today's piece.

Greetings from a very cold vienna!

Compensation Coyote

2010-11-04T19:18:00.003+01:00

I totally forgot about this painting, until I visited my mother yesterday and saw it on the wall. When I decided to visit Los Angeles she heard about coyotes there, asking me to take pictures, because she adores them. I'm a good boy and kept my eyes peeled for, but unfortunately never got to see any. My only confrontation with mother nature was when I remembered the washed laundry I had hung in my host's garden to dry. It was dark already and I rushed out. After a few steps I realized I'm surrounded by a huge racoon family and daddy (or was it mummy?) got really pissed, kept hissing at me. I didn't know these animals can grow that big! It was then when I asked myself if I ever heard about racoons being harmful to humans. But no matter what, I did have respect. So I grabbed my stuff and run like a girl. (No offense, girls!)
Quite thrilling story, isn't it? ;)

Anyway... I didn't want to return to Austria without a darn coyote, so here I was, using the gouache colors I brought with me for the first and last time during my trip.

Urban Terrorist

2010-11-01T14:03:00.003+01:00

Back at Red Engine I had to come up with 2 Character Designs for Steve's class. He wanted us to do an urban terrorist, with at least one mechanical body part, and his counterpart, the female police officer. I'm still working on her, but here is how the terrorist ended like.

I had this idea of Rio de Janeiro in near future, showing it's scars after the long war between drug lords and the government. The indigenous people started settling down in urban areas, fighting for their rights and standing somewhere between these 2 big factions. I like the diverse possible outcomes for a story here... this indigenous man may be seen as a villain in the beginning of the story when the audience slowly notice the inconsistency in calling him so. I may continue doing some concepts for this story, as I find it quite fascinating.

Mech fights Tentacles

2010-10-22T17:53:00.004+02:00

This piece started as a speedpainting / sketch for Jung Park's class at Red Enginge. I liked the outcome, so I decided to keep working on it and ended up with this result. The retro feeling of the mech is totally intentional! I think the painting in general feels a bit too noisy and overloaded, but I may be wrong... something to keep in mind next time.

I'm also attaching an environment value sketch.

Back from L.A.

2010-09-25T21:37:00.006+02:00

So I'm back in Vienna, still recovering from the jet-lag and still overwhelmed by the experience I could make in Los Angeles. It has been a great time and I owe the guys at Red Engine a lot! I've never made such an improvement in such a short amount of time and hopefully I'll stay in the flow for some while.

I wanted to polish the work I did there before posting it, but I feel like I should move on to new pieces, so here is a collection of what I did at the workshop. It all was painted on my Macbook Pro with the small Intuos 4 Tablet, so I'm very happy to be back with my cintiq. Most of these paintings/sketches were done in 1 to 3 hours.

Thanks to Steve Jung, Jung Park and Nathaniel West for the great feedback and help on these!

Mordor Redesign

2010-09-15T19:49:00.005+02:00

So, my trip to Los Angeles is coming to an end. I really wish I had more time to spend with you Angelinos, was pretty busy with all the workshop assignments and rarely had time to go out, do all the tourist things and hang out with all these great people I've met here. Thanks a lot for the great experience! But it's not a farewell anyway... still some days left. ;)

Heres a little appetizer of what is coming in the next weeks. I gathered tons of sketches and speedpaintings, failed paintings, bad paintings, good ones (hopefully) and I want to bring them back to vienna first, before reflecting on the whole output and maybe change some things.

Album Cover

2010-08-01T09:30:00.003+02:00

Hello world,

LA is a blast so far! The guys from Red Engine are so talented and super friendly... in just 2 days I've probably learned more than in the last years of hanging around in university, so let's see where I end up after 2 months. I'm really happy I decided to do this trip and hopefully I'll be able to show some of the work I'm doing here soon.

Meanwhile... heres an album cover illustration for "Ta-Li", an austrian hip hop producer, who is just releasing his first solo project. More info here: http://www.ta-li.eu/

I'm also including a sketch I did before, which I kinda like more, but you know - the client leads.
Was a fun piece to do!

Card

2010-07-24T23:27:00.006+02:00

My new business card! I had to rush through the bottom part of it, but I'm pretty happy with the result. It may be a bit cheesy for a representative card, but at least it has character. Well... I hope so... The backside, with all the contact info, is made in a sketchy way, like a little doodle, so nothing worth to show. Again, made in a hurry, but I'll be coming back to finish it right as soon as I have time for.

If anyone is wondering about the rabbit: That's what "Coelho" means in Portuguese. ;) Basically my idea was designing a business card that resembles some kind of tarot card, which you can play to cast illustration, concept art, etc. - whatever your need is. A bit silly, but why so seriousss?

Another small note here: I'll be attending the Red Engine School's summer classes in Los Angeles for 2 months! I've been following the instructor's work for some time and this is a great opportunity for me to see some PS-magic, learn new techniques and hopefully get in contact with some people. Besides visiting Los Angeles of course. A city I wanted to experience for a very long time and I'm very happy it's finally going to happen. If anyone from LA is reading this - don't hesitate to contact me!

Heres Daniel Park's blog entry about the class schedule: Click

Studies

2010-07-21T10:59:00.006+02:00

Some studies and lifedrawings, not the most actual stuff, but worth to show I hope. The last one is a still of Ridley Scott's 1492 - Conquest of Paradise. Such a nice and underrated movie! I would like to archive his kind of lightning and composition in my work, so I started to study a lot of his movies.

Post Fox

2010-07-20T22:15:00.003+02:00

A little filler until I get some new material to show here. This character concept was done for a 3D animated commercial which would introduce the new austrian postal service mascot. After some sketches and tryouts I had little time left to complete this rendering so it was quite a rushed job. I'm really happy with his character, as it's something I usually struggle to archive in my concepts. Unfortunately the job was canceled, but at least I got a nice piece for my portfolio.

Still living...

2010-07-18T10:05:00.005+02:00

Hey folks! It's been a while since I posted something to my blog... Had a very busy year with some very interesting projects. Pretty close to my last blog entry, around october, I got hired to do concept art for 2K Games' upcoming "Spec Ops: The Line" 3rd person shooter. It was the biggest game project I've been involved so far and had the opportunity to learn a lot. I almost exclusively did environment concepts, but got a chance to work on other things too. In the end I was hired for about a half year, working some time on location in Berlin at Yager, the developer. Met some really nice people there - thanks a lot, guys! As always, NDAs are strict and I can't show anything right now, but I hope to get the permission as soon as it's released end of 2010, early 2011.

A little teaser/trailer, for those of you who are into that kind of game. I'm really excited by the fact yager is trying to make a more storydriven singleplayer experience. There have been so much visually beautiful but with regards to content uninteresting shooters lately. Hope you'll enjoy the fresh air!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxu7W8xR5jo&hd=1

After Spec Ops, there were several minor projects, including feature film, storyboards, animation character concepts and other not yet published games. In overall, as stated before, a busy year so far. Right now I'm trying to relax a bit, focus on my portfolio to send out some applications soon. I think it's time to move on and get out of austria. The industry here unfortunately isn't very promising and I would love to get some experience as fulltime artist in a big studio. So I hope to see some opportunities soon.

Anyway... this blog is officially revived! And to start off I'm posting some concepts for a projects of some former students of mine at the Qantm game school. I offered them to use some of my old concepts for their graduation project. I kind of acted as art director, though I haven't been involved much later on. But for the kickoff, I did made some concepts, using my old sketches as basis. The basic idea was an iphone surfing game which takes advantage of the motion sensor control to tilt and navigate the surfboard. Hope to see the game soon, as it's almost finished.

Two character concepts and a moodpainting, which has been used as screenshot fake to present the game pitch.

2009-10-14T22:32:00.002+02:00

New speedpainting for the unearthly challenge. Took me about 2 hours of pure fun! :)

2009-10-14T02:11:00.002+02:00

A quick study of my grand uncle. Playing with new brushes and experimenting.

2009-10-11T17:12:00.002+02:00

I would like to join the "Unearthly" contest at gameartisans.org, but so far I have no ideas. So I just painted little thumbnails of different scenarios, to have something to chose from. Still not happy, but at least closer to. All around 20 minutes.

2009-10-10T03:10:00.002+02:00

Two new just-for-fun pieces. :)

2009-08-28T12:43:00.005+02:00

So here it is - the finished painting! Mostly done yesterday, just added some details this morning. Always good to check again the next day for a fresh view. All done in Painter X, als always. I really enjoyed this piece. It was fast, uncomplicated and turned out the way I intended it to be. I miss some more elements, like flying bones and stuff like that, thought about adding a corpse which is rising in front of him. But I wanted to finish this fast, keeping in mind the deadlines I normally have for trading card illustrations. Even so it took me too long, but it's all about the practice, aye? I think in overall it cost me about 10 hours - not that bad and for now I prefer quality over quantity. I added two detail shots in 100 % zoom, so you can see some of the brushwork.

More hopefully coming soon!

2009-08-27T12:03:00.004+02:00

A sketch for a trading card type illustration. Want to build up my illustration portfolio and work on my imaginative painting skills. After years of mostly doing studies and learning I have a big difference in quality compared to my illustrations, so this is something I definitely have to catch up. And I would love to finally stop doing commercial storyboards, so maybe entering the fantasy illustration field is the right thing. Though it doesn't pay the same... ;)

2009-08-25T18:32:00.002+02:00

The view from my working place - constantly watching the neighbors. I'm sure they love it! :)
I like the colors, kept staring at them several times, so I decided to paint a little study this morning.

2009-08-16T20:57:00.002+02:00

A little gouache study, made from a movie still. "A Fistful of Dollars" !

2009-08-16T13:15:00.002+02:00

A character concept demonstration work I'm doing for my class at the SAE School. I'll be turning this into a full colored concept sheet the next time. Also doing a little introduction to Corel Painter and it's features.

2009-08-12T20:14:00.004+02:00

I was asked to contribute my work for a monthly feature in the "datum" print magazine. The basic idea is simple - giving illustrators the chance of presenting their work to a wider audience. I decided to do something new, because most of my stuff don't represent what I would really like to do. It was rather spontaneous to come up with the idea of the 3 apes. I wanted to paint this classic motive, with some hint of criticism. Being vegetarian, almost vegan (except cheese - something I just don't want to miss), animals and their struggle and pain within our food economy always was something that moved me. But I also always wanted to stay away from political or social themes, not wanting to be reduced to only one opinion. Besides the fact I don't want to sound like a hypocrite - we all are full mistakes, right?

Anyway... This was painted with oils on three small sheets of paper and put together behind a frame. The size is 6x3 inches and I painted it all in one day, which is a new record for me working with oils. I will post a scan of the page in the magazine as soon as I get a copy.

Oh and many thanks to Tom Mackinger, from austrianillustration.com, for the opportunity!

2009-07-10T23:16:00.003+02:00

I painted this portrait at the last sktechgroup meeting. We painted for about 3 hours, including the breaks. Started with an oil painting first, but decided to switch to digital medium, because... you know, I was lazy! But it was an opportunity to try out the screen capture feature once more. This time it worked, but there are still minor things like the camera shake. My apologies!
Not my best, but I hope you dig the little video.

2009-06-15T21:24:00.004+02:00

A self portrait I painted today. Rediscovered the palette knife in Painter X - what a tool!
Always something very strange and difficult to paint a self portrait... you just can't relax.

2009-06-03T10:35:00.002+02:00

2 new plein air paintings. The first two I did without a drawing before, so I just blocked in colors and the result was surprisingly a lot faster and secure. You sometimes need to lock away the fear, right?

Still not where I want to be with my plein air studies, but I'm getting closer. :)

The Vienna Sketchgroup

2009-05-21T10:51:00.003+02:00

Some weeks ago, my buddy Tom Seiger started a weekly sketchgroup session. This is kind of nostalgia for some of us, as we used to do this some years ago, but unfortunately most of the people moved away or lost interest. Anyway... it's mostly about sitting together, have a nice chat and do some art. Here are the portrait studies I did during the latest evenings. Mixed, as always, two gouache paintings, one in oils and another digital painting of Tom, who posed for us after a model dropped out.

2009-05-15T21:58:00.003+02:00

I recently watched blade runner, yeah once again, and i really fell in love with the lightning in one of the first scenes, so i decided to do a small study of it. Nothing special, but i though it's still worth to share.

And I'm also showing a digital lifepainting I did during a session with my buddies Stefan Nützel and Igino. The mighty Andrew Judd also joined our session! Dude, it was such an inspirational experience meeting you - thank you a lot for the nice talks!

2009-05-15T21:50:00.003+02:00

A bunch of things I did in the last weeks. Sketches, studies, doodles, and so on...

2009-05-12T23:37:00.002+02:00

Long time!

To start it slowly again, i just show something i did at the beginning of these silent weeks.

Heres a kind of logo i painted for a friend of mine whos playing in a metalband. The idea was to just get a logo for promotional things, but i think they'll use it on their next album cover too. Their ideas were quite clear, but i had my artistic freedom in choice of color and overall style of course. I'm pretty happy with the result, still it's not something i usually tend to do.

If you want to check out some austrian rock solid metal, go visit their site: http://www.reap.at

2009-02-17T09:50:00.002+01:00

Digital study, didn't stick that much with the reference. Done in PS and Painter.

2009-02-17T09:46:00.002+01:00

Character design for the weekly character challenge over at conceptart.org. The theme was something like "Siamese Twins in a postapocalyptic setting".

2009-02-15T14:03:00.001+01:00

More lifepainting shizzles.

2009-01-02T11:05:00.002+01:00

Not much happening these days... christmas burnout. Some of the few new sketchbook pages. Happy new year to everyone out there!

2008-12-05T18:22:00.002+01:00

Today i went to a weekly lifepainting session i'm doing with some friends. I got up late and didn't have time to pack my oil stuff, so i decided to just grab my sketchbook and the gouache tools. The spontaneous change of tools was one of those happy accidents. Had great fun painting this, some things are off, but in the end i'm very happy with the result. 3 hours, with some minor breakes, painted on A4 sized sketchbook page.

:edit: I also posted some random sketches i did lately.

2008-11-29T11:53:00.003+01:00

More stuff i did for the Wizard of the Oz. :)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - Steampunk Remake

2008-11-15T00:49:00.003+01:00

I'm participating in the running CG Society Challenge named "Steampunk Myths and Legends".

After some time searching for interesting stories and doing research i chose "The Wonderful Wizard of OZ", because it fits best to the pictures i had in mind so far. Beside my girlfriend loves the story and i love apes. Did i ever had a choice?

The attack of the flying apes is one of my favourite scenes and i'm pretty sure i'll try to illustrate that scene. My first idea was to only show the witch with her apes in the castle, but its quite boring and i wanted to paint something bigger, something "epic". Thinking about Steampunk... I decided to relocate the whole story into a smaller universe, put it into an industrial city - inspired by London in age of the industrial revolution. The journey of Dorothy and her fellows would lead through this city, with it's districts which resemble the different chapters of the story. For example the emerald city will be a district where all the buildings have roofs made of copper, which turns into green, as we know.

Here are the first 3 sketches i did for this event. More coming soon!

Late Update

2008-11-14T22:52:00.003+01:00

I just noticed i forgot to post the stuff i did at the digitalartconvention in september. So heres the stuff, i also included a digital lifepainting i did this morning, the woman on the couch, and an animation tryout in TVPaint. Neat program!

2008-11-11T21:24:00.002+01:00

Some of my latest lifedrawings. 5-15 minutes each pose. Excuse the crappy quality. :(

2008-11-11T20:52:00.001+01:00

building concept for the mighty airborn project!
see more here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/airborn

2008-11-10T19:50:00.002+01:00

Little head study.

Jaguar Warrior

2008-11-10T08:05:00.004+01:00

Been a time since i posted... Lot of work to be done, but i spend some time to finish that jaguar concept i was working on for a while. I may revisit it and change some minor things, but in overall i'm just happy to move on to the next chapter. Can't look at this piece anymore...

The sketchbook strikes back!

2008-10-17T10:43:00.004+02:00

I'm on the run so i'm making it short and just drop off some of my latest sketchbook pages. Studies, sketches, lecture notes, lifedrawings, ...

I'm going to a digitalartforum convention in germany this weekend, so expect some new stuff next week.

Sorolla

2008-10-12T12:09:00.002+02:00

A digital Sorolla-Study.

vdb

2008-10-11T17:24:00.002+02:00

I just wanted to try a new technique in painter, so i simply painted a portrait of an austrian politician. One of the few i can sympathize with.

Carpenter

2008-10-07T19:37:00.002+02:00

A quick portrait sketch i drew with a Carpenter's Pencil. Quite interesting to have these flat shapes.

Nuzlwogn

2008-10-07T16:47:00.003+02:00

An oil study of a photograph taken by Stefan Nützel. I also posted the sketch I painted before moving on to the final painting.

Hoppy

2008-09-01T14:42:00.002+02:00

A sketch i did inspired by Philip K. Dick's "Dr. Bloodmoney or How we got along after the bomb". A great book - i recommend it to anyone interested in intelligent Sci-Fi.

Reiseskizzen

2008-08-30T15:42:00.003+02:00

Some sketches from my short trip to germany last week.

New Plein Air Equipment

2008-08-26T18:49:00.004+02:00

I ordered an Easyl Lite pochade box from the States a while ago. The shipping costs where high of course, but unfortunately there is no such system in europe, so i decided to pay the price. This is my first try and it feels really nice to work with quality equipment. The painting is a bit cropped, because the canvas didn't fit right on the scanner. If you don't know about pochade boxes check the recently posted article at Lines and Colors.

Can't wait to run again and do some guerilla painting in the woods! :) I highly recommend this to anyone!

Werhyena

2008-08-20T11:07:00.002+02:00

A concept i've drawn a while ago for Stefan, who makes some really nice miniatures. You can see the progress of the hyena and other works at his blog: Stefan B. Niehues

Sketchbook

2008-08-02T11:07:00.003+02:00

Some pages from my sketchbook. Studies, sketches and thoughts...

Tikiboss

2008-07-31T18:17:00.003+02:00

Something i had to do for a maya-course at the university. The final goal was to make a little animation with that character, but unfortunately the program had a strange bug when it came to make the skinning. So here is "just" the model with the texture. Learned a lot of stuff, i'm quite happy with the result, as it's my first finished 3D model, but i'm sure i'll stick to 2D. But... it's never wrong to know other tools.

Many thanks to Tom and Gilbert for helping me with the modeling part!

Desert Behemoth

2008-07-27T12:10:00.002+02:00

A strange creature feature - having fun with painter.

Assault!

2008-07-27T00:13:00.001+02:00

Another random speedie... :)

Se Woods

2008-07-24T21:56:00.003+02:00

A quick environment sketch... that's it. Really! Nothing more to see... walk on!

The Phantom

2008-07-17T11:48:00.003+02:00

Had a lot of work to do, so i just post some initial sketches for the Comicon Challenge, over at gameartisans.org. I'm going to redesign the Phantom... because i like him. What i like most about this character is, that he is not limited in age. The phantom bloodline goes over more than 21 generations and i practically can chose from every era of time without being off the context. So i chose the very first generation, because i wanted to paint some pirates for a long time and it fits the theme. For more info about the phantom take a look at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom I also uploaded a cover i'm using as reference.

Sketchbook Pages

2008-06-28T23:47:00.002+02:00

Werjaguar?

2008-06-27T10:33:00.003+02:00

A character design in progress. Waiting for the feedback for making minor changes and moving on to the final colored version.

KHM

2008-06-25T12:38:00.004+02:00

Wanted to paint this statue with oils some time ago, but unfortunately couldn't do it. So i took a photograph and decided now to make a little digital study of it. I love that fancy stuff in vienna! :)

Custom Brush Action

2008-06-24T20:51:00.004+02:00

The next Photoshop Trip. The first time i focused on custom brushes and i'm really surprised by the fast results. Still, i think the painting suffers from a bit of overload. But it was really fun to do something completely free and sketchy. Lazy monday afternoon!

Fotoladen?

2008-06-21T18:12:00.002+02:00

After years of using Photoshop strictly for the "Save optimized for web" Function, i decided to give it one more chance. And i'm surprised by the new workflow... again it shows it's never wrong to try new ways. So heres my tryout!

Plenair, I'm coming!

2008-06-15T09:24:00.002+02:00

Two of my first Plenair attempts, painted during a workshop by Stefan Nützel. Again a very helpfull time, learned a lot and can't wait for the next one! The paintings were done on 24x30cm boards in about 3 hours each.

OC Woody

2008-06-10T22:16:00.002+02:00

A quick Woody Allen portrait painted in Open Canvas v.1. I would like to post the video file, but unfortunately I don't have any webspace left for providing a download. Anyway... it's not that interesting in the end. ;)

Sketches

2008-05-23T23:40:00.002+02:00

Some sketches done from life. Trying to catch life!

Vulture Shock

2008-05-23T17:41:00.002+02:00

A first impression of where those vulture studies are leading to. This is a personal project i'm working on with my buddy Tom Seiger. He is going to make the 3D model, letting me botch around from time to time. ;)

Vienna in Gouache

2008-05-14T10:30:00.002+02:00

The summer arrived and I went outside for painting in the park. Those pieces were simply for relaxing so don't expect my best output to come. Especially the second one was very rushed, due to my red skin accident I mentioned in the last post. ;)

Gouache on Paper, about 14x11cm.

rrrrr...

2008-05-12T22:39:00.004+02:00

More of those cute creatures! Was painting in the park today when I realised I toasted myself in the midday sun, so I decided to run into a museum and sketch dead animals. There was no chance to get a seat, so I had to draw while holding the sketchbook with my other hand - kinda exhausting!

Geierrr

2008-05-12T10:31:00.002+02:00

A quick study for an illustration I want to paint soon. Played around with the impasto tools in painter.

Jaguarrr

2008-05-09T11:39:00.003+02:00

A character concept i'm currently working on. Some sketches and studies - very random and lose so far. As my father used to say: "I'm going pregnant with the idea!"

Lifedrawing

2008-05-08T21:42:00.003+02:00

Some of my latest lifedrawings. I apologize for the bad quality, but they are fairly big and my cam is low budget.

Dario meets 3D

2008-05-06T10:44:00.002+02:00

I always was interested in the possebilities that a 3D workflow can give you, so I started to play around with Maya and ZBrush. This is kind of my very first attempt in 3D so I guess you people from the business will see the big mistakes i've made.

Took that Shark-Surfer concept i've painted a while a go and used it as ortho in maya for a very lowpoly model. I think I got to a point where I should've remade the whole thing, so I switched to ZBrush and had a happy sculpting time. :)

More to come soon... as soon as I have time for 3D again.

Tibetan Mask

2008-05-05T10:55:00.002+02:00

oils, 24x30 cm on paper. ~3h

Portrait Workshop

2008-05-05T10:14:00.004+02:00

I took an oil painting workshop two weeks ago. The instructor was Stefan Nützel, a plen air and alla prima painter whos work I really enjoyed, so I decided to use this opportunity and learn some stuff about oil painting. Check his site here: http://www.stefan-nuetzel.com/index.html

The color palette was limited to cadmium red light, light ochre, titanium white and ivory black. The first time a had to handle with such a little amount of variety and it helped me a lot. But before adding color to the painting, we painted two portraits in black and white to get a feeling for the right tones. While doing this, Stefan indicated some troubles in my drawing and again - this kind of instructing was the first time ever for me and I feel like i've made huge steps forward.

The first time painting in colors was quite frustrating, as I was directly confronted with the task to handle only these few colors but still get the full spectrum in the model. But I think I finally managed to get off on the right foot when I painted the last two of the portraits.

Muchas gracias, Stefan! I hopefully see you soon again. :)

The paintings were done in about 3 hours each on 24x30 cm boards.

Airborn

2008-04-13T18:15:00.003+02:00

Some Concepts i've made for a small Game Project called "Airborn". The ship design ain't new, but i never showed it here, so i decided to include it.

Chilling

2008-04-13T15:50:00.002+02:00

...after this hard week, a bit of recreation.

Dominance War III

2008-04-12T23:16:00.002+02:00

I recently joined the Dominance War III Competition, a multiple forum activity with a lot of talented people from the game industry. And those who wanna work in - like me. ;)

For more infos check out the site: http://www.gameartisans.org/dominancewar/

Here is my entry. We had to do one concept and one modeling sheet and last but not least an illustration of the created character.

Claus

2008-04-06T19:18:00.003+02:00

A little oil portrait of an old friend of mine. 24x30 cm on canvas. The canvas has an invisible priming - found it quite interesting working with oils on the raw linen, and it gives the painting a nice rough touch.

Abandoned Industry

2008-04-06T17:54:00.002+02:00

I'm going to paint an Illustration with such buildings in the background next week, so I got some inspiration from a book called "Shutdown". It shows amazing photos taken by Christoph Lingg. If you have any chance in buying it and have interest in such pictures go and get it! Worth every single buck...

As Usual: Sketches and Studies

2008-04-03T13:29:00.004+02:00

People

2008-03-25T11:24:00.003+01:00

Red Rocks

2008-03-11T09:18:00.003+01:00

An Oil Study I finished yesterday. Nothing really special but I felt like showing it. :)
It's pretty small - 24x30cm Canvas on Board.

Creative Cat missing!

2008-03-01T12:26:00.004+01:00

Been a while since i updated my Blog. Not sure about how many people read this stuff here anyway, but thanks for the recently written comments. I mucho appreciatio!

I painted Portraits of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, who starred in "The Blue Dahlia", an old Film Noir Classic. They now serve as Illustrations for my Filmanalysis, which i had to do for the University.

And the last few pages of my 2007 - Sketchbook. Time to roll up the new one...

cuteness vs. evilness

2008-01-23T21:10:00.000+01:00

i showed some sketches of a shark-like creature. i think i will work on with that theme as long as i'm pleased with so i colored one of the sketches. stay tuned to see more of the "arenui" project.

and this evil nintendo was painted as logo for the gameartisans.org community during the dominance war 3. the idea isn't mine, but i liked it and decided to paint it the way i want to see the logo. so no credits for me, i'm just not original this time. :)

digital studies

2008-01-20T14:12:00.000+01:00

two digital studies - never gonna stop!

Back in Town

2008-01-11T22:19:00.000+01:00

hi folks,

i've been moving to my new flat, had a lot of trouble and i'm still not through, but the situation is getting better. at least i have a lot of space now and was able to set up a little "studio" at home. i can't wait to see what 2008 will offer me and hope you enjoy what i'm offering you here.

so first of all, a new oil painting i did for relaxing and finding new techniques. it's painted on a 50x60cm gesso-primed canvas. also the first time i tried working with mediums like liquin and impasto. a little breakthrough for me, so expect more to come.

and a detail shot. :)

and two pages of my ending sketchbook. time to start the new year with some blank new pages.
the second page is a rubens study made in the museum.

colorwater

2007-12-02T21:04:00.000+01:00

two gouache studies i painted today. :)

gray world

2007-12-02T18:56:00.000+01:00

two drawings i've made during some lectures the last weeks. always some strokes forward!
the "camarao dormindo" drawing will be painted with gouache soon. a possible cover for my upcoming comic.

sketchbook attack ! - the second wave

2007-11-29T17:26:00.000+01:00

finally managed to use my scanner and jpg some sketchbook-pages. so here is a little impression of what i doodled during the last month.

movie stills

2007-11-08T09:16:00.000+01:00

yesterday i wanted to make some studies of movies. just to train my eye for possible camera solutions and get some new ideas in terms of color combinations. here are the first 4 pieces.

the movie is called "tropa de elite", and shows the life of members of the BOPE, an brazilian special force unit which is only used for missions in the favela of rio de janeiro and causes a lot of "pain" there. a must-see!

Uuuuhh??

2007-10-31T22:45:00.001+01:00

an illustration i painted during the last days. my entry for the monthly gnomon contest with the theme "dearly departed". the idea isn't anything special, but it was fun to paint and i could use some new tricks and techniques i was thinking about.

and a detail shot at 100% zoom