Ralph, Keith and practice

Welcome back Internet people,

You know, writing e-mails is pretty hard work in my humble opinion, well enquiry e-mails at least. I have inmense trouble with gauging how i come across in text. Certainly because of the language barrier (i hail from the Netherlands). I like to think i can hold up a decent conversation in English, I also worked in the UK for a stint, which helps, but with written communication you just never know. With converstations, you can check people's bodylanguage for understanding and their pitch for their general mood. Maybe i should invest in a course in written English or something.
What is also causing me slight trouble is the fact that i am still unpublished, and quite unsure to try and hide it, or mention it clear in the initial email traffic. My gut feeling is stating it loud n clear, but when putting such bold thoughts to digital paper, It always seems to come out wrong. To AD's (or artists) reading this: any pointers are greatly apreciated. My own pointer to starting artists: Never send out emails at 2 am, tired over enthusiastic artist make stupid mistakes. I made a very emberassing one, that may well haunt me for a couple of years.

You'll be pleased to know that the ranting stops from this point onwards:

I have put some projects on hold (dont worry if you are a paying client this wont affect yoursI have far to little of you to start cancelling on ye) to practice my hybrid skills. Like I yapped about before, combining acryllic/watercolou paintings with digital overpainting seems to really be my schtick. The eventual goal is to create a method of painting that I am comfortable with, has the smoothness to apeal to a widerange of audiances but the texture and weight of a traditional painting. In effect using photoshop to speed up the difficlut elements of my beloved acrylic paintings.
Pictured below is a new version of a painting I did two years before, and below that it´s previous incarnation.

Various elements have changed as ye can see. I fixed the right arm becuase it looked like a club, I also changed the size and rendering of the wisps, mixing up the sizes to create more depth. This ofcourse has nothing to do with digital painting, I should have gotten it right the first time round. The lighting has become a whole lot more dramatic ofcourse, something i feel I can achieve a whole lot faster and better in photoshop. As a quick test it was more effective than I initially expected... I expect more tests like these in the future. Have to give a shout out to Ralph Horsley, I really like his aproach to acrylic painting, enough that I must be careful not to copy him...

I also talked about emulating Keith Thompson´s style as practice. This is the result:

I dont like the resulting rendering too much. I did learn quite a few things about layers, and what you can achieve with areally tight pencil phase, as opposed to my customary loose scribbles. I did like the design of the bot, something I would have scrapped as too odd, if I never came across Keith´s work. He truly demonstrates the beauty of odd designs.

I have one last self plug. I plan to something for this compo. Hope I can get it finished. So if you are a member of the Conceptart.org community, and you like my entry, why not vote for me?

catch you all next time.

Cheers,

Nick

p.s. Never the one to indulge in self promotion: Nick Egberts is looking for new clients. You can find samples of his work on http://www.nickegberts.nl/ and http://mr-nick.deviantart.com/ . If you are interested feel free to send him an email at info@nickegberts.nl

all images in this blog are (c)2005-2009 Nick Egberts unless noted specifcally otherwise.