Second school background

This is the finished background tile for Kalø Vig school's webpage. It took while to make, since it had to work convincingly in Firefox, Explorer and Chrome.

School backgrounds

I am currently working on some school web pages, most of which involves setting up html documents and taking photographs of school children. This is not the most artistic work, but it does have its points of interest. Here are two images I have made/am making for two different web pages. The image above is a horizontal tile, made for Sølystskolen and designed to show the sea in Kalo Vig fjord.
The pictures below are WIP images of a beach leaves tile, and will be used on a different school page. My idea is to make a tile which conveys the impression of either leaves against a darker, unfocused forest background, or a summer sky. I'll post more pictures of this tile later.

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Firebird

This is an illustration of a pheonix I did for a web page. Its the first digital painting I've done in almost two years, and hopefully marks my return to the medium. The painting was done with multiple layers, which were then compressed to create a PNG with a transparent background. The clouds were done as a seperate image. The red bird below was my first attempt. 

DSB illustrations

These are two 'fast' wargaming illustrations I did for one of my other blogs. They are both hand drawn line art, vectored in Illustrator then rendered in Photoshop just like mos of my previous figurative digital paintings. At some point I'll make the next step I think and start doing fast, fully digital illustrations for my games. The best part about images like this is I odn't have to please any one but myself.

Forest background image

This is an experimental digital painting designed for use as a 'flexible' background image for a web page. The idea is as you scroll down the page, the back ground image shifts in perspective. An example page can be seen here.

JRC-1138 background tile part 2

I've now finished most of the textures and I'm working on the shadows. The image above shows some shadows which have since been removed. The biggest problem is getting the various layers to mesh without causing double shadows. A lesser problem has been distractions caused by work, and the summer weather which lures one outside (and makes drawing with a wacom rather a sweaty affair). I've still not decided whether or not I'll make a second 1800 pixel wide tile.

JRC-1138 background tile part 1

The initial template, about half way finished

What began as an experiment to offset a single cog, soon became an entire cog assembly

Things are heating up now, both literally as the summer approaches and figuratively as I spend more and more time playing with my new computer and wacom tablet. Drawing on the computer never really appealled to me as I had so many other projects that were more interesting, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to draw 'third hand' as drawing on the computer seemed to me. The fact of the matter is, I am becoming quite fond of my wacom and I've even taken to drawing things in Illustrator. Since Wednesday (26th May) I've been painting a thematic background for my primary blog. In previous attempts at making a tiled back ground, I'd floundered, mucking about with layered montages and drawing with a mouse. Now, I've made my shapes in CS4-AI, painted them, and made the tile in individual layers using the offset tool in CS4-PS. The result is very satisfactory, though I'm not finished yet.

The initial tile design was just going to be three cogs on a 900x900 pixel tile, but this developed into a complex pattern of interlocking chains. This then turned out to be unfeasable however as I'd not fully understood the nature of the repeating pattern. Instead of two chains I settled instead for one and I also began to add a lot of other curious details, inscriptions, a gauge and various feed lines. The idea became to create a repeating 'machine pattern' of some complexity, without losing the sense of an actual machine, though with a touch og age and decay about it.

My primary inspiration, though I have deliberatly not consulted any of his pictures since I began this project, was Oscar Chichoni.