Phoenix Rise: Part 2 (Finished)

The finished album cover for The Phoenix Rise (or TPR) album " The Collection". Must say I had a lot of fun with this, especially trying to figure out how to paint those wings.

Phoenix Rising: Part 1 (thumbnails)

Thumbnails for a new project.

Below is a simple Phoenix in flight in a rainstorm. I later added a stag and cat (or any other creature) for a sense of scale and for some interaction between the two creatures.

Researching on the Internet for bird references I came across images of herons and secretary birds standing on freshly caught prey. The white elegant secretary bird conquering a dark serpent could almost be poetic. Here is the same sort of idea, a radiant Phoenix standing on a defeated dark creature, which in this case was made into a dragon. There is mist in the background to add some mystery.

A low point perspective of a screeching Phoenix on some sort of building/tower, as if summoning the vortex of clouds above. In another thumbnail there is some ivy crawling up the surface to give the building a decaying old look, as if the civilisation that built it has long since perished and this building now only serves as a roost. The third is a bit more destructive, with lightning hitting the tower with plumes of fire coming from within.

A sunset (or sunrise) setting with and without a hunting scene (hey, its that stag again!) On the left cliff are men with horses and dogs chasing the unfortunate deer to make its leap of faith.

Arcanine Speed Paints

Just a few speed paints I did to warm myself up in the mornings. My coffee-arts, if you will.
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Sugaar

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“In Basque folklore, Sugaar is the flying - but wingless - dragon who lives in underground caverns. It travels through the sky in the shape of a half-moon of fire.”

Well, my dragon may or may not be wingless (depends on how you look at it) but I based the creature design from ray’s, because they (especially the Manta Ray) are half moon shaped. Its also something different. At first the half-moon caused me to create a dragon with a Diplocaulus-like head engulfed in fire.
The woman on the cliff was inspired by Sugaar’s consort, whom I found out about while doing a Wiki-search.

Kings of Oblivion

Twelves hours... Yipes! All that time and I'm not 100% happy with how this turned out. Adaro (the fish guy) looks lopsided for one, I'm sure there are many other things wrong with this. But still not bad for a painting as complicated as this.

Don't know if I went into much description before, but this is Fanart for my favourite game, Primal for the PS2. It had everything, monsters; transformations; great soundtrack; cinematic and vibrant story; brilliant voice acting... I could go on and on about my love for this game.

Visiting the lead artist's gallery, Mark Gibbons, (and noticing the lack of love this underrated game has gotten) I got inspired to do some fanart.

Why So Silent...

This is why...
Well, since I made this screenshot I've now nearing the 6hr point... so... yeah... pretty much done Adaro's torso, back shell, and barbels and now moving onto the arms. Jez, I thought Adaro would be the simple one. Turns out he's more complex than I thought. I shudder to think how long it'll take me to do Raum, though as he has so small details I might feel the need to do him in Photoshop (I've been using ArtRage so far).

So that I don't grow to hate this picture I've been doing some sketches in between to refresh the mind, which I will probably speed-colour somewhen.

Quez Head Designs

These are a few head designs of my fictional species, Quez, as I still have no fixed imagine of what they look like (well, I do but its not what I want- it looks too "Walking with Dinosaurs" for my liking).
I've been doing these as warm-ups before working on my current piece, which is becoming my longest project yet and already reaching the 4hr mark without even starting on the detailing/render (See below). It was also my first attempt at building something out of a solid black shape, and I did rather enjoy the freedom. If I had to choose which head to go forward it would be the third one, the one with the corkscrew unicorn-horn (which I would loose and straighted the beak to a more heron-shape.)