Explorer WIP

This is a my first oil painting that I did for life painting 2 during fall semester. We got to choose our own costumes and subject matter and with the costumes we had I choose to paint an explorer of worlds who is currently exploring a jungle on some unknown alien world.
Due to time constraints on this painting it ended up being very painterly. I plan on finishing it up digitally. This way I can fix some anatomy issues and put a lot more detail into it without having to deal with oil paints (which I'm allergic to). Let me know what you think.

Curious Eddy

This is another project that I did over the summer last year. We had to create a city that was being invaded by a large animal or creature. I decided I would do an illustration with my creature, Eddy. He is primarily based off an Edmontosaurus with some prehistoric elephant and other things in him. He is a very gentle creature who usually lives in swamps and wetlands. Here he is roaming through the canals of a city looking for food. This city is something that I have been designing for about a year now for The Pollywawg Project, which is a long term collaborative project between a couple of friends and I.

I do have to admit that this was a totally new challenge for me because it was a hybrid technique that I had never used before. I first did an umber underpainting in acrylic on canvas, scanned it in and colored it completely in Photoshop. For some reason I had a hard time with the texture of the canvas. I now know that I should of used that texture to my advantage instead of fighting with it so much.

Here is the final product along with it's long process. Let me know what you think.

Just a few of my thumbnails.

Sketches of the city for the final product.

Value Studies

The entire coloring process.

A study of an Edmontosaurus from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

P.S. Going to be changing up the layout of this blog soon. Starting to market myself more and as soon as I can get things up and going the layout of this blog will change along with all my other social media.

~Danea Fidler

Alive and Creature

Starting this week, I plan on posting a new piece of art here at least once a week till finals start and then after graduation.

The piece for today is a self portrait I did for Computer Illustration 1 over the summer. We had to create a surreal self portrait of ourselves. It didn't have to look like us as long as someone could recognize it as us. I created an arctic wolf okapi that I dressed up in clothing that I normally were every day. This was one of my first real digital paintings I've really done successfully and I learned a ton while doing it. The main things were that even in digital painting, underpaintings or quick speed painting studies help a lot. Also shortcuts are your friend.

Hope you all enjoy. Here is also my process of the painting.

~Danea