Continuing with my underwater painting, I went ahead and added some green and red barnacle looking things. I think the red ones look alright, but the green ones though, they could use a little work. Not exactly sure what changes needs to be made, but something to help make them look more natural. Or maybe it’s just me. I dunno. Geez, is it ever hard to make an underwater scene look alien-like! No matter what planet you’re on, Earth or wherever, it all looks alien-like!

There’s also the obvious sub in the middle there. It’s just a placeholder. Well, it was supposed to be just a placeholder. I kind of got carried away and I kept on adding more and more details. Part of me wants to leave it all as it is and call it a finished product, but I think I could pull off a decent machinery design so I’ll keep pressing on. For one more day at least.

Everything is shaping up nicely. Seems everything I’m creating lately is turning out wonderful. Oh! Not to mention that I got asked to do an interview yesterday for a blog. Not just any blog though, Crystal Moody’s blog. The blog that got me inspired to start my Year of Creative Habits in the first place. I wouldn’t of even thought to do something like this if it wasn’t for her. So it’s a little bit surreal that she wants to interview me. I believe she said for an “artist of the month” type of thing. I’m currently in the process of answering some questions about myself, and my artwork. Pretty cool!

So much has happened this year, it’s all kind of unbelievable.

Thanks for the suggestion, Brad! This was so much fun to paint and I’m not even finished with it yet. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to make it an “alien” underwater scene, which Brad also suggested the other day. That way I’m not limited in what I can add to this scene by what’s already here on Earth. Limits suck. So let’s avoid them.

I think I have this “painting in Photoshop” thing down pretty good now. I’m still finding new ways to do things all the time though (those plants had so many do-overs) and Photoshop is so clever. When I was doing the comic book style text for yesterday’s post, Photoshop knew I wanted to put text inside those green boxes I had already created. The text, rather than having it’s own separate text box, made use of the boxes I had already drawn as the guidelines for the text. Pretty awesome. Not to mention incredibly useful. It’s also really smart when it comes to aligning objects properly. I don’t think I would enjoy adding text to my pictures very much if it wasn’t for those nifty features. Because without those features, math and rulers would be involved. No fun for me! Or less fun, at least.

I’m not going to ask my usual questions today for what to do next as I’m still working on this one. So, for today can I ask for suggestions on what I could possibly add to this underwater scene? Color suggestions would be awesome. For plants and/or alien life perhaps. I’m definitely going to try and paint in some bright colorful coral. Not sure exactly how to go about doing that yet though. I’ll have to experiment tomorrow.

This was so frustrating to work on today. No matter what I did, I just could not get that dock to look right. So it’s black! After that I just wasn’t in the mood to do anything else, but I tried to do a bit of the detail on the mountain in the background, and I guess it’s turning out alright. Surprisingly.

Other than that I just lightened up the gold color so it’s not as bright. Please let me know if that looks alright for everyone. You never know if one screens colors are the same as another.

I hope that’s not too much gold. Looking at this version now it might be a little too bright. It definitely needed a shot of color though, no question. It’s easy enough to fix if it is indeed a little too bright. This image should be a decent size, so full screen it to get a proper look at it. Let me know in the comments if the color is too much, please!

Today I added more branches and detail to the trees (Boy are those dying trees taking forever to finish!) and I’m closer to the lake looking more realistic. It’s not quite there yet, but it’s close. I also added a gradient overlay to the sky and water to give it more color. Doing it that way makes it easily editable no matter what else I add to the painting.

Tomorrow I think I’m going to get started, and possibly finish, the dock. That boat had to of came from somewhere!

After just over an hour of work tonight, I’m not all that happy with the progress I made. Although, I did salvage a lot from the mistakes I made. It was looking pretty awful for awhile there as I was really messing up the trees. I think I was just adding way too much detail maybe. It wasn’t looking natural and I had to fix it. I shuffled some things around and after adding in that boat there, which I think looks pretty cool, I’m done for the night.

I had a really busy day today and just couldn’t find the time to get home to work on this until about 10:00pm. By that time I was so exhausted and ready for bed. I’m very glad I did a little work on this painting and I really can’t wait to get back to it tomorrow. I may even do those trees over again for the third time!  Each time I’m learning something new and I’m beginning to think that less detail may be the way to go. That being said, while I was painting this tonight I had an interesting thought: I think my stand out quality is my attention to detail. So perhaps I should go all out with the detail because it’s what I do best. I don’t know. Any ideas? I think it’s time to get some sleep. I’ll pick this back up tomorrow.

It feels really good to get pretty much everything painted. I was originally just going to get started on the mountain today, maybe even finish it, but once I got the base color down I wanted to keep going and do that for all of the objects in the painting. After that, I went ahead and created new trees. This time with a better brush. I’m not sure what I was thinking yesterday when I started this painting, as I started it with a blurry brush and up close it looked horrible. So now I have things on the right track.

Seems it wasn’t a fluke that I’ll be pretty decent at painting scenery, because this one is also turning out pretty well. So far it is anyways. I have confidence that I’ll be able to finish it and be pretty satisfied overall. I still have yet to look up any businesses that could help me print out these painting and mail them to me. I know they exist, I’ve read about them before, I just need to do my research. I don’t feel like I’m in a hurry or anything, so I’m taking my time with it. Once I get one printed and (if it’s printed quality is high enough) framed, then I can think about selling them.

I’m working on another painting using Photoshop today, and it’s turning out pretty good so far. I have to make sure I keep mentioning Photoshop as I don’t want anyone to think I actually know what I’m doing when it comes to real paints and canvas. I’ve hardly ever touched the stuff, to be honest. I’ve always been afraid of it and I don’t see that changing anytime real soon. Like I said in yesterday’s post, I may get into real painting someday, but I just don’t see it in my near future.

Digital painting (the one with the undo functionality!) on the other hand, is fantastic. Turns out I may have a knack for it too. Not only am I enjoying myself, most likely because I’m doing something new and exciting, but so far I’m feeling pretty confident about what I can create with the painting tools. I just want to keep making more and more as I’m also learning along the way. But at the same time, everything is looking pretty great. Even the stuff I’m messing around with early on, like today’s picture, I really love. And I’m always my own worst critic!

Even though my expectations are pretty high for myself right now, I also need to take a bit of a step back and maybe go into this new project with the assumption that it won’t turn out quite as great as the last one. That way I don’t think I’ll get frustrated if I can’t get something to look quite right. The best thing to come out of all this digital painting so far however is all that I’m learning along the way. It’s been a very long time since I’ve picked up a new medium and It really has been continuous learning throughout. So no matter how they turn out, it’s been a positive experience.