Gamut Mask Tool

I'll share this here too. Mr. Ossi Hiekkala, Illustrator extraordinaire, suggested that I'd try this out as I was getting a nervous breakdown with the Alice pic. Still haven't had the time to test it properly but it looks promising. I think it could help all of us.

Gamut Mask Tool 

Free Interactive color harmony tool for painters and visual artists 

"What is it?
The Gamut Mask is a great way to created harmonic color schemes. It simplifies your color choices and saves you lots of time and paint in achieving unified color palettes quickly and easily.

Who made it?
This Gamut Mask Tool was developed by me (Richard Robinson) and is provided to you free to use. The original concept of the Gamut Mask was developed by James Gurney (www.jamesgurney.com), artist and author of the fantastically illustrated Dinotopia books (www.dinotopia.com).

How do I use it?
Below are some samples of harmonic color schemes achieved by using the Gamut Mask. First I designed an image with a limited value study. Then I decided my most powerful color would be the orange in the foreground and I made a triangular mask with yellow orange as the dominant color, supported by a grayed red and a grayed green. I could have mixed intermediary colors located midway along the sides of the triangle, but I decided to keep it simple and mixed just three color strings of five values each. Then I removed all other colors from my palette so I wouldn't be tempted to dip into them, and painted the first little study (just 2.5" wide). Satisfied with that, I made two more studies, and you can see what different color schemes were achieved by the different gamut masks. Each painting is harmonious, yet each has a slightly different mood. "

Bring Your Own Virgin or rules to comicpunkery

The point of the exercise here in Comicpunks is to have fun and create stuff we love, to improve our craftmanship whatever it may be.
But like all good anarchists we need guidelines.
One has to have rules to break them, right?

So here goes: every one should do at least one post in a month to avoid treading water. And commenting the work of others is highly recommended.

Anyone can (and should)comment stuff but submitting stuff once a month is by no means asking too much, ok?

If you don't have time for that do remember we do enforce these rules with Trolls.
No, not the internet-user kind but actual god-damned Trolls.
We clear?

Alice in Updateland

Just a tiny update on Alice. And yes, I know, I'm totally blocking the feed with these :D

Think I'll just go with painting instead of vectors. Made a quick color test last night and kind of like it.

***EDIT***

As I don'twant to block the whole blog with these I'll just post some updates on Alice here. Sadly I still haven't had the time to finish the pic, not to mention starting the sceleton armies... But I'll get there. Some day, LeSigh.

This is my first attempt at Alice. I'm pretty happy with the muscle tone on the arm but everything else is just somehow... off.

So I did another try with a complitely different palette. I like the cool almost dead pallor of her but it doesn't fit the mood of the pic.

So then I decided there's a problem with the whole composition and kinda re-did it... I got this idea from the dead colors in the last try. Nothing makes you look as strung out and gray as the subway lights.

I love the composition and the "story" in the image now but am so fed up with painting her face at this point that have no idea if I'll actually finish this or not :D

And yes, the White Rabbit does have a Cheshire Cat button in his jacket. As one does.

More steps here

Week 3: Sweet little Alice...

Simply loved this mission, and the image has been in my head ever since Sari posted the theme for week  3!
There are several ways of interpreting this picture, all of them as good as the next one. One thing is certain, thou - I've been spending much too much time with Catherine (the video game)...

Colour coming as soon as I manage to find the time!

*UPDATE*

Here's an update to Alice, started colouring now...

*UPDATE*

All the ground colour almost there...

*UPDATE*

Now starting to work on details.

*UPDATE*

Getting there... soon!

Week 3: Alice in Wonderland

As it seems I won't have time to finish this any time soon, I'll just post the line art for the Alice in Wonderland piece. As you can see the idea is for this to be a new banner for my blog. Whenever I get around to finishing it.
Haven't yet quite decided which style to use with this one. Loved making the vectors so much that I kind of want to do this like that too. Then again I could make it really magical with Photoshop and shading like hell...Yeah, this might take a while :D
I'm also totally open for suggestions so if anyone has any strong feelings about the style then now is the time to open it :)

Anyways, here's my Alice and my personal favorite character of the books: the White Rabbit.

Frank's bride and maid of dishonor

This is what happens when I can't sleep. I made the Zombie a little friend.

***Edit***

Updated the files as I felt the white parts in the zombies hair looked like maggots. It would have been kinda fitting, but eww anyways.

What's in your heaaad, in your heee-e-eeeaaad

I'm posting this as a sort of a proof of life. Remember the zombie I was making for week two? The ”Something old, something new, something borrowed” mission? The one that was supposed to be a tattoo? Yes, that's it.
Well, in the end it didn't become a tattoo after all and I got this genius idea to make a vector out of the pic. Mainly because I almost never make vector pics and wanted to try it after a long break. That should have also told me that I'd be bloody slow with it, but nooo, I happily started vectoring away. I might finish this some day in the near future. Or not. So just in case it's the latter (and to keep this thing going)I'll post it the way it is now.

Mmm, yeah, this is really not finished so plese don't mind the "blood", I know it looks ridiculous :D

And a close up.

Steps to the pic can be found in my blog

Who wants to live forever?

Ok, so while there is still time for Alice in Wonderland's to appear I issue the next challenge/mission for us punks.

I love comics and horror, listen to metal and to me REH is one of greatest authors ever in existence. So the next mission, should you choose to accept it is to do your vision in picture(s) or writing of following sentence:

Alone against the Skeleton horde/army

The idea/image keeps haunting me so that's up.
Any version or genre goes as long as it is according to that phrase.
Say one and half weeks to create?

Hey Ho, Let's Go !

Hey all!

It seems that this week is a bit of a slow one. Curtvile was fast enough to post his brilliant Alice story but Rama is in a flu and I've been computerless most week. So I'd suggest we postpone posting a new subject at least for a few days? We could make this post the ones you're missing (if any) or just share some of your personal work week? And Curtvile, who's the next to choose a subject, could just post it in the end of the week or something?

I'd also like to take this opportunity to welcome our newest "member" Mr LasseLasse to this club of monsters and miscreants. Haven't had time to add his info here yet so why don't you all just flock to his page at the Goldeneyetattoo.com

And on account it being Monday, I think an ode to coffee is in place

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/index.php?date=033109