The topic of this weeks’ photo challenge is something that I have been looking forward to these days. Escape, from my regular daily life, from my busy schedules of work, from all the physical, mental and financial stress. And my contribution aptly describes it. Like these birds, I want to escape and fly away from it all. At least for a few days.

Escape!! Away from those snoopy photographers.

HOW I SHOT THIS

This is from this small village called Alamparai, which is abbout 150 kms away from Chennai. I was here with my other photographer friends for a photowalk. It turned out to be very adventurous. We had to take a boat from alamparai to reach the alampari fort across the shallow back waters. While returning we spotted these folk of birds and told that we ride towards them. We were all ready with our camera’s and just when they were about to fly away, I snapped this one with my Nikon L120.

You’ll find more shots from this photowalk here.

Some of you who are seeing this post on wp.com may remember me. Some of you may not. For those that remember me, yes I’m back from the Other side. For those that don’t, doesn’t matter. Let me make a fresh start by saying a big HELLO to you.

Back in June 2012, I made a big move. I moved my blog from wp.com to wp.org. I’m sure you at this moment you are expecting me to say whether it was a good move or a bad move. Comparing the two platforms will be an endless yet a very interesting topic to debate on. But before we starting evaluating something, it’s always best to hear from both the sides. Because every coin, has two sides to it.

THE BASIC DIFFERENCE

What one must know is that I’m not a programmer. I don’t know squat about coding in HTML or CSS. Having said that, let me know start taking about the life that I experienced on the other side as a blogger.

wp.org is a self hosted platform. What is “self hosted” you ask? Let’s say that you have bought your self a piece of land. And there you decided to clear out the land, lay a foundation, and build your self a home. You take the help of a contractor or an engineer, an architect who give you a basic idea. Over which you further customize the plans, re shape it, mold it to a design that you always dreamnt of. That’s exactly is how self hosting feels like. The wp.org platform provides you with the basic tools of blogging. On which you use the various boat load of plugins available like disqus, wordpress SEO, jetpack, akismet. The customization that you can do to your website is just as vast as your knowledge in CSS and HTML coding. You are in complete control, with complete freedom. You are the boss.

wp.com on the other hand is not self hosted. WordPress is in control. If we take the same example as above, wp.com is the kind of contractor/engineer/architect who lets you customize your building plan. However, it will not accept anything and everything. It does not give you plugins, and does not give the complete freedom and independence that you experience in wp.org. What it does give, is a sense of security and a blogging community.

LIFE AT WP.ORG

If I have to summarize the it one word, I cannot think of any other word than “lonely”. But don’t take my word for it. I started blogging in Feb 2012. I made the move in June 2012. I was hasty and made this move too early. There are so many other self hosted blogs who have developed a community around themselves. May be they were not so hasty as I was. May be they are magic bloggers. But then again, one can’t say for sure. I thought I will have the best of both worlds. I thought that I will be able to experience the independence of wp.org while I enjoy the blogging community of wp.com. Well, I was wrong.

What ever may be the case, I will suggest (in my honest opinion) that every blogger must experience the wp.org platform. It’s like stepping into the real world, plugged out of the matrix. You will learn things which you can’t pick up in wp.com. If not, you will definitely learn to appreciate the comfort that wp.com has to offer.

HOW DID I MAKE THE MOVE

If you stumbled upon this post by searching for “how to move blogs in wordpress” or some other phrase hoping to find an answer on how to move your blog from wp.com to wp.org or vice versa, I’m sorry. I have no clue on how one can do it. To move from wordpress.com to wordpress.org, I paid for the guided transfer and a wordpress happiness engineer did it all for me. They were there to help me step by step and also supported me with trouble shooting for two weeks.  Coming back to wordpress.com didn’t cost me a dime. I just shouted out for help in wordpress.com support and a wordpress.com staff helped me move back.

A JACK OF ALL TRADES

Before making the move, I was a hard core street and HDR photographer. I even wrote tutorials on how I go about it. You can still find them in the tutorials menu. But the more I started exploring photoshop, the more I started exploring the art of creating images from a blank canvas. I started exploring digital art. And it realised that it is so deeply connected to what I used to love to do while I was a kid, drawing. I was drawing ever since I could hold a pencil. Even in schools, even during my college, while a class was in session, I would always draw a doodle or scribble a piece of pencil art in the last pages of my books.

I bought a wacom tab, and since then there has been no stopping to me learning digital art. Drawing on a digital canvas is not as same as drawing on paper. It’s a bit weird at the beginning. But by practice, I soon got the hang of it. So right now, I’m dabbling both in digital art and in photography, where digital is at the moment playing a dominant role.

WHILE I WAS IN WP.ORG

Here’s a list of things that I feel are worth sharing to show you what I had been doing while I was in wp.org.

DIGITAL ART

As I was saying, drawing digitally seems a bit weird at the beginning. I’ve arranged these art works of mine starting from my earliest, share-able work, to the latest. Click on the image to if you would like to download gigantic versions of them. I use most of them as wallpapers for my computer.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Like I said earlier, photography has been on the down low. I’ve been drawing, shooting, some times combining both the techniques into one piece of art. Photography requires time to go out, shoot and process later. Due to some changes that have happened in my professional life lately, I have not been able to devote enough time to shooting. I plan to make a backpacking trip in may, hope fully I should be able to scout out some good places to shoot. These are some of my photographs that I shot while I was in wp.org.

These are a few good ones that I feel are worth sharing as a collection. More photos, more digital art, more tips, tricks and tutorials coming up. So, stay tuned, stay connected.

This weeks’s challenge is also the name of my favorite animation, Up!! I mean, that movie is the only thing that came to my when I first saw the challenge. However, looking at the example given in the post, I’m sure images like these is what they meant.

The Old LIC building on mount road, Chennai.

This time, when I started sketching the line art, I wanted to reduce on time I spend on making art. I also had in mind that I will not compromise on quality. Keeping the learnings from my previous art in mind, I steered clear of those mistakes. I spent 20+ hours on this over a span of 2 weeks. I also ended up using lesser number of layers this time. And by less I mean 100+

DEATH – DARKSIDERS 2 VIDEO GAME ART

Darksiders is a game set in a post apocalyptic world, where the kingdom of man is in peril as heaven and hell wage war for which earth is the battle ground. The story revolves around war, one of the four horsemen. Darksiders2, is built around Death, war’s brother and also, one of the four horse men.

It’s not a surprise that there is not much fan art of Darksiders2 in particular. The game sucked. Compared to it’s prequel, Darksiders2 was pretty much a disappointment. I still played the game though. Only for the art work in it. I especially loved all the boss designs. I even felt the design of Death is better than war. I looked up a lot of images of Darksiders2 on google for color reference.

Death from Darksiders2. There are different types of armor sets that you can collect as you progress through the game. In this one, he’s equipped the Magus Cowl and wielding that monster size revolver whose name I don’t remember. Order a Limited Edition print of this image.

Currently this is adoring my computer as the wallpaper. Go ahead and download it for yourself. Just click on the image for a bigger resolution.

TECHNICALITIES

It’s not easy to put down 20+ hours of work flow in a step by step tutorial. I referred to a lot of tutorials on the internet and still I don’t get them exactly the way they describe. I learnt a little from here, some from there. Two artists on deviantart.com have been my inspiration though. Yue wang and Sandara Tang. I’m still trying to figure out a process here. But I guess there’s no single defined path to art. Everyone has their own style. I’ve been following a different art style for each of my art works so far. Any how, I will try to break it down as much as possible.

1) LINE ART
Building blocks of any art. Here’s what I did. I had trouble with the posture. It’s like he’s been thrown off in a fight, back wards, and he’s balancing himself, griping the ground with his claws and tearing it apart by his feet.

2) BASE COLORING
To get a rough idea as to how the coloring is going to be, I’m going to add base colors using a hard brush. Need not be accurate at this point.

3) DETAILING
This is the tough part. But also the fun part Here’s where we start adding life to the painting. I’m going to shade the base colors a bit more accurately and do a little more line art detailing. At this point I will also base color the background.

4) ADDING TONES (HIGHLIGHTS AND SHADOWS)

Here’s where I used a different approach from my previous warrior princess art. Instead of shading and coloring the whole image at the same time I started doing it one item after the other. I used a different set of layers for every prop you see in the image. And I try to keep them in the order that is visible on the canvas. For example I keep the layers of the revolver in front of the left foot layer group. I started off with the magus cowl.

5) THE TRICK OF BLENDING
I always keep my left on the keyboard when I paint. My thumb rests on the left alt key, and my fingers on the X and the D key. Because

• X helps you switch the foreground and background colors.
• D helps you bring king the foreground and background colors back to black and white. This particularly helps when you are shading and highlighting.
• Alt is the magic blender key (I like to call it) When you are painting with the brush, and you hold the alt button down, the brush tool becomes the eye drop tool (color picker). This way it’s easier to evenly shade various layers of lights nd shadows on the painting.

Using this technique is what I did the hair. Also the cowl. Pretty much the whole painting.

6) FINISHING THE REST
Using the same technique for blending, I complete detailing the rest of the image.

7) FINAL TOUCHES
Another fun part of the painting process. I’m going to paint the debris that is flying out from the impact and the lava that’s bursting out. To give a glowing effect, I’m going to use a soft edge brush and the lava burst with a bit of glow around it to show that they are emitting light. I will do the same thing on the metal surfaces to show a shiny glow.

8) ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS
Now that the lava is emitting light, naturally some of the light is going to fall on the main character. Also we should keep in mind that this will also impact the brightness and color of the surfaces which are lit up by the bursting lava. Here’s how to deal with it.

• Add a layer and set the blend mode to soft light
• Select the same color as the lava
• Select a soft edge brush. Keep a moderate brush opacity (40-60%)
• Paint on the surfaces where the lava light will fall

9) BACKGROUND
I will use the blending trick I mentioned in step 5 and do the back ground and the fore ground.

10) FINISHING TOUCHES
Almost done. At this point I was just stating at what I’ve created and kept on pondering if I’ve anything more to do on this. I added some more debris near his foot. Darkened and lightened some outlines here and there, fixed colors spilling out or drawing in.

AND THAT’S ABOUT IT

If I try to do anything more I will just end up messing it.

Death from Darksiders2. Order a Limited Edition print of this image.

Like any other aspiring artist, I too try to seek inspiration from other artists. Recently, I stumbled upon this amazing artist in deviantart.com, and I instantly fell in love with her style of art. It was love at first sight. There’s so much that I learnt by observing and studying her style. And her tutorials were of great help in doing that. She is Sandara Tang.

Of course I couldn’t get that exact touch that she gives to her art. Every artist is unique. Her style is unique. And there’s no way anyone can duplicate that. I’ve tried my best. Probably I should just apply the concepts and try to make my best way possible with my art.

WARRIOR PRINCESS CONCEPT

I started with a completely different line art. I made it look like the princess was flying on a huge griffin. But I started detailing the princes to such an extent that I had to ditch the griffin and make the princes the main element of this piece. In order to make the improvements that I had in my mind, I ended up screwing the entire workflow. Ultimately, I’m satisfied with the output that I have here. There has been a lot of learning though. I hope I put it to good use in my next art.

Warrior Princess. Order a Limited Edition Print of this image.

TECHNICALITIES

And the longest time taken award goes to…this one. I have been working on this since a month. Not at a stretch though. Even If I average 2 hours per day, I have taken about 60 hours for this one.

I wasn’t thinking straight. All I had in mind is to make a definite improvement in my art style with this piece. My style lacked details, polishing (I think it still does). So I tried as much as I could. I ended up using more than 150 layers in photoshop. And the flow didn’t follow any particular plan or direction. If I have to summarize, this is what I did

• Made the line art
• Filled in the base colours
• Added shadows and highlights
• At this point is when I added a background colour (see what I mean?)
• Made some corrections to the high lights and shadows
• was not happy with the out put
• tried a different set of brushes
• painted over the already fixed base colours and highlgihts
• added details

I need a lot more practice.

TOOLS USED

• Photoshop CS5
• Wacom tab
• Brushes by Sandara Tang

Every minute that I spent on sketching the xenomorph I was admiring the swiss art genius, H.R.Giger. Their design is so simple yet complex. Xenomorphs were his origninal brain child for the Alien movie franchise. Geiger’s art work is both beautiful and difficult to look at at the same time. It is this quality of his art that inspired Ridley Scott, the director, to use Giger’s talents and thus employing him as the art director of the movie.

THE PAINTING

The painting is dark and my website, in contract, is bright. I would recommend that you click on the image to open it so that you can see it in full screen with a dark background. Enjoy!!!

Strange Attraction. Order a Limited Edition Print of this image.

TECHNICALITIES

I used photoshop CS5 for the entire painting. And daz to help create the pose of the girl.

SKETCHING

Just the sketching took me about 15 hours. I was sitting there staring at the blank photoshop document thinking what I would draw. And I started drawing the xenomorph head. I thought it came out pretty well and so I went on to make a fan art. I didn’t refer any images for this one. I just remember bits and pieces of the features as seen in the movie. I could pretty much visualize the basic outline of the xenomorph. But I had no clue about the details. That’s where I just started adding what my own touch to the monster.

Geiger’s Original model had 4 fingers. Mine has 5.

DETAILING

They are armed to their teeth. Literally. Their fangs and claws are enough to rip any poor soul to bits. If that wasn’t enough, their tongue is actually another mouth which is nestled inside the obvious mouth. Occasionally, they use that spikey tail as a harpoon to impale their victims, just to add some style in the mutilation. Detailing most parts of the body was tough. Especially that tail. Because I had to add the twist in it. The spikes helped me create the illusion.

THE GIRL

I couldn’t wait to start with the coloring process. I was working on the sketch of the xenomorph for 5 days already. As a quick fix, I used a daz 3d model to create the pose for the girl. Using this as reference, I just added my own details like the hair, dress, and Mr. cuddles ( n_n )

DARKNESS IS THEIR ALLY (LIGHTING)

These savage yet magnificent creatures are shown in the movies as killers who use the darkness to their advantage. Not that they actually need it.  And so I changed the canvas color to black. So now, rather than shading, I had to do lighting, using white color. Because of which, there wasn’t much scope for color.

ELEMENT OF DRAMA (RAIN ILLUSION)

I thought “how hard could it be“. Thought, I could just add streaks of white and make the rain. Trust me, it wasn’t easy. After I added those streaks of white all over the image, it just looked like streaks of white all over the image. It looked nothing like rain.

It needed the aftermath of drops falling on a surface. So added the splatter. Hard visible splatter at some points and fine droplets hovering over the surface to make it look like a moment frozen in time. Like a photograph. And also water rolling down after falling from the surfaces.

And since water droplets tend to stick to shell-like material, I had to draw black and white spots on certain surfaces. While spots on light areas and black spots of dark areas.

AND THAT’S IT

Despite spending all that time into taking care of those minor details, chances are that errors might have crept in. However, every art I make is a leaning step for me. And I have a long way to go. I’m happy with this result at the moment. Do let me know how you feel. Enjoy!!

I know, I know, it’s been a really really long time. My work schedules have been hectic. I hardly get time to go out, shoot and process images. Same is the case with my digital art. And recently I have moved my home closer to my work place. It used to take me a 45 minute bike ride every day to reach office, and another 45 minutes to return back home. But after the move, office is now a 20 minutes walk. I can return back home early now. An thanks to this little time that I’m able to save for myself, I’m able to write this post.

NEW BLOG IS ON THE CARDS

It was a suggestion of a friend of mine, and also I have been thinking lately. I was thinking of a new blog for my digital artworks. Photography and digital art are two different horses which I have been currently riding at the same time. And honestly, it’s not easy. Finding time for doing just one of them is a blessing for me. And since both the art forms attract different audience, I think I should really move to a new blog for my digital art. What do you think?

BLOOM CONCEPT

At first I started by just sketching the model. Then I continued to add the wings. Just to see how it goes, and then went on to add the flower to make it look like she’s blooming out of it. Originally I wanted to stop it with the pencil sketch. But then I thought “lets put the wacom tab to use”.

THE PENCIL SKETCH

This is just pencil shading. Even for this I used the wacom tab. Order a Limited Edition Print of this image.

THE PAINTING

Click on the image for a high resolution digital panting. Order a Limited Edition print of this image.

TECHNICALITIES:

I did this on photoshop CS5 using a wacom tab. Please check my earlier posts for tutorials on how to do it. With every painting I create, my technique keeps evolving. More tutorials to come in future. The pencil sketching took around 10 hours to do it. I had a lot of fun shading and going through the details on the flowers and the petals. Painting took another 7 hours.

No matter how high-end be your photography equipment, it helps to be old school at time. I’m sure most of us started out with photography with our camera phones. That’s how I started out. I started shooting with my camera phone. But slowly started getting hooked on to this art when I began to realize that my images turn out to be bit different than from others.

When it comes to street photography, you have to be ready to react to situations. At most of the occasions, you will find your self, not having the right equipment. But that should not stop you from taking a picture. Reach into your pocket, grab that phone of yours and click away. I’m sure 1 out of 10 shots will definitely turn out well.

MUFFIN – THE PERSIAN

I found my self in such a situation when my cousin’s Persian kitty was lazing around one evening on the terrace. This happened in Bangalore and I had come here for a short visit. And.. I had forgotten to pack my camera. But that did not stop me. I took out mu mobile phone and clicked some neat shots of him.

Muffin, The Persian Kitty. Order a Limited Edition print of this image.

And then I shot some more but out of all the shots that I took this one turned out to be the best. I shot this with my Sony Xperia Neo L.

TECHNICALITIES

So far this must be the least technical image ever on my website. There’s not much to it. Like I said before, learn to shoot independently. Whether you have your camera with you or not, do not hesitate from capturing a moment with whatever it is that you have at particular point of time. When I saw this guy lazing around under the evening sun I just couldn’t help my self but capture it with my phone.

This is what I got.

Then I used this neat app called awesome miniature. You can find it on Google play store. What I did to this one was

1. added vivid effect
2. then the rusty effect (I’m confused between morning, or rusty, but i think rusty it is)
3. then the vignette

And that’s it.

It’s official. I just can’t get enough of my wacom tab. Thanks to some developments that happened at my work place lately, I’m not able to focus much on photography at the moment. I’m not able to find time to go out or travel, shoot, process etc. I high time I got some shots done. Mean while, after I get home from work, I settle down in front of my computer with some snacks to munch on and with the Wacom tab on my lap. What ever time I have is mostly spent on making more and more digital art.

MUSIC CONCEPT

If there’s anything that makes me feel alive more than photography and digital art, it’s music. I have also been learning music, but again, due to my work I haven’t been to music classes since months now. I have to sort out my life. For now here’s my newest digital art, which is also adoring my desktop as a wall paper at the moment. Enjoy!!! Feel free to click on it and download the high resolution wallpaper for your self.

Music makes you loose control. Order a Limited Edition Print of this image.

No stock images in this one. It’s all done from scratch on a blank canvas in Photoshop CS5 using wacom tab. I used CTH670 to make this and all of the other art that I’ve posted here.

TECHNICALITIES

Nothing new to talk about the process of creating this piece. I used the same steps as shown in my queen of the night digital art. However there are some important points that I learnt while creating this one.

• MORE DETAILS, MORE DEPTH: The more details you add in a image, the more depth your art will have. I’m sure you’ll agree when I say that the out put in this one looks way better than my previous art works. I paid a lot of attention trying to create detail on the hair, the stitching lines of the pants, texture of the road and the pavement she’s walking one. I spent a full night just doing the hair.
• IT’S ALL ABOUT LIGHTING: I cannot stress this enough. Keep source of light as reference, and it will guide you as to where to create highlights and shadows.
• YOU CANNOT RUSH ART: Yup. True fact. Patience is the key. When you start creating something it might not actually seem to go in the direction in which you are trying to take it to. But it will, eventually. You just have to continue to keep at it.

Masjid-e-Askari is the oldest mosque located in the heart of the capital city of Karnataka. Bangalore house about 10,000 shia muslims, and this place is their most prefered place of worship. It’s called the Babul Hawaej.

This is the interior of the newly built Babul Hawaej. This the strait case that leads to the first floor of the mosque. The chandelier was a stunner.

Chandelier at the Babul Hawaej. Order a Limited Edition Print of the image.

TECHNICALITIES

Nothing much technical in this shot. No pro photo equipment or software editing. I bought a new Sony Xperia Neo L. I set the exposure to -1, set the frame and clicked this. Straight jpeg image out of the phone camera without any editing.