Head painting exercise - Princess Elizabeth

Pictured is a portrait sketch of a young Queen Elizabeth II, as a princess. it is based on an old B/W photo presumably taken in the very late 1940s. The painting used a limited 3 colour plus white palette, and painted in oils on a piece of cardboard sized at 12" x 9.5". Uploaded on the 18 September 2022, one day before the funeral of her majesty. 

Fantasy big railroad locomotive departing city - WIP stages

Fantasy big railroad locomotive departing city - WIP stages

Stages of the digital artwork consisting of the gigantic railway locomotive.

A gigantic railway locomotive is about to depart a city with very tall skyscrapers in this 1940s inspired retro railway illustration. The digital artwork was completed during December 2019. The first stage of the illustration was to do the initial drawing/ colour concept on a Samsung tablet running software called 'Auto Sketchbook Pro', a drawing app that uses a pressure sensitive pen. Once the concept is worked up to a point using the device, the file is then transferred to a more powerful windows desktop machine, which also runs the same program. The tablet can only do so much before it reaches its operational limits and the image, to be printable, needs to be of a far bigger size than the tablet can cope with. The file is exported as PSD levels as set on the tablet app, and these remain on the desktop file. The image is enlarged to 6000px (horizontal) and then is redrawn/ repainted at this new definition, with some work carried out additionally in Photoshop.

The picture below shows three panels, the first is the drawing with the second showing the colour rough as completed on the tablet. The final panel features the finished artwork as completed on the desktop machine. The illustration can be viewed in greater detail on this link.

Fantasy big railroad locomotive departing city - digital illustration

Fantasy big railroad locomotive departing city - digital illustration

Finished artwork of a giganitic steam locomotive at a big city fantasy illustration

The subject of this scifi/ fantasy scene is a extremely large steam locomotive about to depart a city comprising of some very tall skyscrapers. Some employees of the railroad are having a meeting before departure. The landscape has a retro/ 1940s vibe in terms of the design of the buildings, car and locomotive sitting on the monorail railroad track. The main engineer is dressed in a classic uniform for the job.

Auto Sketchbook pro was used for the creation of this digital illustration. Initially it was started using a Samsung tablet to rough out the idea up to a certain stage. It would be nice to continue using the tablet but it has technical limitations as digital work is processor and ram intensive. It is exported to a windows desktop computer, still running the same program but with the power that is now available. One of the first jobs is to resize the whole image to something that can be printed up to a large scale, the initial image being too small for anything other than screen viewing. Then the whole painting is redrawn/ painted to the final required details/ colour for final output.

The illustration was completed during early December 2019, and can be seen in detail by following this link.