hexratt

Tracing is what I did as a kid on paper. Wow, I just realized I've been accused of plagiarism because I made a guide trail, or maybe it's just my imagination. And not by you my friend, csm75. My poor PC can't handle 40 to 50 layers so I need to break up my images which my guide trails make it easier to reassemble later. Yes, I employed the same techniques such as distorts, line gradients, blurs, and shape3d to make my War Machine. If you think you can do the same give it a try, and please do search the web, I bet you won't find much of War Machine to use as reference let alone trace the image. I really would like to see some one trace it and show me the result. Here is free lesson how to paint Iron Man: http://idrawgirls.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-draw-and-paint-iron-man-video.html No offense to pdn or anyone who use plugins. Plugins are great and can make up for some of your lack of artistic skills that you can't do with a paint brush. But it's no substitute for a formal art education. People, please don't use plugins as a crutch but rather use it to help enhance and expedite your art work. If you learn how to paint on real paper, painting on digital canvass will be much easier. Well this could also be just my opinion.

Re: sig entry A Japanese Story is considered one of Australia's top film with great landscape scenery. I will have to tour the sites when I visit the "outback" country next christmas. Excellent entry, you did a great job with the photo editing; and you said you weren't good at that, what a kidder you are. Indeed, photo editing is an art itself but in the hands of a great artist it is an inspiration.

Thank you, Welshy, for the fine example. And the key word is practice, practice. When you paint something enough times, you become familiar with its every shape, lines, curves, and shades of texture. Some day I hope to become that good and proficient at using the various plugins of pdn. But til then I will continue to practice and practice and do what my art instructor told me, "always sketch out what you want to paint before you start painting until it becomes second nature". Thanks, chrisco97, for your compliment on my sig but I'm gonna keep the car one. Again, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Love some times is blind, or is it love can some times make you blind. Whatever, either way you like whatever stimulates your neuro-receptors. Sounds like insane in the membrane, doesn't it? bbq25, the bee is not hostile, it is your friend. Thanks all for sharing.

Try for a repeat csm75. I just made my entry in the sig comp. You do have one of the nicest sig. I'm still learning to make sigs.

Nice theme, one that I can actually put my recent creation to use.

Well said barbieq25. Competitions should be about expanding our artistic skills, trying to improve ourselves as an artist, trying to out do our own work and not the work of others. That's why I prefer not to use stocks or renders, but rather try to improve upon the techniques that I've learned to create realistic images. I know that I may not win, not against some great photo editors anyways, but I'm happy that I can truly put my signature on my work because it is my work 100%. Shame on you, bbq25, for being a hijacker but you're welcome to hijack my gallery anytime. In fact, I prefer it be you, lol.

That is an excellent idea. I believe that will promote fairness. It will help people like me to vote more fairly.

Hold on...don't missed understand me. I'm speaking in general when I said people don't vote for the art but for the artist. And not referring to this forum. Such as when people vote for a prime minister or president, they vote based on popularity factor, who they like most and can relate to, especially in beauty contest. Every person has a personal bias toward something and art like love, imo, is in the eyes of the beholder. Something may be ugly to some but beautiful to some one else. I vote for barbieq25, not because her art work isn't nice, but instead it's one of the best and I'm quite fond of her style of work as well as welshy's and ash. Now, I'm not saying that others work isn't as good but that is my bias I tend to favor barbieq25's and welshy's work over my own and others. When I'm doing a complex piece on pdn, I will put down a guide trail, call it a trace or whatever. That's just the way I was taught. Most of my work is free hand and I don't have a steady hand at that, a guide trail makes it easier to erase unwanted excess. If I'm not doing 100% pdn, no way would I need a guide, especially if I used pdn in conjunction with 3d max studio. But my goal here is to learn how to use pdn. Also, I would never put a finger or two up at any art. Every art work has its own value in its own way. Pyro, I'm sorry, but I still have my personal biases toward some more than others. I'm sure everyone else does, too. Fair enough? Welshy, I hope you stick around more because you and barbieq25 put out one of the best work. I'd searched through your gallery and barbieq25 looking for inspiration every day.

Heck, I'll give it a try. My first abstract. Layers of exotic rug. http://sites.google.com/site/hexrattpdn/artwork/exoticrug.jpg

I love that piece, falling short. You're right. Voting is mainly fan base. People usually don't vote for the art but for the artist to show their support. I always vote barbieq25.

At the time, I only had a few pdn tutorials under my belt. But next competition watch out. Well, anything besides abstract.

I agree, dream maker is my favorite, too. However, I love the pattern on decadence. Really nice work.

I still need to come up with a cool sig. But for now my flame swords will do. New image added, extension of the giant invasion theme, I call it rampage. I think there was a game like that back in the 80's with giant apes punching and knocking down buildings.

That's an awesome wall texture. The wine glass makes me thirsty for blood, lol. Nice job on all of them.

A flame sword, nice effect. I tried it, too. My result. http://sites.google.com/site/hexrattpdn/artwork/flamesword.jpg

@ welshblue- ahh, you noticed. I used one set of tires for all my cars; was too lazy to make new rims at the time. Thank you for your compliment, much appreciate it coming from such an esteem artist. @chrisco97- thank you for the avatar idea. Hopefully, I'll be a contender for your totw comp.

Awesome tutorial, thanks for link. Your results are very creative from that tutorial. I used that one to make my sig and is very plain compared to yours. You have a fantastic imagination and creativity illustrated by your artworks.

Love that analog TV set. Do they still make those? Yep, I can relate, got 4/6 numbers on PowerBall game but won $400 with power play 4x. Hope, there's a second prize to that game. Very nice illustration.

Sounds like an excellent idea, will give it a try.

Ok, here's my last minute entry made with clouds using smudge and painted on feet, beak, and eye. Sorry, didn't have much time to touch up feather details. Eagle: starting texture: http://sites.google.com/site/hexrattpdn/artwork/eagle1texture.jpg

Thank you all for your critique. The text is too blurred because I was trying to blur the fire behind war machine but had the text layer activated, and was too lazy to redo by the time I had merged all layers down. Yea, the dark blue clouds background, I actually got the idea from the Iron Man 2 movie poster with war machine standing in front of it. But anyways, I still have a lot to learned about making text and background.

Ok, finished my War Machine theme. It's my finest work so far, I believe.

Congrats, sarkut. Nice work all.

I did a no, no that's why. I was suppose to work only with one color, yellow, and use black for shading, but I strayed and mixed in orange towards the end. That left the cartoonish look. See the image under where I said "some more tweaking will give a polished look", I was following the rule there and just used yellow, at that point it still had more realistic look. But thank you for your words of comfort. Well, I can always start over , good practice anyway. As for the tires, just try to make a tread image and use shape3d, cylinder with ball end points. I will do a write up on that after I finish War Machine. Oh btw, added second part of War Machine.

Well, finally got started on making War Machine from Iron Man 2. Finished the head, yippie.