Something old, something new

Time to get to work

Hey,

September was very busy for me, at least college wise. Didn't have time for drawing but fear not, it's all past now :)

Here's something new, speedpaint as I'm only checking if I remember anything :)

 

It was done using few custom brushes and no initial idea. Speedpaints, at least for me should be impulsive and wild yet they should be transparent enough for viewer to understand what's going on. That philosophy makes it hard to draw subjects you are unfamiliar with- for instance I would have trouble drawing any sort of act fast since it requires from me quite a bit of tinkering with pose and proportions. That's why training is very important- it is quite possible to draw something entirely new, the only thing that will limit you then will be time- something you can't afford while speedpainting.

Speedpaints apart from being fun way to paint are great tool for "catching" ideas when you really can't or don't want to focus on that certain subject. "Speedies" have one more advantage- even while not drawing something that came on your mind, they can still be great way of getting ideas for better refined stuff: Poses, characters, landscapes- everything can be reused later to create something new.

 cheers!

Small tutorial from me :)

Few tips on drawing landscapes and little insight on my technique.

Here are few links worth trying when you start your adventure with Gimp:
GimpDome
-helpful people, loads of tutorials to read and friendly atmosphere
Gimp Paint Studio
-Ramon Miranda's great addition to Gimp- set of brushes, tool presets and color palletes to make painting more efficient and effective- must have for starter painters! In the article you'll find link to his blog- take some time to explore it, his artwork is simply astonishing :)
Current version of plugin is 1.07 and what's interesting, mr Miranda is working on new, polished version of his creation. You can see further details here:
Oil Presets
Pencil Presets 

Why, oh why am I doing this?

Ahoy!
I've decided to create this blog to share tutorials, art and all things Gimp with world. I assume some of Earth's inhabitants like the idea of creating digital paintings using open source software and supporting it.
This blog won't be about how good is Gimp and how @$#!$ is Adobe Photoshop- both of those programs are great in many ways. Reason I chose Gimp in first place is simple- it's free. It's also good, the more I learn about the software and about digital painting the more I believe it can be tool equal to Photoshop in quality.
This blog will be my way of supporting community- through tutorials, art, tips and news from Gimp community.
Let's get started, I hope you're not asleep just yet ;)