Ognjen Sporin

Tiger WIPS

WIPS for a big commission

Here's some work in progress on a pretty complex painting 

Actual vs Visual

Here's a little talk I was invited to have by a friend for his university 

I think the subject is very very interesting and I could have definitely had a less confusing intro, but I think it becomes more clear as the talk progresses 

Another Painting I had to Re-DO

As you can clearly see, not scrapping an idea early enough only leads to wasting your time

As soon as I laid in the flat colors over the 1st drawing it was pretty obvious it was reading poorly, but I wanted to save it instead of starting it over, so it's very important to PLAN and do multiple sketches and explorations when starting, because chances are the first one is going to be kinda crap

sometimes you gotta redo a painting

a few times even

and some wips of the version I ended up finishing 

Dwarf Cook Process

WIPs of a Cover Commission

More progress stuff, if you have any questions ask awaay

Process For a Scene Illustration

Along with some sketches 

A big part of painting (especially in this way without a developed drawing) is just remaining calm and not panicking about how shitty the painting looks at the beginning stage

Commissions WIPS and Sketches

Here are some process shots of a few commissions, hopefully it shows a bit of how I build the painting up

Nowadays I don't really have a final drawing before the painting itself, but use the sketch drawing as reference when laying in the painting and then deviate from it if there's a need 

Commission Process

Here's a process vid for a client painting, feel free to ask any questions! 

Complex Painting Process

Here's a process vid of a more complex scene commission. The total length of the original recording is about 17hrs, and here's the finished painting:

I'm trying to paint without a precise prior drawing, but I did have a value thumbnail to go off of:

Here's what my ref board looked like:

2021-12-13 16:52:57 +0000 UTC View Post

Commission Work in Progress

Some WIP shots of a character painting 

If I have a rimlight in mind I usually figure out its placement in the early stages and then hide that layer until I render out the main light well enough, after which I get the rimlight back, polish that up, merge that and the main character layer and then add the final detailing on the merged character 

Client Painting Progress

Here are some WIP shots of a creature done for work!

Feel free to ask me anything you'd like to know about this process or just in general :D 

Self Portrait Process and Color Tips

Here are some process shots of a self-portrait, and I figured this is a good example of  using hue shifts on the face. Here's an exaggerated diagram showing how the colors change over the face area:

Here are some color samples from the painting, showing how you could apply this more practically:

<...

Another Twitch Stream

This one is a bit all over the place, in the beginning I do a little reference collecting which might be interesting to some I suppose, and I also show  the start of a drawing for a larger interior scene 

Plus it's kinda cozy

Twitch Stream Replay

Here's a replay of yesterday's stream, they disappear on twitch in 2 weeks so I'll post them here where they'll remain.

If you've got any questions or topics that you'd like me to get into in the next stream, drop those in the comments : D

Some Progress Shots for a Personal Painting

This is a painting of Charon, a dude that rows the souls across a river to hell in Dante's Diablo, and I plan to take it really far with the render. The painting had to go through a few changes, because I wasn't thinking about the direction all the souls would be struggling to escape towards. In the drawing and first 2 WIPs they're wrestling towards the way he's rowing, which is hell, which makes zero sense - I just wasn't thinking about it, so there's a little lesson: don't only think about ...

Beatrice Portrait

Here are some of the references I relied on the most for this painting:

I used the dude with the dark background for the light direction, and the blonde girl for sort of how I envisioned the value key and the colors.

Separating light and shadow - value + color 

If...

2021-10-23 06:48:13 +0000 UTC View Post

Portrait

Here's some work in progress on a portrait I should finish pretty soon, I'll do a tutorial/tips about it. What would you like me to share/talk about? : D 

Redoing Drawings

When you're figuring out a solution for a drawing, often you'll have to do it a few times over to get it looking the way you'd like. When the drawing isn't going well, it's very important not to frustrate over the fact that it's failing but to try to figure out how you'd tweak it to work, or if perhaps you need to redo it entirely. When I was failing the first drawing, I realized I wasn't liking it mostly because the back and arm gestures were too weak, so it was stiff and sorta segmented loo...

Sketchbook Tidbits

I've been having a bit of an art block so I started drawing more in my sketchbook without any commitment or pressure, so I figured I'd share some raw pages from my sketchbook. The only real commitment I made is I gotta fill up 2 pages of a sketchbook per day, which can be done very quickly if I'm just sketching and being loose.

A big principle with getting better in art is definitely collecting mileage - when you don't really feel like you can make something remarkable you just gotta pu...

Some Process and Painting Tips

Haven't posted over here in a while since I've been busy with client work, but here's a little bit of process and some painting tips that keep coming down to the same thing - always think in simple drawing terms while you paint, which is to say in terms of big simple forms and large planes created by those forms. 

I've attached some process shots and an alternate background as well, I'll try to work on more personal stuff and post more in the coming period :  ) 

Treeant progress

Here are some progress shots for my last personal painting. It's loosely based on an older one that I did about 2 years ago:

Character Paintings - PSD Files

Here are a few PSD examples of how I typically approach pieces for clients (and particularly single characters)

Editing When Doing Studies

Here's a painting I'm doing as a gift for a friend and pretty much treating like a slightly caricatured study. 

It's very important to be conscious when doing studies, because if not diligent people generally tend to fall into auto-pilot.  A good way to avoid this is to simply try to caricature or consciously tweak your subject matter. It really doesn't matter in which way you do it or how much, as long as it's thought through, rather than automatic. 

At this stage ...

Painting Detail

Here's a small breakdown of the lighting on this hood fold, showing all the light sources and influences. Hopefully my little diagram reads well, I feel like I have dysgraphia when I try to write on my tablet lol

Also, that atmospheric blue is actually almost a gray with a tinge of purple in it, but it reads very coldly next to the orange and bright yellow

Painting Process and Separating Lights

Here's some progress on a painting I started yesterday. 

I generally start with a rough sketch, and do a color comp over that, which looks something like this:

Kinda crappy, but enough to give me a general understanding whether my idea works or not. Sometimes I do it on a single layer below the line sketch, and sometimes I use layer blending modes. Then I lower the opacity and figure...

Simple Structure Everywhere

Here's a big piece I haven't posed anywhere yet, and I wanted to give a little tip on simplicity when painting, especially in these big, more rendered pieces.

The only way to get really good at painting, I think, is to internalize drawing, and more specifically structure and construction, to the point where you don't have to think about it and use painting to show simple planes and forms. For example, here's a detail from the painting:

2021-09-01 06:25:32 +0000 UTC View Post

Using Good Reference

A huge part of making a believable painting is finding high quality reference. The images you find will inform details and anatomy of things, but they still need to be filtered through your conscious choices and serve the big picture, and learning how to not copy reference is a skill in itself.

So I figured it might be useful to show some of the reference I sued for this painting. I use PureRef for making reference boards and so should you: 2021-08-20 06:32:21 +0000 UTC View Post

Some Tips on Doing Dragons

Focus on Proportions and Shape Language over Anatomy

When I started doing dragons some time ago, I saw animal anatomy as a big part of them and found it pretty intimidating, but the more I worked on them the more I realized that it really isn't very much about anatomy, and the focus should instead be much more on the big proportions and shapes, such as here:

2021-08-13 06:30:05 +0000 UTC View Post