Compost Mentis

Update!

2011-10-21T00:07:00.001+05:30

Finally finished the vendor!

And another older quick piece:

Stuff

2011-06-09T06:01:00.000+05:30

Speed paint and some sculpting progress

2011-05-18T09:48:00.000+05:30

Environment speedie

Also started some sculpey sculpting. Here's a block in and some Photoshop tests for the design.

New works

2011-04-14T03:07:00.000+05:30

Been a while. Here's some stuff I've been working on.

Helith

2011-01-28T07:22:00.003+05:30

More doodles

2010-10-21T23:55:00.001+05:30

I got married (whee!) and moved to Portland, OR. It's so beautiful here, I might have to start painting landscapes soon!

Here's some painterly experiments and a caricature-ish portrait of my husband <3 . All Photoshop CS2.

(Ref by Marcus Ranum)

Alice and the Caterpillar

2010-05-10T20:12:00.001+05:30

The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.

`Who are you?' said the Caterpillar.

And in an ideal world, at this point Alice would defiantly stare back and ask, "Who are YOU?".
------
I thought it would be interesting to have Alice get younger instead of merely shrinking :)

Painterly-ness

2010-04-27T00:18:00.002+05:30

Studies

2010-03-11T12:47:00.001+05:30

A couple of studies. The first one is from life, the rest are from movie screenshots from http://framefilter.blogspot.com

Vampire Alpaca

2009-12-08T04:02:00.006+05:30

Here's another quick one for today, about 1h15m . Vampire Alpaca. Don't ask. I think it might not have turned this goofy if I was listening to something else and not CanCan music >.>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK0gYi1YEZ8 Can't you just see him dancing to it?

I think this doodle-a-day thing might not have been such a great idea after all, it's bringing up strange stuff from the recesses of my mind.

Still life

2009-12-07T02:36:00.001+05:30

Here's a still life for today, from life. About 1 and a half hours, I'm actually surprised at how fast it went. I guess that means I should have paid closer attention to what I was doing, probably a lot of errors there.

Creature Classifieds!

2009-12-06T01:24:00.002+05:30

I thought I'd do a series of Creature Classifieds ( CraigsList for creatures )

#3534534
M4W
Dashing Flower Goblin seeks attractive, young female partner for long term relationship. I'd like to find someone quirky, cute, wild and playful.Pixies, fairies, sprites and elves welcome, must not be allergic to pollen. I enjoy long romantic flights, sleeping under the starry sky and collecting mushrooms.

Faces, faces!

2009-12-02T23:25:00.002+05:30

My first caricature!! OMGWTFBBQ!!

Well first -intentional- caricature anyway, nevermind that most of my portraits end up looking like caricatures :P

The superawesome Jason Seiler, for the contest on at https://www.schoolism.com/chiutv.php

And some doll portraits of the fun, talented folks over at ConceptArt that I made a while ago but forgot to post.

It's finally finished!

2009-06-21T02:49:00.000+05:30

More mastercopies!

2009-06-15T01:26:00.003+05:30

Just trying some more master copies , trying to improve brushhandling and texturing. I need to find a way to upload psds, any ideas?

Crop of head and some stages. I'm falling in love with Rembrandt all over again. I usually don't like his women, I prefer how he paints men,armor,drapery and lighting. I loved this image though, I think it's his mother? I saw the image first in a book, that had more yellow tones which I liked much more so I am sticking to that. You can see the orig at http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/eg...t=405000&row=0 . I can't wait to start on the shiny embroidery!

It's FAR from finished but I just wanted to upload something. Please look at the fullsize images.

Girls!

2009-05-29T00:30:00.005+05:30

I recently bought ZhangLu and Jason's awesome female portrait tutorial and have been practicing a few heads from my imagination but I realized I need to supplement it with (lots) of studies from ref too.
Click for bigger images.

One from my head(need to go back and rework the mouth..a some point):

and from a ref, the gorgeous Noë from CA.

Whee!

2009-05-04T00:42:00.014+05:30

I finally finished some pain-things, wheeeee!

First:

Gar, guardian of the skies of Eithanas.

annddd some closeups! I don't even know why I went this detailed.

Maggots are a zombie's best friend.

And some stuff from life:
Dileep!

And a still life with some random stuff

Closeups!

Drew

2009-02-03T22:17:00.004+05:30

I had almost forgotten how incredibly HARD it is to paint from life. Luckily I had a very very patient model :)
Thanks Andrew!
As always, clicky for a larger image.
About 4-5 hours or so.Must..practise..more..argh.

Why so serious?

2008-09-30T00:36:00.003+05:30

A quick update on an older painting. Still a WIP, a couple of changes and it will be done! I think this piece needs a little more 'breathing area' compositionally on the right, hmm. Going to work on the top of her head so that space will most likely not be cropped off.

Corny Uni

2008-09-27T16:02:00.001+05:30

Quick sketch for another piece.

One undead, one shiny head

2008-09-01T13:22:00.007+05:30

Quick creepy zombie woman who seems to remind me of Cameron Diaz

I conducted a digital painting workshop yesterday and I decided to do a creature to show how to paint various material like skin, horns, slimy surfaces etc. It was fun! (and scary!) but I didn't get heckled or anything and the crowd was super nice and surprisingly I was very comfortable painting with 500 pairs of eyeballs on me( God knows I can't paint even if one person is looking usually).
So anyway I only had 2 hours to talk(theory,tips,etc) and for the demo so I got very little done (the color test that I have posted, only worked on the head) but I am happy with the design and I think I'm going to push it as much as I can.Creature design is not my strongest point (drawing sad girl faces is, hahaha) so I'd love any help and advice on the anatomy etc (Davi made a great point about the connection of the forelimb to the body, need to define the shoulderblade/upperarm area)

So once I fix anatomy issues I think I'll repaint the entire thing, I'm quite excited!

Also, here's a quick youtube blending-in-Photoshop video that I quickly made. I'll upload it to vimeo I think, this resolution on youtube makes it hard to see anything!

ChOW!

2008-07-01T13:23:00.008+05:30

Here's my DEEP (Underwater-city Utopia) entry. My first ChOW ,yay!. I wish I had the time to color all. Serves me right for starting 2 days before the deadline

The Enoi:
The Enoi are a highly evolved race of spiritual and peace loving beings that have formed a eusocial society deep in the underwater trenches of the planet En. The Queen-Mother rules the Enoi Kingdom and the Shaman-King acts as the royal consort. The Queen-Mother reproduces asexually by laying batches of eggs in her womb which are then infused with the life-force that binds all Enoi together, harnessed by the Shaman-King, in a sacred ritual. Enoi young are born hermaphrodites, revealed by the purple coloring of their life-force aura, and upon reaching adolescence, as they mature into a male or female, the color of their life-force changes accordingly to red or blue. Besides the color of their life-force there is very little physiological difference between the males and the females, except that the women have longer tendrils on their heads, and the males tend to be heavier set (which can be seen best in the structure of the cranium).The spiritual development of the Enoi is parallel to the physical development and is marked by the opening of the second eye at adolescence.

(Thanks for the help with the text, Drew!)

Manamana do do dodododo

2008-04-27T02:40:00.003+05:30

So, a friend suggested I should try drawing some cute things for a change.
Well...I tried. It might not be cutest thing around though.
Oh and the blood on the mouth is from the poor thing biting his lip too hard, he's afraid :(

Woohoo!

2008-03-10T00:14:00.007+05:30

Cathartsis.com is mineminemine!

For those who think they know me...no..it's not a mix of cataract and arthritis :P

Just so that this post is not artless, here's an older doodle that I forgot to post :)

More doodles.

2008-03-03T02:24:00.007+05:30

I think I need my very own corner in the Intarweb .A certain website that shall not be named for the fear of blockage loves to delete my paintings because of the nekkidness( whatever happened to artistic nudity,? And I've only been doing mastercopies).Another is blocked at work, so not very useful either. Where oh where can I upload images without facing censorship I ask.

In any case,I can't think of a suitable domain name . As much as I love shettyhappens.com (thanks Nirmal) I don't think I want my name or my surname in there. I've been racking my brains and I just-cannot-think-of-a-name! So much for being creative.

I want compostmentis.com :'(

Doodles!

2008-01-06T23:45:00.001+05:30

2007-12-31T00:36:00.000+05:30

I haven't been painting much, work has kept me busy. I keep thinking I'll just forget to paint one day, if I don't practice enough. So when I'm not feeling particularly creative or when I think I just need to push myself in capturing detail and observing better, I usually pick a reference and try to match it as closely as possible.
So anyway,I came across this BEAUTIFUL image in photo.net by a very very talented photographer called Dirk Vermeirre. I haven't come anywhere close in matching the softness of his features (and the eyes are oh-so-off!) but in some way I like how the painting has a character of its own ( he's got serial killer eyes, eh?)
Reference used with permission

And the stages!( a little heavy, please wait + open in a new window :))

^_^

2007-11-26T00:04:00.000+05:30

She's a man(tis)eater

Rust Busting

2007-08-21T00:25:00.000+05:30

Hello world :)

Here are some doodles and completed works from the past year. I hope to have updates with more recent works soon!

First, a quick 75 min sketch of the OH-so-cute Adrian Grenier

Some in-progress pieces...

A couple of studies from the masters...
Rembrandt :Bouguereau!

And older work :)