Digital Painting - the floor is lava and everyone is doomed

(Most of this text is post lesson since we didn't have alot of downtime so i was concentrating on the lesson)
Today's digital drawing is lava and boy is this a hard screen to look at with glaring red's, orange's and yellows; thought i suppose that is what makes lava so effective in telling us that it will melt our faces off if we touch it.

the technique i suppose you can call it to create lava is surprisingly simple but obviously takes some finesse to get right, it's all about establishing layers and working so brighter colours are more towards the center while the more low energy colours hand on the outskirts.

the first example here shows the result of me playing around with this knowledge and man is this better than anything i'd done previously.


an alternative method we used made use of the layer styles, using inner and outer glows to make a sort of auto lava, so anything drawn on that layer would come out looking rather lava like.


The last task was to apply our lava techniques to this golem here (obviously not drawn by me - will need to source this at some point) sadly i redid mine so the amount of lava effect is minimal but i did a portion which i liked, giving one of his shoulder pieces a mouth like lava drip, i've always been quite into elements which take you by surprise like additional heads or limbs on a creature.



and that covers the lesson, it really makes me appreciate how formal learning can make a difference in how much you learn within a period of time, as this was only half a days work, so i could definitely notice a better quality of work. on top of that i'd read that something you need to get used when using a graphics tablet is to stop being so forceful with the pen, which is something i definitely have trouble with, always pressing so hard i'd break the page if i was drawing on paper, so relaxing and trying for softer strokes was a major factor in improving how i was drawing.

This isn't the end of the lava monster though since my weekly homework is to design my own monster so hopefully i'll have something interesting (and coloured) to show on here.


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