Hi all and welcome to my very first journal entry here at deviantART. After submitting my two first entries here on deviantART I got some comments about how they needed a bit more work and refinement. And of course I agreed! They really are not that good. Winged Fairy is perhaps nice in that it looks a bit weird and maybe it has some merit in that respect. But my two first creations were really not very nice.

Then I started to use some tutorials (like [link] and a few others by the same artist) and by using them I managed to create [link]

I got a lot of positive responses on her so it seems that the tutorials were worth it. I'm now busy with a new work. I want to do a few more face studies first before I go back to full bodies. I think the face is the most important part of any person. A nice painting of a person will be totally spoiled (IMHO) if the face isn't good (even if the body is). Later I hope to be able to do some nice fantasy drawings.

A bit about my techniques. I don't have a tablet so I use mouse drawing only (using GIMP as my drawing program). I first draw a rough shape of the head on the base layer. Then I paint the initial skin color on top of that (on another layer). Then I start with the eyes and lips on yet another layer. When I'm at this stage I start repositioning, rotating, and scaling the eyes and lips to try to get the expression I want. I usually also add a rough hair layer too so that I can get a better idea about how the end result will look like. At this time I usually also adjust the outline of the head by chopping off parts or adding color where needed. When I'm happy with the expression I start to do the first rough work on the face layer. I create shadows and highlights and also refine the nose a little bit. Then I start on the eyes and the lips. The last part is the hair.

The tools in GIMP that I use most are: airbrush, smudge, dodge, and burn.

In another life I'm also a programmer (working on a 3D engine) and a really techie guy I also work with analog electronics (making a synthesizer for example).

Well, hopefully I'll finish my second good work soon so you can give comments.

Greetings,