Saturday, January 6, 2018

Arishem the Celestial: Happy New Year - 2018

Happy New Year!


Hey, it's a New Year!  Happy New Year, everyone!  I just got used to writing out 2017, and now this--another year to add to the stacks?  Anyhoo, what better way to bring in the new year than have the Celestial, Arishem the Judge, with 2018 inscribed on his thumb, rather than the code to destroy the planet (will they be one and the same?  Only time will tell!).

I just want to take a few moments to thank everyone who has stopped by and briefly gawked at my modest site before moving on to other sites, or were searching for something else and accidentally got referred to my site...  Heck, I'd even settle for rubber-necking at the digital car crash which is my Blog on the information super-highway.  So, thank you to all who have visited (some on purpose!), and even provided words of encouragement (names are withheld to protect the guilty)--It means far more than you can know and is greatly appreciated! 

I have plenty of resolutions to break, including posting more this year (don't say I didn't warn you!).  I only had 24 posts in 2017--just under one ever other week.  Rather meager and personally disappointing, IMHO.  This year, I hope to have more posts, a few projects which are more ambitious.  Well, we'll see.

Onward to the preposterous process portion of this post!

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STEP ONE:  Here is a quick, digital thumbnail of the idea I had for the New Year's posting.

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STEP TWO:  Another really quick drawing to layout the figure, etc. on a 1,500px by 2,100px canvas.

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STEP THREE:  And here it is a little bit further along and tightened up.  It's starting to take shape and resemble (loosely) Arishem the Judge.

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STEP FOUR:  This was the finished picture, done with multiple new layers, using the blend and smudge tools to smooth out some of the brush strokes.  However, after looking at the original quick sketch, I decided I liked the idea of Arishem's hand breaking out of the frame, even though it was due to me doing a poor job of drawing a rectangle, rather than something planned out that way.  That said, if anyone asks, I meant to do that!  So, I went back into the picture and carved out around the hand to make it look like it was popping out of the frame.

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Done digitally in Photoshop.

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