The Stone Breaker Flagship "Caldera"

The Caldera is the premier stone breaker currently seeing action in the northern territories. 

The Caldera acts as the spearhead for the navy's enforcement detachment. Capable of smashing through into coastal and tidal basins traditionally considered unassailable this breaker can clear a path at speed allowing for a dozen support vessels to follow in its cleared wake.

All cannons are elevated and loaded via mechanical assistance and can fire a variety of projectiles ranging from standard penetrators to explosive rounds that can be lobbed ahead to break up stonepack.

The ship is powered by a captive steam system for primary functions and arrays of sterling engines for auxiliary systems. A large central turbine around the collar of the superstructure also harnesses the strong convection current passed from the hull via heat pipes and acts to force air through the ship at high speeds.

The outer plating is created with an alchemic forging process that creates durable, insulated and most importantly, low reaction steel that molten rock cannot bind to.

This started out as a sketch on the iPad Pro using Procreate. At around the halfway point, the limitations of Procreate for compositing and effects were becoming insurmountable so I transitioned to Photoshop for the remainder which helped the workflow but hurt my time given.

This piece started off in the daytime because I felt like night + lava was a bit overdone on my end. But with the coaxing from some friends, I decided that the more dynamic lighting would be the better decision. All of these changes just added to the time spent waffling around without clear final vision.

  • Be careful turning first-draft sketches into final pieces.
  • The iPad Pro is great, but working on a large piece in 15-minute chunks every few days for over a month is a fast way to lose your vision and perspective on a piece.

Vacation Plein Air Attempts

I had the blessing and curse of taking 2 vacations this year. It wasn't easy to ditch the family and have some time alone but every so often I'd drop a flash bang and get out to try my hand digital painting out in the wild courtesy of my iPad Pro and Procreate.

I never did this kind of stuff even back when I drew traditionally so I am pretty far behind the curve.

Clark

After the 30th reading of Dr Seuss's "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish" the creepiness of the last page's image compelled me to render my own take on things. I kept my illustration pretty consistent to the book's image but ramped up the creepy by a few notches to help things along. Most of the work was done in Procreate on the iPad Pro and then finished in Photoshop.

The subject and style aren't really in my wheelhouse so I was interested in how my process would change working primarily on the iPad. Due to all the layer blending styles and Procreate's terrible non-existant folder and masking options the end result included 30-40 layers with very little structure or cleanup - and no easy path to flatten.

Generic Robot Soldier sketch

Whenever i don't know what to work on, or want to try out something new, i usually lapse into "Generic Soldier from the Future" designs. This is no exception. 

I do really wish paper had more color and brush control, but i suppose there are other more complicated apps out there. 

Done using Paper on my iPad

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Using "Paper" on the iPad

Since my Cintiq drivers are still broken i've had time to check out stylus drawing on the iPad thanks to the new Paper app and the Adonit Jot Classic!

I am usually a fan of application limitations, but I think Paper could be significantly better with at least a few tweaks. I am looking forward to what they add in the coming weeks and months! 

The Jot stylus is really quite awesome and leaps and bounds more capable than any other squishy tipped stylus i've used. I am anxious to use the bluetooth pressure styluses coming out on the market soon, but for now this will do! 

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