Michal Ivan illustration blog

Unfinished stuff

2011-11-10T02:52:00.000+01:00

This will be a short post before my next w.i.p. post- tutorial. Hopefully with videos.
While managing my disk space I found some unfinished pictures. Some of wich I kind of like. I don't like them enough to finish them, but I'll share it here with you.

Quick character study for a cancelled project:

Paintng of a bad ass girl in "comic book style". I really liked the Girl with a dragon tattoo movie, this is kind of sci fi version of Lisbeth:

Frank Frazetta tribute piece (He was my teenage idol):

Learning

2011-07-28T13:50:00.001+02:00

Sorry for not posting for a while, I’ve been quite stuck in a project for an advertising campaign. But that’s a different story. I may post something from the campaign soon.

This post is something as a disclaimer of what I’m trying to do in my work recently.

I felt I’m stuck on one point in my work and I’m not moving forward. In my concept art job I’ve been doing the stuff I like and am quite good at, but it wasn’t much of a challenge. In illustration I was using this weird technique witch has been quite unsystematic and therefore took long with uncertain result. I was just painting what I liked them put some textures and effects over it and so on. The whole process was one big chaos. It worked at first but I just couldn’t move forward in this direction, so I started seeking.

I started painting traditionally. I’ve been doing more or less abstract pieces, for basically exploring colour. That really was interesting for me and was more entertaining than my illustrative work.

After some time I realised, that just starting to paint doesn’t really bring me anywhere. What I always wanted to do was illustration. So I decided to leave my concept art/ art director job and concentrate solely on developing my illustration skills. That is something I’ve never done before. I always had an art related job or school and illustration was just a hobby during the evenings.

In June 2010 I attended the MADE Symposium (watch the documentary here: http://vimeo.com/14607148). It has been great decision to go there. I really learned a lot from guys who are great professionals with lot of knowledge. My portfolio review from Esad Ribic, Marko Djurdjevic and Coro form Massive Black was eye opening. They gave me a lot of stuff to think about. From there on I looked at my old stuff differently.

Here are few photos from MADE

1. Esad Ribic working on comic book for Marvel

2. J.S.Rossbach talking about Merlin book 3. Marko and Coro reviewing

4. Coro and Shawn Barber painting 5. Aleksi Briclot painting

6.attendees + Jason Chan painting

First illustrations I started to do after the symposium were different and much harder to do. I started to concentrate on the things I’m not good at and tried to analyse what works and what doesn’t. I again started to study other artists work, analyse and learn from it.

It really wasn’t easy. Sometimes I’ve been reworking images over and over and they still weren’t looking as I wanted.

Basically what I started doing is planning the picture in the beginning, sketching more and concentrating on the whole thing not just on fancy detail. In the new pictures I’m using a lot more colour as I started to be a little tired of the washed out look. I now started to see a lot more shades of colours and what is possible to do with them.

In the old illustrations I was often hiding mistakes with detail, texture and effects. To repair that, I removed the guitar solos (as Marko D. called those) and started to improve the base (anatomy, colour, composition). Some people giving me work weren’t so happy about that, they said the new stuff is different and is less atmospheric than the new. Someone really needed to get used to that.

I needed to do it for my growth. Now I see I have a wider range of skill and can do more varied work. I’m again starting to use the textures and details, but differently I know use them just on stuff I want not just to hide stuff.

some older pics:

newer, after MADE stuff:

for more stuff visit my devianart

I still have a lot to learn as I’m not satisfied with my work. I want to see where I can take it. Painting pictures, creating stories, characters, and emotions is again very exciting to me. I think about it all the time and look forward on new challenges. I hope I’ll never be satisfied.

Warpath - illustration

2011-05-14T01:17:00.000+02:00

In 2003 my first book cover has been published in Czech Republic. It was a first book of a series by Slovak writer Juraj Cervenak (his website in Slovak) about a character named Black Rogan. This has been my start in illustration and my long time cooperation with Juraj. By the time the character became quite famous in the fantasy and sci-fi scene here in Slovakia and Czech Republic. The first printing of the 4 book series are sold out.

New reworked edition is hitting the shelves right now and I’m redoing all the covers. It can be sometimes frustrating to stick with a character for so long, but I quite enjoy it and take it as an opportunity to show myself where I have moved artistically.

Here you can see cover for the forth book of the original series published in 2006

On the new cover I wanted to have a kind of iconic shot of the two main characters. Rogan - the black warlock, with his magical sword, giving him the power of blood red flame and his companion Goryvlad - the wolf god. As the two characters are black I wanted to show them on light background to stand out. Foggy forest was my choice.

After I got my sketch approved by the author I started to work on the actual image. Nowadays I like to keep all the elements of the illustration in layers move them along and play with the composition etc. After I’m satisfied I flatten the image, paint over it and try to get the mood I want.

This was one of the more final stages. In the next morning and also after a feedback I realised it doesn’t work the way I wanted.I reworked the reds, changed postprocesses (levels, colr balance etc.) and changed some details I disliked and improved the picture a bit, till I was satisfied with it.

Intro

2011-05-14T01:01:00.000+02:00

Hello everyone, welcome to my new blog. This will be a place where I post my work in progress images, sketches, news and other stuff. Basically I want it to be kind of a diary, how I develop and try to improve in illustration.

I hope you’ll like it and find some information interesting or useful. Any critique and comments are well appreciated.

If you want to know more about me and my work check my website, deviant art or my new cghub account