Digital Painting Progression

So I have had at tablet for the past 8 or so years, that being said I didn't start using it until my first semester in the Character Animation program. One of the seniors in the program, Trey Buongiorno, is a FANTASTIC painter and would have weekly tablet classes (he just graduated so make sure to check out his site!) In the very first class we ended up painting a floating  mountain scene.

I was pretty impressed with how it turned out, considering I had never used my tablet before. The other thing you should know, is that I don't traditionally paint. I have tried in the past but I've just had so many issues, that I decided to stick with drawing. So I really liked digital painting because it fixed all of the issues that I had with traditional painting.

Well two semesters have passed since I started painting and in addition to getting better equipment (going from an 8 year old Wacom Graphire to my baby, a Medium Intuos 5), my skills have gotten significantly better. I decided that for this blog post, it would be cool to do an updated version of that first painting.

I wanted to do another floating mountain piece, but I wanted to have a mountain range involved this time, as opposed to the rock columns I had in my last piece. In addition I wanted to go for a more arctic feel to this piece. Most floating mountain pieces are more tropical (ala Avatar) so I wanted something to set mine apart.

Overall I'm pretty pleased with this piece. I like how it turned out, and I think it definitely shows a progression of my skills as a digital painter.

Enjoy!

~Josh