Halloween Mask – Painting
Posted: October 28, 2012 Filed under: Sketchbook | Tags: art, artwork, dark, drawing, eye, halloween, illustration, mask, masquerade ball, night, painting, portrait Leave a commentI started this painting a few days ago with the thought that I wanted to create something a bit different form my normal artwork. To be suitably Halloween themed, I gave the subject matter a more dark and creepy feel. While working on it, I developed a rather detailed back-story for the character, but I’d love to hear your feelings of the piece and what you think it is about.
Halloween Mask Painting by Nicole Cleary
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Dynamic Illustrations by Ture Ekroos
Posted: October 23, 2012 Filed under: Inspiration | Tags: art, artwork, book cover, drawing, illustration, landscape, surreal, Surrealism, Ture Ekroos 13 CommentsBeyond his amazing technical painting ability, Ture Ekroos has a knack for creating well composed illustrations which establish a large scene. As a freelance illustrator living in Finland who commonly works on book covers, I can definitely see how that medium has influenced his work. Every piece is perfect for setting a story, involving dynamically positioned characters, and placing them in an interesting background with a clear climax coming to a head in the visual. Each work immediately draws the viewer in to the situation the characters are facing and are wonderful examples of great book cover design. Which I expect jump right off the shelf and into the hands of potential readers.
Check them out for yourself and let me know what you think…
Depths by Ture Ekroos
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Drip Drop Concept Painting
Posted: September 6, 2012 Filed under: Sketchbook | Tags: art, design, drawing, drip, drop, graphic, illustration, painting, rain, water 8 CommentsAfter a few days of pouring rain, I came home and painted this. The “colored pencil” style of the water drop was achieved with a pin-point size brush, which is contrasted by the large blended strokes of the background.
Drip Drop concept painting by Nicole Barker
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Knot Concept Painting
Posted: September 4, 2012 Filed under: Sketchbook | Tags: art, design, drawing, graphic, illustration, knot, painting, rope Leave a commentI had this design in my head for awhile, and wasn’t able to sit and draw anything else until I put it on paper and finished it.
If you love some of the other color combinations I did below, let me know.
Knot – Purple & Green by Nicole Barker
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Inspirational Artist Feature – Nanami Cowdroy
Posted: August 22, 2012 Filed under: Inspiration | Tags: art, black and white, drawing, fish, illustration, ink, monotone, Nanami Cowdroy, origami, painting, pen 5 CommentsNanami Cowdroy has an interestingly complex, pen and ink style to her art. She uses seemingly fragile objects to create a strong presence and composition in each piece. Utilizing the look of fluid line-work, she gives the feeling of each object flowing into the next. The overall style of her work is heavily japanese influenced, and gives the appearance of different phases of water. In “Ink Pond” the water style is splashing out of a paint can device used at the bottom of the work. In “Geisha Yume” the water style is cascading down the woman’s body like a waterfall. In “Cable Cranes” the water style is slowing moving the origami like a calm river.
Ink Pond by Nanami Cowdroy
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Abstract Painting “Eye Can See”
Posted: August 20, 2012 Filed under: Sketchbook | Tags: abstract, art, design, digital, drawing, eye, graphic, painting, photoshop 2 CommentsIn this painting I was playing with the relationships of different human features, abstracted to convey their similarities.
“Eye Can See” – Abstract digital painting by Nicole Barker
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Game of Thrones Time-lapse Painting of “And Now My Watch Begins”
Posted: August 5, 2012 Filed under: Movies and TV shows, Sketchbook | Tags: art, drawing, fan, Game Of Thrones, lapse, painting, show, speed, time, TV, video 3 CommentsTo see this video on youtube instead, please visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0vpDFbxVwE
The video is a time-lapse of 25+ hours of my Game of Thrones digital painting of beyond the wall titled “And Now My Watch Begins.” Completed using Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Wacom’s Intous 4 drawing tablet for the painting, and Camtasia and Adobe After Effects CS5 for the video. Music is from the Game of Thrones soundtrack by Ramin Djawadi.
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Living On Antaries – cityscape photoshop painting of an alien world
Posted: July 29, 2012 Filed under: Sketchbook | Tags: alien, art, artwork, cityscape, drawing, illustration, landscape, night, painting, photoshop, Sci Fi, Science Fiction 2 Comments
“Living On Antaries” Photoshop Painting by Nicole Barker
“Living On Antaries” is a massive panoramic view sitting on the top of the tallest tower of an alien world I conceptualized and named Antaries. The digital painting mixes a gritty over-populated city feel with organic sculptural elements and light patterns which add movement to the piece. This is one of my older Photoshop paintings which I completed years ago, but then brought back to alter it considerably after receiving some constructive feedback. Mainly, I took out a human character in the foreground which felt out of place, and really filled out the background substantially to show complexity throughout and add depth.
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Back To The Roots – Colored Pencil Drawings From My Past
Posted: July 10, 2012 Filed under: Sketchbook | Tags: art, artwork, bridge, colored pencil, drawing, landscape, paper, sketch, Surrealism, traditional, vines, water 4 Comments
Pulling You In – Colored Pencil Drawing by Nicole Cleary
Coming back to the roots of where I started in my art career, I decided to show some older pieces I created with traditional media. My professors described my art style in college as “painting with colored pencils”. I’d pull out my 250+ PrismaColor pencils set and disappear for hours, coming back with hand-cramps, the stubs of what used to be colored pencils, and a smile on my face. I would use extremely thin solid lines and a plethora of bright, saturated colors to create each artwork. Towards the end of each piece, I would go over the sketchy colored pencil with a white (or neutral colored pencil for the background) coloring over every line to blend the colors together. Each PrismaColor set came with a smudge stick for this very intention, but I hated the effect the smudge stick created. It was too wide and blurred all the lines instead of mixing the colors on the paper in specific areas. Using a thin tipped colored pencil allowed me to keep the crisp edges I wanted in some sections while blurring the colors in other sections. I found that when I moved to digital art with my Intous 4 Wacom tablet, the essence of my style remained.
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Freedom Illustration – Happy Independence Day
Posted: July 4, 2012 Filed under: Sketchbook | Tags: art, drawing, feather, freedom, illustration, independence day, july 4th, painting, pen, quill Leave a commentHappy Independence Day! Below is an illustration I created to celebrate the birth of America.
“Freedom” – Illustration crop 1 by Nicole Barker
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Nicole M. Cleary 