Hi everyone. It has been a while since I wrote my last blog post and it is the same with our Syama Art Newsletter. I must admit that this was an experiment and a test for me of how many platforms I can handle at once and keep track of at the same time making them interesting for the audience. There were and there are projects that I cannot disclose details of on a daily bases. Facebook proved to be the most useful tool among all online options of communication and marketing. Our web page was performing as well but not as good as Facebook and therefore fell on a second place. Premium account on Deviant Art did not perform at all. I hoped that there will be some small sales from our print services but there was no motion at all. Obviously similar to Facebook Deviant Art has to be updated on a daily bases but I just do not have updates of my art work so often due to extended execution times of each art project. may be the content is not right and most probably I have to start building a more subject driven fan base. I must admit, projects we are engaged in are really diverse and it is difficult to identify our main stream. I am working on this and thinking hard on how we can make things easier and more uniform. That's it for now. Kind regards, Sergei. PS: Is you happen to read this and think is is of any interest for you, please drop me a note, reminding me that there is someone looking for a content update.

Another piece of digital art practice.

Past few days I spent doing some digital painting exercises and here are the results:

"Tree of Hope"

Speed painting exercise in Photoshop CS5 (4,5 hours)

"Lost Empire"

Speed painting exercise in Photoshop CS5 (2 hours)

Enjoy and comment!

After watching a few tutorials on the Pixologic.com I finally managed to create my own little Insert Mesh brush within Zbrush. As a part of creative training exercise I have added a little twist to it too.  Although it is a very simple process it took me a while to find and adjust all necessary functions of the program to get the desired result. There is still a vast amount of knowledge to be absorbed and many hours of practice to get me to the top.

Dear reader,

Thank you for visiting my blog!

This is my first post as a blogger and I hope to make it very interesting, exciting and entertaining for you as much as possible.

Since our return to Hungary in June 2012 from a five year South African Quest my wife and I are in the process of building a new portfolio with a more European/Western orientation. This requires a lot of patience, persistence and practice. To view our previous works visit us here or alternatively here.

Mean while I spent February busy working on a tender for Playmobil Experience Center that unfortunately for me did not win the competition. But it was a wonderful 3D exercise in interior/exterior design with new for me rendering in V-ray.

Note:I used Kerkythea Render before.

   

For a larger picture of my activities over the past few months I would like to take you on a tour of my personal studying process that I am going through right now. As a creative artist who is actively working in the field for more then sixteen years I am always looking for an opportunity to extend my knowledge and learn more so I can share it with you and give you more wonderful and gratifying experience.

As virtual world becomes more of a reality and overtakes many spheres of our lives we are attentively following its progress. Even traditional art becomes more digital as it opens the areas previously unknown to us. Tools, textures, colors and shapes, techniques and variety of applications. All this is a fast growing and developing organism that, if used properly could bear amazing results.

Digital painting is one of the spheres I was practicing recently. A highly effective and creative form of art that can be used  in many different areas such as illustrations, webdesign or game development.

Besides digital painting I had a chance to taste the 3D environment modelling in Vue xStream. A great application for creating photo-realistic virtual landscapes and this is what I came up with after a few short tutorials.

With all the support and classes I could find on the net my knowledge expands and my portfolio hopefully will take some shape but again it takes time and a lot of practice.

In a search of new projects and prospective job opportunities I came across a few wonderful people who were kind enough to introduce me to and direct me to an unknown for me area of 3D modelling. Although extensively using SketchUp as a 3D application on a daily bases over the past five years I still want to expend my knowledge and bring more to my creative projects and their professional presentation. Here, I am talking about the Zbrush. Although I heard the name a few times it never fully grabbed my attention. I had my list of applications that I wanted to learn containing the names such as Vue xStream, 3D Studio Max and Maya but as an artist and sculptor in traditional media some digital or to be more precise 3D applications were giving me a hard time with their vast "galaxy" of functions and complicated user interface. This was the reason why I fell in love with SketchUp that has a very user friendly interface, predictable and logical functionality tools and instant view of you project.

Never the less, after viewing tutorials on the internet I entered a world of Zbrush and started sculpting my first models. Although I had no particular goals to achieve nor did I have any idea of what am I doing I was highly impressed with the results and here are some samples that appeared on my screen after only a few of hours of playing around and testing default functions and brushes. Once again it was a wonderful experience as I have discovered for myself a fantastic digital sculpting application with a huge variety of tools.

But my amusement did not last long. As I contemplated on my next project I have placed goals to be achieved and mentally envisioned the final object so I tried to apply all that little knowledge of the program that I had and realized that it is not that easy. I faced the giant wall of various obstacles and again felt a strong urge for further education mixed with personal dissatisfaction and criticism.  My levels of self esteem hit the floor once again and my ego crashed in pieces. So I am back on the net  watching tutorials trying to absorb all the information I need to progress.

That's it for today and hope to write to you soon!

Sincerely yours, Sergei.