Artwork de K4ICY

Nice Work Mike...

Thank you all guys!

Pilou, I remember reading an old book by that author about a battle with giants from another dimension that were eating humans. B-movie type sci-fi, (which I have an affinity for)
I'll have to check "City" out.

"Steampunks On The Air"

A scene depicting the fledgling Amateur Radio hobby (early 1900's) with enthusiast/experimenters setting up a demonstration (Get On The Air event) in a public park.
The "spark-gap" transmitter shown uses a steam engine for electrical generation.
I left the "Steampunk" elements light with emphasis on detail... which there are a lot of... in fact, I wanted more, but I'm running out of time on just the work for the radio club's newsletter which this piece will grace the cover of.
This took a good two weeks (off and on) using the help of models made in Moi3D for sketch setup for some elements including the city and table.
The figures includes the likeness of myself and my three daughters. And consequently, my oldest daughter (who draws better figure proportions than me) hates my version of her.
The tennis ball launcher shown depicts my actual creation: http://k4icy.com/launcher.htm I use it to propel tow lines over high tree limbs for hoisting antennas.
My only real complaint with Verve's performance are the strange brown edges that appear through time around the semi-transparent parts of each layer. You can see them around the table legs in the image (amongst other areas) and they are NOT intended.
But aside from that Verve is my Zen, and it's been nice to bury myself in my work.

Wow Mike! You knocked it past that nice satellite image you did in top row! The details are simply magnificent and I can see the time spent was well spent. While I really like All of your earlier works this is a step above. Moi served you well I love your self portrait and the family. Superbly done Great depth, great color and your attention to your strokes is so much more attentive. The hands are much better than earlier versions!

hehe. You know what you have done here Mike? You have set a bar for yourself and now... well... in the future... muhahahahaha

Tom

This is fantastic!
The Antenna Launcher - the real one you made - is unbelievable cool.
Such a good work overall!!

And it works well Knacki. I used to lead a group of nine Bear Cub Scouts and they calculated that at 45 degrees in elevation, at 100 psi, the launcher can send tennis balls weighing 150 grams (when filled with coins) 500 to 700 ft in the firing direction, leaving the barrel at 350+ mph! I've sent many balls over tall pines and groves of trees to hoist many a dipole wire antenna supports. It's all PVC and ABS by the way.
It's not done and I still have more Steampunk embellishments to give it including a vintage dial, model steam engine valve and linkages. I have a real concern that the actual launcher may be structurally unsafe: it's been sitting in the back of my car for seven years exposed to daily temps of -10 C to +70 C . PVC shrapnel can kill!

Thanks Tom!!! Yes, dammit! I set the bar with this one - so I worry myself because the time has gone up as well. My oldest daughter absolutely hates my lazy proportions, so I've got more practice ahead.
Verve is so perfect because you have such a wide range of painting and smudging ability. As you can tell, I literally keep the buildup and thickness down to near-zero. It suits me, especially as I become more detail-centric.
I really need to do some expressive 'quickies' to untangle my mind. And I have absolutely no delusions of having mastered anything! If anything, spending too much time browsing the masterworks on dA makes me feel juvenile and pedestrian. But I do have a curious optimism for how fantastic my work will be in a year or ten years.

[Taron]

Truly awesome, Mike, as usual, but I sense your getting stronger with those figures for sure. Needless to mention the breathtaking costumes!
You are in your own league, truly, and I hope I'm saying what I think I'm saying... which is: Nobody here dares to venture into your realm of staggering details and almost even clarity of content, I would say.
I'm grateful about and flubbergusted by you!

Golden age of invention!

Oh Mike, this is really AWESOME!!!

I am truly honored by your kind remarks Taron!

My need for detail is a cruel byproduct of my OCD. I must, must, must include everything I want - like some spoiled brat at Christmas time. It happens every time - as if by magic, instead of struggling with trying to come up with an idea or composition, it exists in my mind as if I was already familiar with it. Then after some pondering, the scene is so familiar that I can't help but to express every little detail to make it exist in the image as it does in my mind. The problem is, that I can't quite get everything to be realized exactly, so I end up looking at my final image as some imperfect child - both with love and appreciation, but with some lament. The city was not high enough on the hill, etc... Of course, I could get into the issue of my mild synesthesia which causes every tangible element, composition of physical elements and even the atmosphere of a place in real life and so on to carry with them in my "inner mind" and perception, a very real sense of personalities that pervades my conscious. Yes, places and things have tangible 3D qualities in my mind as well as feeling and personalities ...not to mention my barely perceptible co-existence of colors to numbers and letters... So if I'm going to posses a barely discernible ailment of my psychology, well then, I better learn to use it for my creative purposes. All in all, it means that once I come up with an idea, it's not too hard to work it all out until it sits on paper. It's a lie unto itself if it doesn't tell the truth. I'm not crazy, it's just cross-wiring. My body and mind is full of it.

I think a good trick for me would be to learn how to do more expressive art without the constraints of exacting detail or composition. I'll worry about that after I'm as good (or better) as the likes of Norman Rockwell.

Pilou, as I've mentioned before, I really have you to thank for these, almost deity-given tools of alternative digital creativity; Moi3D, Verve and Mischief. No really, I'd still be plugging away at Photoshop and Corel never realizing that could traverse the planes of digital painting and 3D. For the record, I am satisfied with this latest piece and feel content to let it be. But it does still feel very imperfect to me, and if anything, propels me to drive myself further with the next. Though, you guys are going to have to expect a few lack-luster duds from me.

This design started off as a very rough pencil sketch on a letter sheet of paper. The figures were cartoonish at best. I then used Made with Mischief to make finer sketches and to work out the composition. Actually, there were two sketches in Mischief, with the final looking very exact - Mischief allows you to zoom in down to the atomic level and it really helps in getting face details down. I'm actually worried that I'm doing better sketches on the PC with the Wacom than I can on paper. In fact, my daughter very insistently had me tweak the detail of her face (and she still hates it.) I hate self-portraits, which says a lot about my self-image Like Norman Rockwell, I hung a few inkjet prints of me and my girls over my desk and went by eye... if you can get the faces looking right, then the viewer can more easily forgive your ugly body proportions. The city, the zeppelin and the table were created in Moi3D and brought in as white sketch outlines from a png made in PS. I made "clay" renderings in Kerkythea to get a good idea on where to make the shadowing. It would be nice to render these things to the T, but since I don't own a render farm... The bricks in the walk way was just a Corel made pattern given a 'Perspective' envelope, and I just filled in each brick with color and a little outlining. The trees were my favorite out of the whole piece. Just take brush #7 and wiggle it around some, then turn the build-up to 0 and fill in with more brush #7.

Taron, I hope you find the time to realize the Verve update you have in mind. There is no other painting program like this one. The fluidity really adds a 'feel' to it and there would be no reason to call and artist "not an artist" for painting digitally over the real thing... all Verve is missing is the 'haptic' feel of sloshing and resistance on the brush.