Digital paintings
Park bench
An abstract painting of people hanging out in the park. A certain color palette was chosen to create the atmosphere ; dark blue, purple, red and the sparsely used bright yellow.
An abstract painting of people hanging out in the park. A certain color palette was chosen to create the atmosphere ; dark blue, purple, red and the sparsely used bright yellow.
Bianca
A pop-art style portrait I made for a friend as a birthday gift
Luka
A cartoonized version of Luka, a German Shepherd, I painted for a friend. I tried to look for distinctive features based on several photographs.
The Lumberjack
Well-built with a strong urge to chop down every tree in the forest. Accept he doesn't know what to do with the wood. Nobody wants to buy.
The old man and the donkey
Another character design. This fellow lives a simple life. He prefers a donkey over a horse, because it works much harder. And his eyes can't handle the horses speed, so he says.
The actor / The Jester
In the course of the story, this character meets a different fate than that he was promised. I like the idea of a ball and chain in form of a giant jester bell.
Trolltoad
A monster design for the fairy tale. It will be produced in a children's picture book format (prentenboek). These giants remain unseen from the civilized world, as they live deep inside the toadstool forest. But when men cut down their precious toadstools they get upset. Humans taste sugar sweet from a Trolltoad's point of view. The last thing a victim sees, is its sticky tongue.
Dees
A simple portrait. By looking at a handful of photographs I tried to capture the person the best I could with only a few lines. Using the same watercolor effect as in previous work I made the features stand out (hair, eyes and lips). I decided not to paint the skin and leave it out for the background colors to come through. I wanted the lines to do all the work of expressing the person.
'Turkey Knight'
Another character concept for the fairy tale. For this I wanted to give the knight a plumped look, but still moveable. I'm quite pleased how it turned out, he looks pretty ridiculous. The painting this time was about simulating fitting materials for a fairy tale. I love doing this style, it has a watercolor look, with soft and blended colors. Oh yeah, I named him Turkey Knight (Ridder Kalkoen) because he reminded me of the bird, especially his helmet and plumped body.
'The King of all the Land'
A character concept for a fairy tale I'll be doing together with a friend, which is being written in Dutch. I prefered the super deformed proportions (2,5 heads tall) over normal proportions (7,5 / 8 heads). For the painting I wanted to set the grimmy classic mood.
Don't Look
Done in photoshop and sketchbook in about 7 hours. This was a really good practice for using the brush. I wanted something eery and weird in designing this.
Fladdersock
A quicky, at least fast for my standards (still about 3 hours). The idea was to just draw something with the focus on one object without lots of backdrop. I started sketching out shapes without a plan or idea in mind. A creature emerged, like a sockpuppet. Then I defined more recognisable shapes. For coloring I wanted some teeth, but not as rich as the Long Day drawing. It has this watercolor / crayon look, which I like. I may do more of these random drawings, because they're all about creativity.
Long Day
I was eating my egg sandwich and suddenly it popped up into my mind; an odd looking creature drinking tea while sitting in a chair. It looked sort of like an anteater. Then I thought up more creatures and a theme was starting to form: enlonged features: legs, mouth, nose, ears, neck. The sketch started to get this Tim Burton / American McGee's Alice look. For the rendering I was inspired by the beautiful adventure/puzzle game Machinarium. Especially the use of textures, but also the loose drawn feeling, but mine is not as scribbly as the game. This painting has much more straight lines, because I wanted to show depth. I also paid lots of attention to the lightning, making sure the values are right (by viewing in black and white, you can clearly see the value range). This is pretty much my most detailed work so far. Behance doesn't give the option to enlarge pictures, but a bigger version is available on request, as it does more justice to the work.
Wallace Sinner
This is a character design for a one-shot comic I'm doing worktitled 'System Works'. Its about the ugly side of the systems we as a society create and how the survival of such systems exceeds its main purpose. Wallace here is a key player in a system designed to serve the needs of twisted minds. When writing the character I always had an attitude and expression in mind, but it takes time to flesh out the actual face. This is the result of weeks trying to define expression lines into shapes and making it fit in 3 dimensions. Below are some focus shots. I changed the lightning a bit for more contrast. It almost seems like he is standing in moonlight.
Happy birthday Pa
This is a portrait of my father in his younger, wilder, years. It is based of a photograph, but I enhanced the expression and made up my own lighting and colors for dramatic effect. I did it for his 60th birthday.
Portrait
A portrait I did for a friend who went to study abroad in China for a few months. I used several pictures to determine facial features. I stayed away form direct transfer from the photographs to the drawing. Instead I wanted to transfer only the person and the expression, and design my own frame and angle.
Ego Exodus
What happens when you build your world on ego alone, without confirmation from your surroundings? It keeps you from facing real problems and doing something about them. If you keep telling yourself that you're the best and got it all (super important job, big house, hot chick and all that money in the bank) it better be true. Cause when reality kicks in and words alone aren't enough to satisfy your mind, all those air castles are coming down, crashing under the weight of your ego. And its pulling you down with it.
Waiting
This is a scene I saw before me when reading a chapter of a book a good friend of mine was writing. An old men sits on a stone bench overlooking a sleepy village hidden between hills and trees. He just sits there waiting. When asked what he is waiting for he says: "Waiting for the world disappearing." His eyes are hollow, soulless.
Antonio - Monestary
Tony in action, searching for answers at an abandoned monestary. A lot of work was put into the forms and motion of the body. This is also my first real try at an environmental drawing in perspective. The first stage was the design of the figure, then some rough ideas for an environment. The second stage was the inking, with lots of detail in the front and finer lines in the back. The last, coloring, stage was about creating a mood, through matching colors and lightning. I wanted a soft and blended look, comfortable to the eye.
Antonio - Mugshot
The style here gives more of an animated feel (like Japanese anime); the cel shading and desaturated colors. I had this picture in my mind of Tony (for short) with his chin up, glaring into the camera, not thinking much of the situation he is in. The prison uniform he is wearing is pink. Some prisons use pink on attributes for psychological purposes, here I went just one step further.
Antonio - Relaxed
I did a few more with this character. Here the purpose was to create a detailed manga-style look with tones. The buildings in the back are manipulated photographs with tones added on top. It all needed to blend in.
Antonio - First Look
This is a first try at a character design for a comic a was thinking about. Things weren't very clear on the story part, but I may dive into it again in the future. The idea came from a carnaval costume me and my friends put on. It was supposed to be a 'Johnny' though-guy look, but it had this maffioso touch; the long hair in the back, the slick mustache and Lennon-glasses. I also made some different focus shots based on this one (below). Each with a different feel to it.
Circus Anton
I had a go on a front cover for a music cd, but it turned out on wallpaper size. The inspiration came from a song I was writing with a friend about a very popular circus duck who had an unfortunate accident during his biggest stunt as a human(bird) cannonball. It was a little gloomy, but with black humor. The song was never finished, although the tunes were about done. In the picture Anton (the circus duck) shoots out of the cannon.
