Artist Spotlight - Richard Schmid

Gosh-- how to even present such a MASTER!? Richard is an inspiration to ALL who view his work-- both collectors and definitely artist's that know of him! he's a living legend and someday will be studied in Art History alongside the other legends of Art.. he's that good!

he's been an inspiration to me for 15 yrs or more (when i first discovered him).. everything he creates is full of life/energy.. such amazing knowledge of color, masterful brushstrokes, etc.. my words just won't do his work justice.. see for yourself if  you haven't already!

..man, what i would give to study with such as master!?! :)

link to his website: http://www.richardschmid.com/default.htm

link to DVD's: highly recommended  (i own 6 of them-- very useful):
http://www.richardschmid.com/video.html

books/catalogues: http://www.richardschmid.com/book.html

google image search of his work: Google image

Figure studies #01

Below is a page of 60 second figure studies, by Chad W Greene

(click the image to view a larger version)


below is a YouTube video that shows the process of creating this image (click to play)
note: this video was sped up 2.5x for playback purposes


---
Just as athletes and or skilled professionals, artist's (musicians, dancers, actors, etc) must practice their craft to get better. Artist's have long used figure drawing studies as a way of training the hand/eye coordination needed (in all aspects of fine art);

during art school, we would spend hours in class drawing/painting from live models.. once we graduate, it gets harder to find this much needed means of training (you have to find art associations, attend workshops, etc) or draw from reference books. portrait artist's will hire models to pose for them live at their studios-- but this takes money and the initiative to make this commitment.

at my company, Volition-- we are fortunate, at times, to have weekly figure drawing classes (5-8pm) once a week, in which we hire a local model that comes in to our office. (i'll post some sketches from these classes at some point)

anyway-- as for me, i try and find time to practice, at least 3-4 days a week-- drawing from reference books, etc.. i plan on posting these studies here for you to view.. most of my studies are 45 second and 60 second poses (nothing longer than 90 seconds) -- and this is great practice for studying weight/form, etc.. these studies are done both digitally and in my sketchbook using mostly pencil (although i will use ink washes, charcoal, etc.. as well)

more to come-- check back!

Blog title changed

as you may notice, i switched my blog name/title to 'Chad W Greene' and no longer am using my online artist nickname, 'Artsy Fartsy'..

the reason being that i have been reading a lot of articles/ediorials and talking to others about the importance of building your identity as YOURSELF.. and i want my artwork to be synonymous with Chad W Greene and not Artsy Fartsy

nevertheless-- it's still ME! :)

i have also registered a website: www.chadwgreene.com and i'm the process of building it up to be focused on my fine art exclusively (it won't have my illustrations or professional CG work) and will be used on business cards and communication with galleries, collectors, etc.. stay tuned for that!

Cheers!

Chad

'Inside the studio' -- art studio pics

I just love seeing photos of artist's studios.. it's nice to see where they create their masterpieces and what their space is like.. as for mine, it's in the basement of my home (wish it were above ground-- with Northern light windows.. but it is where it is and it works out well for me! ..maybe someday i'll have the dream studio! :)

Here are a few pics of my art studio.. (more to come-- i plan on taking a 360 pano pic as well)

size of studio is approx 12x24 and has a bathroom/sink as well


(Above) one view of the corner of my studio; you can see the
painting, 'Cherries' on the easel



(above) misc props on my shelf



(Above) just finished this painting, 'Peppers,' mixed media, 18x24



above - 'tools of the trade' (oils and oil pastels)

Artist Spotlight - Feng Zhu

Feng Zhu is a concept artist/designer that has been working professionally for over 11 yrs now -- working on games, films and other forms of entertainment and industrial design (for companies such as: Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Sony, Activision, Industrial Light+Magic, NCSoft, Warner Brothers, Lucasfilm, Bay Films, Epic Games, and many other top studios)

He also started his own design school -- http://www.fengzhudesign.com/ which has tons of good information/training, etc.. i especially want to point you to his videos, which are streamed from YouTube, in which he discusses student works and how to make them better..



check out his artwork/portfolio here: http://www.fengzhudesign.com/portfolio.html

check out his design school here: http://www.fengzhudesign.com/index.html

check out his YouTube training/insight videos here: http://www.youtube.com/FZDSCHOOL

New Artwork: "Embracing our differences" - by Chad Greene

Just completed this last night. This is going to be part of a series of Abstract Expressionist paintings that i'm working on for a gallery showing.

(click the below image to see a larger sized version)

"Embracing our differences" - by Chad Greene


i have been working on this particular piece for about a month (at nights, on weekends, etc) -- and i'm really excited over the results-- i may be on to something! As with most expressionist pieces, it started out very sub-conscious-- just laying down color/values.. then it started to take shape/form.. somewhere in the creation process i started seeing figures emerge and worked on bringing meaning to the central part of the image (figure embracing other shapes). i particularly like the amount of texture and how it works with the shapes and color.. and how each area of the image gives the eye something to rest upon and study.

i had a lot of fun working on this--- sort of 'art therapy' for me, since it's so different from my usual style(s) and from my 'day job!' working on computers all day, making video games!

stay tuned for more! ..and thanks for viewing!

Chad

The making of artwork, 'Serenity' by Chad Greene (project overview)

"Serenity" -- by Chad Greene

Recently i was asked about how to use Maya Paint effects to generate foliage in 3D (trees, grass, plants, flowers, etc..) so i referenced this project that i did a few years ago. i won't go into too many technical details and settings here (contact me if you are interested) but i will show some images that show the process of creating this artwork.

This image was done using Maya, After Effects, Photoshop and Deep Paint 3D and it was done in about a month

** click on any of the images to see a larger, more detailed view/image

Initial Layout

this image (below) shows the initial layout curves and main geometry (which is stand in geometry for the moment).
you can see that i was trying to define the curves and shape of the river and the dirt path with these curves.

once the curves were drawn and i liked where they were flowing (from the camera's point of view), i then created a poly plane primitive and subdivided it many times. I used the sculpt polygon tool (Maya) to get the shape of the terrain to be what i wanted.

Here are a couple of images which show the scene being developed.. and first pass (very rough) textures being applied -- just to get a sense of color and feel. (the water was just a reflective plane at this point, too)

Objects/props

Once the terrain was acceptable-- i moved on to modeling the buildings and major props. All of these objects were 'box modeled' using Maya. (note: i only added details where it was needed and based this on the objects distance from the camera/viewer) i also used displacement maps for the stonework on the house and the chapel-- so the wire frame geo was kept low res, for poly count issues.

Here's the boat geometry and stages of development:



Organics/foliage (using Paint Effects in Maya)

The hardest part of this piece was the grass and misc foliage such as plants, trees, flowers, etc.. -- because of high polygon counts that they caused! all of the grass and flowers totaled over 12 million polygons! (and that is NOT counting the trees!) because of this, i had to render out sections of foliage and later comp then together in after effects.

Below is an animated gif -- that shows some sections and grass and how it was split up into separate layers/renders:

(click this image below to watch as the foliage is composited to 'grow')


For rendering, i wanted to use Mental Ray-- so i had to convert all of the foliage into polygons (because the default Paint Effects nodes will not render otherwise). here are some images which show the wireframe and the rendered out foliage:



(Above) I created many different types of flowers-- for color and shape variation

(Below) Here are some examples of polygonal grass-- and how it looks when you 'grow' of plot of it


These were some of the shrubs that i created


As for the trees: they were created with software called Xfrog (great software, by the way!-- for trees, etc). i created the trees and placed them around the 3D scene.. and i rendered them out in sections (5-8 trees at a time) and then later composited them in the final scene.





Water dynamics and rendering

As for the water-- i first studied how fluid dynamics worked on a simple plane (Maya).. and then i applied what i learned to the river geometry in my scene.. (i also added the rocks and the river bank as collision geo for the simulation to properly calculate the ripples and waves) I then used a modified ocean shader for the material of the water.

Maya Scene file

..and finally, here's the environment wire files.. (note: i'm not including the trees, etc.. because most of the work for that involved comping effects and post painting to complete the look)

[The images below were screen captured from Maya's hardware shaded view]

As for the rendering/lighting: it was done in Maya, using Mental Ray. One key light source (sun) was in the scene and all of the bounce lighting came from indirect illumination using a sky dome with sunset colors. Environment fog was used as well to give the scene some atmospheric haze/depth.

Post Painting: i used Photoshop to add the birds in the sky (painted by hand) and also added a slight amount of film grain to the overall image to reduce some of the sharpness.


Final image (click to see larger image)



..Thanks for your time!

Chad Greene-- aka 'Artsy Fartsy'