Latest Commission: ‘Gorn’ for Some Coffee

Latest commission: Patron wanted to give her hubby, who is a big Star Trek fan, a Father’s day gift.

 

She also told me her husband likes reptiles and loooves coffee. Wished every commission was as easy to come up with as this one!

 

Trekkies worth their salt will no doubt recognize the rock formation in the background as the actual location where they shot that ‘epic’ battle between Kirk and Gorn (God bless the Internet!). Again, this was another opportunity to challenge myself using synthetic brushes because I wanted to make something a bit less ‘cartoony’ without being actually realistic; I kept trying to emulate what I saw other artists do, which is not trying to ‘blend’ the colors too much and trust in how the brush strokes work as a whole, and although during the middle of it I was like “what the hell am I doing??” and thought about erasing the whole thing to start all over, I took breaks and returned to it until it was completed and I was fairly impressed with the end result –it actually reminded me of Nicholas Roerich’s lovely mountanous landscapes… well, a beginner’s attempt to it anyway 😉

An example of Roerich’s wondrous artwork. This painting I believe is depicting the mystical hypothesis that Jesus visited Tibet during his “secret” years. And is that supposed to be a Nephilim’s skull??

 

Once the ‘hard’ work was over, the rest was easier and much more fun to accomplish, yet I still experimented with a few things here and there (for example, instead of ‘colorizing’ the line art like I usually do by locking the layer’s transparency and painstakingly changing the color of the line manually, I instead changed the layer to “soft light”, which proved to be too intense, so I duplicate the line art layer and applied it with the ‘color sub exposition’ filter at a 16% opacity, which darkened the color of the lines and looked better to me. I also tried to find ways to caapture Gorn’s ‘bumpy’ skin and his weird insect-like eyes. Again, the goal was not hyper-realism, so I was very pleased with the end result.

(Oh, I also took some liberties with Gorn’s physiognomy. For example, I added a ‘skin fold’ at the end of his mouth, which is more in line with how the mouths of reptiles are actually shaped. I even gave him a deep purple tongue because why not? 😛

The original Gorn. Notice his ‘unrealistic’ mouth, which kind of looks like a duck bill! Also, the poor guy has no tongue.

 

Remember: You too can have your deepest, fondest and GEEKIEST fantasy fulfilled –in 2d form, anyway 😛 Leave me a comment here if you’re interested in an artwork commission.