Right panel of my robot triptych finished

It took me a while to complete this, not only because the image is large, but I had to hone my technique so that I can apply the same methods to the other two panels of the triptych for consistency. So, I couldn’t just use a process of trial and error, because I’m going to have to repeat it. This basically involved at least 3 layers of painting. In other words, every square inch is painted over at least 3 times to get the effect I want. Don’t ask how I do it. It’s a pain, and what works for one image or section of an image doesn’t necessarily work for another. And when I say it’s finished, I mean for a single panel. Once all three are done, I’ll have to put them together and do the final touch ups and polishing. Right now there’s too much “noise” and artifacts, and I haven’t finalized some of the lighting and shading, contrast, sharpness, and so on, which will remain flexible.

You may wonder why I bothered to digitally paint it. Aside from that I just love that textured surface effect – Van Gogh is tied for my favorite all-time painter – when you see the close ups side by side you can see why as well.

I didn’t render my Blender file at a high resolution. It would have taken hours to do so, and since I intended to paint over it, I just used a screenshot, or, rather, several screenshots stitched together, and overlapped. Now it can be printed quite large [up to about 4X5 feet] with high resolution. Also, some of the painterly techniques worked really well with the metallic colors for an overall effect I don’t think I’ve quite seen before. See details at “actual pixels” below.

Also, after doing the next two, I’ll probably have developed some fine tuning methods I’ll want to go back over this one with.

I really want to finish the whole thing in the next couple weeks, so I have one month to finish one more piece I have planned before my move to Cambodia (better visa situation allowing artists to  live cheaply enough that they don’t have to work full time and sideline art), after which I won’t have a suitable monitor, will be scrambling for work, and otherwise probably not able to focus on art until I get settled. Might do some “analog” work though.

~ Ends