this past July there was 600 anniversary of the battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg) and Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian victory over the Western European knights and Teutonic Kinghts.
I started working on this piece a while ago - it is far from finished, perhaps too far. It purports to show a Lwow banner 'ensign' mounted on his faithful 'dextrarius' aka English language 'destrier' - I am not going to refer here to the Wikipedia page on the subject as it is not a good entry.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteI've been following Your blog for a while now and it's amazing - a real source of inspiration and knowledge.
Are You using Gimp for your digital paintings?
(note: this is really not a spam robot doing a software ad)
If You happen to have time to try something new, You might like this piece of software called ArtRage:
http://www.artrage.com/
It's a really great tool that simulates traditional painting techniques like oil paints or watercolors. With proper settings you can get the look of gouache or acrylics too I suppose.
It's a bit like Corel Painter if Painter had much fewer options to confuse You and much more intuitive controls and interface.
The results look really nice and I find it less "digital" looking than what Gimp does, or Photoshop.
There is a free version of AR2, which isn't as good, but it gives you an idea. There's also a 30 days demo version of AR Studio Pro, the newest version there is.
And the Studio Pro version which is like the most "professional" one out there costs only 60 USD, which I was able to afford easily as a student.
(The Studio version costs a half of that, there are some features missing though.)
Anyway, not to sound like a used-car salesman, it's a great painting tool and quite cheap too.
Please, keep up the good work! :)
Jan
PS: Recently I've done a reconstruction of my own (also painted in ArtRage) - an Achaemenid Cavalryman's armour:
http://merlkir.deviantart.com/art/Persian-cavalry-armour-186489776
thanks for your comment Jan!
ReplyDeleteI got to try ArtRage then, I am using as my operating system Ubuntu 10.04 (love it), and many programs do not work here (while MyPaint works flawlessly, while GIMP I just use for editing) eg Painter, Photoshop, let me see if ArtRage works.
Interesting sketch of Can cavalryman,my only critique would be that the sword has to be suspended from the belt (your thigh attachment is much later, i.e., Sarmatian), look at the Persepolis Apadana art, I will post here more Achaemenid Persians.
Thank you for letting me know about the ArtRage :)
or send me email at dario966 at gmail and I send you some precise images of the swords in question
About ArtRage - Ubuntu may be a problem. :( I didn't realize that. The website says it works on all kinds of Windows and MacOSX.
ReplyDeleteIt seems it is possible to run it somehow (Wine is some Windows emulation under Linux? I'm not sure)
They talk about it here:
http://www2.ambientdesign.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22977
and here:
http://www2.ambientdesign.com/forums/showthread.php?t=86
and there's Wine page for AR here:
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=18683
The sword-scabbard problem has been pointed out to me by other people as well.
I (wrongly) interpreted lines of the bottom of his tunic on the relief as the leg straps.
Sadly the scabbard strap attaching it to the belt was most likely only painted on the relief with red paint and has weathered away, so I didn't see it and instead saw the leg straps in lines of the tunic.
Jan,
ReplyDeletehave you tried the Autodesk Sketchbook Pro software?
I think I bought several years ago ArtRage and I did not like it, but the Studio Pro looks better, and from quality of your own art it appears that it can deliver what we will ask for :)
As per your Can cavalryman - the akinakes/short sword attachment it should be easy to correct, with digital painting, right?
have you used these programs on the web - http://www.queeky.com/app or http://www.sumopaint.com/app/ easy way to draw and paint when you at some cafe or library with wireless access,as in the US