Tao'tieh

The Tao'tieh from J L Borges's Book of Imaginary Beings, 

painted as part of a demo at the Ringling College of Art & Design.

(The below approach was heavily influenced by the inimitable Sam Neilson.
Pay him a visit, if you haven't already.)

1. Graphite drawing, scanned & cleaned in Photoshop

2. Illustrator "live trace"(converting to vector for scaling purposes). 

3. Local color pass

4. Ambient lighting pass

5. Direct lighting pass

6. Steps 2-5 combined; the final (topmost) image has cleanup and layer effects added. 

Vampire Portrait

Screwing around in Photoshop... the text should roughly translate to "I have been lurking."

Stephanie and I have started watching True Blood; it's better than Twilight, but I still don't quite understand this obsession with sexy vampires. I'd much rather see them play up the "ageless parasite" angle, but I suppose sex sells better than biological curiosities. Ho hum.