Lovely Ladies Series

Being a digital artist, I have found that the quality of my work is not only influenced by my level of technical expertise with the software I am using, but also with the quality of the digital models available.

When DAZ started out, their basic male and female models were Michael and Victoria.  When I got started in 3D art, Michael 3 and Victoria 3 were the models of choice.

I get a chuckle out of looking at my really early work because the models were still pretty basic and my own proficiency levels with the software were lacking. 

DAZ just released Michael 7 and Victoria 7, but actually I prefer the previous iteration -- Michael 6, and a female model named Olympia 6.

Below are a few portraits I have done recently, using Olympia 6 as my model, which I have come to think of as my "Lovely Ladies" series.

Vintage Photo Studio

Available on canvas and prints here.
(this piece recently earned an Award of Special Merit at the Light, Space & Time Open Art Competition. The competition received 734 entries! Woo hoo!!!)

Pretty in Pink

Available on canvas and prints here.

 I wanted to do something different with this one. I tried several different Photoshop actions on the final render, but the one I liked most of all was this black and white version.

 Summer Breeze
Available on canvas and prints here.

I'm still working on this last one.  It's the first render I have done using DAZ's new NVIDEA "iRay" render engine.  (I would explain that, but I'm not actually sure about it myself!)

Untitled

Iray rendering takes lighting to a whole new level and allow use of physically based environments so that with the correct tools and setups we can replicate real world lighting. (that's the theory, anyway!)

Yesterday I purchased a new add-on for DAZ, the Ultra Genesis Studio 1 light set from Traveler and Syyd at Runtime DNA.com and thankfully, the creators provided a handy .pdf file of instructions on how to use the lights, the cameras and the environments.

I'm looking forward to playing with it some more and getting more proficient with it.

It's like having my own personal modeling agency and photography studio!

Watch this space for more!

The Story Behind "Here Without You"

My husband and I will celebrate our seventh anniversary later this year, but we've actually known each other quite a bit longer than that.

We met in an online chat room, back when they were all the rage, and maintained a long distance relationship for four years, before our wedding in 2007.

During that time Eric introduced me to the digital art programs Bryce and DAZ and, encouraged by his sister, also a prolific digital artist, I got hooked!

"Here Without You" is one of my earlier digital artworks, created in DAZ 3D.  I created it on a long night sitting at home alone listening to our special music on iTunes.

Not surprisingly, given the title I finally gave it, I was listening to "Here Without You" by Three Doors Down when I came up with the idea for this piece.

I wanted to convey the longing I myself was feeling, waiting for Eric's next visit or the day we could finally be together forever.

If you look closely, you'll see that she has an actual photograph of my then fiance balanced on her lap -- thanks to the wonders of 3D graphics programs I was able to apply the photo to a small rectangular plane and then position it on her lap like a much loved portrait.

Even now when I look at this piece, it really takes me back to those days and everything it took for us to meet, get together and finally be able to marry.

Not all online relationships work out, but I'm very happy that ours worked out so well.

A Peek Inside the Studio and the Making of "The High Country" (or "Do Keep Up, Tonto!")

It was my birthday last week. We won't go in to details, like how old I am, but I wanted to give a shout out to my wonderful husband, Eric, who willingly parted with a hefty chunk of change to replace my three year old iMac with a new 27 inch iMac.

So I thought I'd give you a peek inside "Mockingbird Studio" and give you an idea of where I work on my art projects.

The fact that the new monitor is much bigger than the one I had before (a mere 21 inch) caused me to have to rearrange my studio.  I used to have my computer on a small desk to the left of this photo, facing over a half wall into the living room and the garden beyond.

The configuration of the desk, with a little printer stand on the side, really didn't work with the bigger monitor.  So I decided to move my new computer over to my former craft desk, which hasn't actually been used for anything other than lounging cats, in the five years we have lived here.  Well that's not quite true -- I sewed some window valances three years ago, but that's about it.

I love this layout already.  There's more actual desktop, so I've got room for some desk accessories and when I want to pay bills, I don't have to shuffle things between my lap, the desk and the drawer.

So what am I working on with my new iMac?

Well, at the art show last weekend, I was talking with one of the other artists and we talked about a scene where a cowboy would be up on a ridge, surveying the scene below, perhaps with a herd of cattle or bison or something.

The thing is, when I started playing around in DAZ and started working on posing the Genesis figure on the DAZ horse, I ended up with the cowboy looking back behind him, and leaning his hand on his horse's rump, like he's waiting for the rest of the riders (or perhaps his trusty sidekick, Tonto) to catch up!  (Thank you to Judy Adamson, a fellow artist who lives in Wales, who came up with the subtitle when I first posted the finished render on Facebook, asking for suggestions for titles)

Once I had the horse and rider the way I wanted them, I saved them as a wavefront object which I would then be able to import into a variety of other 3D graphic software.

Then I opened up Vue, the software I use for creating landscapes and scenery.  I created a foreground terrain and added some weeds and grass to it and placed the horse and rider in the scene, being sure to make sure they weren't either floating three inches above the ground, or sinking down into it.  Then I grouped horse and rider together with the foreground terrain and camera and raised everything up above the ground plane and tilted it forward slightly, to give the illusion of standing on the edge of the ridge looking into the valley. (You can see that grouping in the top right hand segment of the photo below).

Vue gives you four different views at once, so you can see your scene from the front, from the side, from the top and finally, the "camera view".   This will be what you see in the final render - it's the view on the bottom right.

Once I had the horse and rider standing on the ridge, with the valley spread out below, I set about finding a suitable atmosphere for the scene. Vue has a multitude of atmospheres built in, or you can set about creating your own by manually adding layers of cloud, positioning the sun, setting the lighting model and many other functions.

For this scene, I selected one of the atmosphere presets and the moved the sun around until it appears that horse and rider are being highlighted from the side by the sun as it moves lower in the western sky.

I adjusted the levels in Photoshop Elements 11 as the shadows were just too dark in the original render that came out of Vue.  I'm very happy with the result.

Inspiration from Life

My latest digital artwork was inspired by a recent trip to England, where we visited the lovely Cotswold village of Bourton-on-the-Water.

The Cotswolds is an area in the center of England, known for its honey-colored stone architecture and idyllic village scenes. 

We were not blessed with pleasant weather -- in fact on the day we were there it was "bloody freezing!"(to quote my sister, who took us there) -- but I found myself enchanted as always. This particular village has a shallow stream running through it, as its name implies and there are always ducks around, either in the water, or sitting on the grassy banks. 

Feeding the ducks is a popular pastime, in fact it's encouraged.  Several of the little gift shops offered for sale paper bags filled with bird seed, labelled with the words "Feed the Ducks".

That got me thinking and when I got home again, back to my studio and my computer, I began to consider how I might recreate such a scene in Vue.

Luckily, I had some time ago purchased a pack of 3D models from Runtime DNA which had the look of typical Cotswold cottages. I loaded several cottages into the scene and arranged in a row beside the stream, similar to how the cottages are set in the real village.

After creating the basic terrain with the stream channel, I set about finding the perfect texture for the stony stream bed and the water .  Once I had that in, I added grass, benches and trees to fill out the scene.

Then it was time to create the figures that would populate the scene.  I envisioned a small child feeding ducks on the banks of the stream.  Here's the figure I created in DAZ 3D.  This render was done in DAZ, prior to the figure being exported to Vue.

I felt a small child shouldn't be left unsupervised to feed the ducks, so I added a mom and dad to the scene, lol. Dad is sitting on the bench watching benevolently as his wife offers duck-feeding guidance to their daughter. I think I hear the words "mind that big one doesn't peck your fingers!"

My computer was really dragging by the time I got everything in. An "eco-system" like this, with lots of grass or trees, tends to suck up the computer's resources and I had a scare when Vue shut down and then claimed it was unable to open the file again! 

Luckily, my computer-savvy husband was able to rename one of the backup files and open it up, so I was able to finally finish the project and do the final render, which you can see below.

As I mentioned at the beginning, my inspiration for this piece came from a real-life place.

Where does your artistic inspiration come from?  Are the scenes you paint imaginary places, or are they places and people you have seen?

The Making of The Easter Bunny

A few weeks ago, I wanted to create a 3D scene in Vue that I could use for Easter products. After struggling to get the exact scene I wanted all in Vue,  I ended up doing a mixed media piece.

I started out by rendering a scene with a cluster of Easter eggs, nestled in some long grass and dandelions, with a background of tree-lined fields, and a nice hazy spring atmosphere.

I played around with the angle of the camera, and aspect ratio to give me a portrait format image, suitable for cards, and with a nice amount of sky at the top where the greeting would go.

My final render looked like this:

Once the render was complete, I opened the resulting image file in Adobe's Photoshop Elements, created a new layer and added a sweet Easter bunny, which is a png file from Bez Boardman and Antje Darling's ABC's Hi-5 Springtime kit at Renderosity.

I'm really happy with the resulting image (although now I look at it critically, I see the lighting on the bunny isn't the same as on the eggs).

Happy Easter! Easter Bunny and Easter Eggs card by 3DDesignsByJayne

Then I had fun with it in my Zazzle store and used it on cards, postcards, gift boxes and I just love it on this plate:

Easter Bunny and Easter Eggs Party Plate by 3DDesignsByJayne

It was a creative project that I really enjoyed - the first time I have tried to layer one of my original 3D renders with a 2D graphic file.  I think I learned some things (that lighting, for one!) and I look forward to improving in the future :-)