Blog Bragino » Paintings

Why is Matte Painting so much fun?

Bragino — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:00:34 +0000

Well, there's a whole list of reasons why it's fun to make Matte paintings. It's not just that they look cool but, for me, it opens up a whole new world of dialogue as an artist. Matte painting is something that's used for creating environments for TV, Film, and Gaming. It's an exercise in creating stories and that's what appeals to me the most. I just started learning about it and so far I've been having an interesting time getting my feet wet. I'm generally teaching myself the ins and outs of it with the help of some dvd instruction from the amazing artist's over at The gnomon workshop. I am in no way affiliated with them, just a very happy customer of about 5 tutorial dvds. I've learned a lot from them and I'm using that knowledge to move my self along as an artist. Here are a couple of quick black and white environmental design comps that I did. After I had a few compositional sketches completed I opened up a cool image that I had in my image library of Scotland and decided to try my hand at making a matte painting. Check out the results below. I'm personally very happy with where this is taking me…

Here's one of the first environment sketches I did in photoshop. Very loose, just trying to sell some depth in the image and an interesting composition. This took about 10 minutes to do.

Here's the second one I did. Again this was quick, about 15 minutes. Just working on creating an environment with some decent scale to it…

Here's my first matte painting. My intention was to incorporate the Asian buildings into this Scottish landscape. Please understand that I am just beginning with this. I realize this would not be suitable for an actual Matte painting but one day through practice I'll create something that will be.. I find this process interesting because your starting out with some kind of mood or feeling and then your allowed to build whatever world you want right into that landscape. It might be too early to tell but I think I'm hooked..

MATTE PAINTING, I call this "The BonnieLand"

West Gilgo Beach Mural Documentary

Bragino — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:05:33 +0000

This is a 12 foot tall by 240 foot wide collaborative mural accomplished in the summer of 2010 by the following artists:

I designed this mural as a 4 seasons cyclical theme starting in winter on the South wall and ending again in winter on the North wall. It's painted inside a 120' tunnel and both walls were painted to complete the cycle of the seasons. I gathered some of the best artists I knew to come down and join me in the creation of this mural. My brother John shot a documentary while we painted this.

Here are two versions to view. The top one is a wider format so you can see more of the mural at one time. The bottom is for checking out details. Enjoy!!

Valley of the Egrets

Bragino — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:18:02 +0000

This image has been through many stages to get it to this point. Here's a list and a good reason to embrace technology as a tool for art…

This started out as a commission for a client that needed a wedding gift for a mutual friend. I was given some information about the soon to be couple. They both loved outdoors and nature, his favorite animal is an Egret, and she loves sunflowers.

I remembered a conversation that I had with someone from that circle of friends about canoeing down the Nissequogue river on Long Island. The sun was about to rise and as soon as it crested over the horizon it appeared as if the lights turned on over the land and the birds that were resting on the river took to flight. The biggest of those birds was a Great Egret that flew by the two guys in the canoe just above the water. I recall them being pretty inspired by the whole scene.

With all that in my head I set out to create a comp or image on the computer that I could later use to paint a large scale painting from.

After the comp was complete and approved by the client I used it to work on and complete a 7ft x 3ft painting

After the painting was complete I took high resolution images of it and brought it back into the computer where I re painted the background of the image. In the actual painting there was some loss of the time of day that's reflected here.

What your looking at in the image below is a computer painted background behind a hand painted foreground. The trees and birds are a direct scan from the original large scale painting and the background was repainted in Photoshop. Sometimes having more tools available to you is beneficial. My challenge for the next image I paint large scale by hand is to be able to get the background painted the way I want it without having to redo in the computer. On the other hand having gone through this process has led me to many ideas and techniques that I would have never thought of…..

Oil painting of Sarah

Bragino — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:00:59 +0000

For the past two weeks during our Friday night Figure drawing sessions we've been opting to paint one long pose over the 4 hour time instead of the 20 minute poses we normally draw. It's good to paint, especially with oil paint, and to give yourself some time to really get involved with the process. Oil painting is surely a slower process and it's fun to work with mixing color and all the odds and ends that come with producing something in oil. It's a tough medium that needs to be worked with often to get a feel for. This is only our second week but the lessons learned so far have been immeasurable. Here's a few things I've learned so far:

Here's a shot of the gallery and some of our handy work. Paintings pictured by Mandy Gor, Kevin Corcoran, and myself.

Here's what I painted that night. It's not finished yet but getting close. waiting for it to dry before I go in and refine the many things that need work..
I was generally going for a more accurate color to what I actually saw. The subtleties in color between her skin tones and the clothing were so close. I
wanted to test myself to see if I could create color in a very closely related color palette..

Digital Painting > Mythic Mountain

Bragino — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 21:09:51 +0000

My intention here was to create a digital painting from my mind and record the process with a screen capture program to show you the entire progression of the piece but the screen capture crashed right before I was done. So this one has no video to accompany it but I intend to do this now quite often so stay tuned to see some process paintings. For now all I have is the image of the final version of this. My goal for most of these will be to create mood and scale. I really love things that have massive scale and I think this one captures that thought process. Comments are always welcome and thanks for checking this image out.

Drawing of Tania

Bragino — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 10:29:29 +0000

Here's an image that I drew of a new model we worked with at the end of the year. This is Tania….

The Mothership

Bragino — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:42:16 +0000

Just to illustrate the way my mind thinks I offer this. As an artist I'm in continual search of understanding about form, scale, invention, imagination, and color. Sometimes I see something and I can imagine it as something else as we've all done from time to time. I was recently upstate and while driving I noticed this enormous cloud and immediately saw the mothership from District 9. Well it wasn't actually the same shape but the scale of it just screamed alien invasion. So here's what I painted in photoshop and below is the original photograph that I took which sparked the idea. It's more of an exercise in color. How to paint in a ship that appears to be in the actual scene. I think I did a pretty decent job for a 30 minute sketch. With more time and some attention to detail this ship might just abduct someone….

The Mother Ship

Original photo

Bragino Sketch 100607

Bragino — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:13:35 +0000

Using the Sketchpad on my blog I created this.

I was explaining to a friend the use of contrast or lack thereof to depict distance in a landscape image so today I decided to draw this image and play with the concepts myself. There is also the theory of warm colors vs cool colors in being able to show distance…Distance is shown here by creating less detail in the distance or (background) of this image. The colors used in the background are also cooler colors as compared to the middle ground (really warm and colorful stuff). Then the foreground is established by using lots of detail and the darkest color (black). Usually only the foreground will have high contrast or the use of black/ darker colors in relation to really light colors. These are all things that can be observed naturally outdoors. I am using the concepts and creating my own colors/ arrangement of colors to illustrate this. It's a game of sorts. Take a concept and try it out. That's what I've done here….

Ode to Anjela

Bragino — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:41:14 +0000

It's sad but true. One of our favorite models from the Friday night figure drawing session has moved back to Australia for a while. Just wanted to give a public thanks to her for all the amazing work she's done for us. In honor of Anjela and with the hope she'll be back in the states again soon here's yet another one of her wonderful poses and the image I drew from it…

A drawing of Jenna

Bragino — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:32:13 +0000

One night we found ourselves without a model for the Friday night drawing session. Luckily my friend Jenna was around and was so gracious to allow us to draw her. She made a great model. Thanks Jenna!