The Spectacle

Digital Painting

Concept

As part of my presentation at Macworld 2011, I was asked to produce a painting for the entrance hall of the Moscone Centre in San Francisco. I decided to mash together ideas from my favourite movies including Terminator, Transformers, Blade Runner, Tron Legacy and Jurassic Park to create this dark futuristic Sci-fi image.

Stages

I began the painting on my iPhone where I used the Brushes App to sketch the composition. I then exported the sketch to my iPad where I used the Brushes for iPad app to refine the image and add colour. I then sent this colour version to the Sketchbook Pro App to fix the perspective lines of the buildings. The final step was to then email the image to my Mac where I finished the painting in Adobe Photoshop.

High Resolution

Once inside Adobe Photoshop I increased the size of the image x10 and began painting the scene in the higher resolution. I created a vector mask for each side of the city buildings in the background which allowed me to easily apply gradients and textures. I used a similar technique for the robot, arm and flying vehicle until the basic colours and shapes were correct.

I grouped the layers for each object which allowed me to insert layers of mist fire in-between. Once I was happy with the overall colours and shapes and positions I began painting in the fine details that make the painting appear more realistic. I created my own textures for the buildings windows and mixed various elements with Layer Bend Modes.

Macworld

When complete, I emailed the final painting over to San Francisco where it was printed into a 6 x 6 foot board and hung in the entrance hall for Macworld 2011. A few weeks later when I flew over, I got to see the poster when I visited the conference.

~