Category: Gallery

Collection of artwork I’ve done, personal and commissioned pieces.

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Freaky Friday! The Blue Devil

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“The Blue Devil” by Helen E. H. Madden

Another iPad drawing, using ArtRage. Have I mentioned how much I love both the iPad and ArtRage? Have I?

Seriously though, this time I opted for a smoother look and used the airbrush for all my coloring. I have a fondness for bright, contrasting colors and the combination of orange/red, bright blue and violet happens to be my current favorite.

I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned this yet or not, but I picked up a stylus for my iPad. I didn’t use it too much on this drawing, as it was mostly finished by the time I got the stylus. But I will use it for the next one. It’s easier to see where I’m starting my stroke when I use a stylus. When I use just my finger, my view of the start point is blocked by my hand.

I’m posting these to my deviantArt page as well, and making each piece available as postcards, magnets and mugs. So if you like this week’s Blue Devil, you can buy it here! Just click the “Buy this print” button on the right to see the merchandise. And thank you for your support!

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Freaky Friday – Lucy

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“Lucy, Bitten” by Helen E. H. Madden, 23 January 2011

After doing all those brightly colored sketches on the iPad, I really wanted to do something a little different. Using what little I know of color theory, I decided on a palette of light green, dark red and creams. This gave me a more subdued painting with a minimalist approach. I opted to use ArtRage’s watercolor brush this time instead of the pen tool. The watercolor brush is more transparent and picks up the texture of the paper, where as the ink tool doesn’t seem to reflect the grain of the paper at all. I also used the airbrush, chalk and crayon tools, but mostly this was done with the watercolor brush.

I like it. I wanted something more ethereal and I think I got it. As I worked on it, it made me think of Hamlet’s Ophelia, and I almost titled it that. But then after I painted the rose, I realized I needed to add the bite marks, and that changed Ophelia to Lucy from Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” I have never been able to read through “Dracula.” For some reason, that book just drags for me. But the character of Lucy has always hung with me. Poor Lucy. A bride who died and then had to be killed again. I think that was the only part of the story I really liked.

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Freaky Friday – Astronaut Bob, what happened to you?!

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“Astronaut Bob, What Happened to You?!” by Helen E. H. Madden

Yet another iPad, ArtRage masterpiece. I love the dayglow colors in this one, and the way the brush strokes from the watercolor tool gave the space suit a wrinkled appearance. I had some trouble with this one initially because I drew it in white ink on a dark background, and then had to figure out how to color it between the two extremes of light and dark. My first attempt at coloring this failed massively.

These little sketches are so much fun, and very easy to do on the iPad. It’s sort of like throw-away art, art that I don’t really feel the need to fuss over because it’s a) drawn on the iPad, not an expensive sketchbook, and b) nothing more than a quick doodle, really. I think that allows me to be more experimental and free with what I draw. It’s no big deal, I can draw any stupid little thing I want, and so I do and the results turn out pretty well anyway. It’s nice to know I can do that and get away with it!

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Freaky Friday – Victoria Z!

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Welcome back to Freaky Friday! Here’s another artistic oddity, this time from my digital sketchbook on my iPad. This is “Victoria Z,” drawn using the ArtRage app. I love how the different painting tools in ArtRage layer over each other to get these really great textured effects. Poor Victoria really looks like she’s rotting away before our eyes! And of course, the pen tool has become my favorite feature of ArtRage. It’s perfect for cartooning! I’m still “finger painting” on the iPad to create these images, and it works very well, but I think next month I’m going to order a stylus. It might give me a bit more control over line drawing, which would be nice for specific images.

Anyway, here’s hoping you are enjoying your Friday. Have a freaky day!

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On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me – SKULLS!

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“Skulls!” by Helen E. H. Madden, 28 December, 2010

I told you you’d get sick of hearing about my iPad, but I can’t stop posting the results. I’m in LURVE with iPad and ArtRage! I made this drawing to be the background image for my unlock screen on my iPad. I really ought to add a skull and crossed bones in the center, and I may later on, but for now, I like it as it is!

You just know there’ll be more to come…

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ACW Episo– HEY! Did I mention I got a new iPad?!!

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“Bloody Mary” by Helen E. H. Madden, 28 December 2010

You guys are going to be so sick of hearing about my love affair with my new iPad. Sorry about that, but I am really, truly, honestly in LURVE!

I’ve done about a drawing a day on the iPad since I pulled it out of its box on Christmas morning. That’s a drastic increase in productivity and creativity for me, and I’m not at all unhappy about it. I’m mainly using the ArtRage app, but have been playing around in Sketchbook Pro, Brushes and Inspire Pro. ArtRage is the most complicated of these apps, but also the most flexible and it’s given me the best results so far. I’m sure, however, that I’ll get up to speed with the others before long.

I’m not using a stylus for these images, just my fingers. ArtRage lets me zoom in very close for detail, which is nice even though the zoom function is a bit of a pain to use. But it makes up for that with all the other natural art tools I can use – water colors, ink pen, chalk, crayon, etc. Layering various tools on top of each other has produced some interesting results. Again, I’m a very happy camper.

And this is far from the last you will hear about my iPad. In addition to creating artwork with it, I found a yoga app and a calorie counter/fitness tracker app. Plus I’ve downloaded plenty of ebooks. I’ve already read one book since Christmas, and plan to get through another before New Years. Yep, I’m a happy girl.

Enjoy your holidays, folks!

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Sunday Contentments – Of iPads and Zombies

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I don’t know if I was good or not this year (okay, I was outright evil and we all know that), but Santa left me a very nice present anyway. I got an iPad! Since yesterday, I’ve been very busy with it, downloading ebooks and apps. I love reading on the iPad even more than I love reading on the netbook (but I still love my netbook, yes I do! Best little device ever for writing and blogging!). Even more than reading though, I love creating digital artwork on the iPad. I downloaded a few apps, including Brushes, Sketchbook Pro, and ArtRage. Since yesterday, I’ve done 4 paintings, which is an amazing amount of output for me. Here’s my favorite piece so far…

This was done with ArtRage. I don’t have a stylus for the iPad, so this was all done by “fingerpainting.” It kept the style of the artwork pretty loose, especially the inking, but I think it works very well. In fact, I’m hoping to do more like this, using a very loose style of inking and then using the watercolor brush and other tools to color the image.

I’ll post some of the other images from the other programs later today. Sketchbook Pro allows me to export my artwork as a Photoshop document, so I’ll be able to start something on the iPad and export it to my desktop for further work. I can’t wait to try that and see how it works!

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ACW Episode 97 – Merry ChristmaaaaaaaAAAACK!

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Happy holidays, folks! I opted to go with a Christmas card rather than the usual strip, and decided to play around with ArtRage to give it all those pretty colors! Huzzah!

This is the first Christmas for our new cats, Hiccup and Toothless, and they’re quite excited by the tree. So far they’ve stuck to just knocking off lots of ornaments, but I’m pretty sure they’ll be climbing that tree any time soon. And I just know how that’s going to end. Meanwhile, we’ve failed so far to take our annual holiday picture and send it out with our cards, so if you’re on our list and you get a copy of this in the mail, you know what happened!

Anyway, Merry Christmas and all that jazz. Blog updates will be spotty at best this week, but you know I love you all anyway!

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Cover Art – Best S&M III

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I’m in the process of updating the art gallery with some of the cover art I’ve done this year. This was a book cover I did this summer for Best S&M Volume III, an anthology edited by the very talented writer M. Christian. When the publisher, Logical-Lust.com, and I tossed around ideas for this piece, we kept coming up with the standard images – a cropped photo of woman’s corsetted torso, a close up of handcuffs on a woman’s arm, etc. I hate the anonymous, cropped woman image. It makes it seem like BDSM is only for submissive women, specifically those who are too ashamed to show their faces and acknowledge what they enjoy. So I decided I wanted to do a fun piece of artwork, showing both a man and a woman laughing and having fun themselves, and maybe the woman is the one in charge here, or maybe not. It doesn’t really matter so long as all parties involved are having a good time. With all those elements in consideration, this is the cover I came up with.

The image was first rendered in DAZ Studio, then taken into Photoshop for postworking and effects.

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Personal Art – Aphrodite in Stone, 2005

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Aphrodite in Stone, 2005

This is another rare ZBrush image for me. I had no idea what I was doing when I started it, and I’m not sure what I learned from it other than the fact I find ZBrush to be very confusing. I so wanted to learn how to make poseable 3D figures, but doing this piece hurt my tiny little brain. I did like the end result, however. I especially liked the hair and the sea shell she’s holding. That blue to yellow blend worked wonderfully. I think that was a texture map I painted in Corel Photopaint, so this one wasn’t entirely done in ZBrush, but 99.9% of it was.