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I was drawn to this image by George for its colour and crispness. Nice use of Jeremy Sutton’s brushes and a great approach to mixing photographic elements with a more painterly style. A well-deserved Pic of the Week for you George!

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Ciaran’s image showcases a deliberately naive style but take a look at the composition itself and you’ll see that it’s very well set up - there’s great use of perspective and height to really reinforce the hilly nature of the scene and the shape of the town, people and foreground draws your eye straight to the empty chest. The depth that Ciaran has achieved on the rain is a nice touch, blending stylised and realistic elements.

Don’t forget that we’re doing daily updates on Twitter full of Painter cheats, Gallery pics and much more! Follow us at http://twitter.com/painter_mag

Imagine Publishing today announced the launch of its new creative magazine, 3D Artist – the first new UK print 3D magazine in over five years. 3D Artist is aimed at anyone who has an interest in 3D art, whether it’s creating it from scratch or just admiring the phenomenal images produced by professional studios. Each issue, 3D Artist has inspirational workshops that reveal how professionals achieve their look, in addition to interviews and features focusing on the most exciting names and 3D techniques.

3D Artist covers all aspects of 3D, from phenomenal still images, right through to animation, game design, exterior and interior visualization and film/TV skills. In addition to speaking with established names in the 3D community, the magazine is also committed to shining the spotlight on up-and-coming artists. For those just starting out, the special ‘Workspace’ industry mini-mag has essential advice for choosing a 3D course or career. This section shines the spotlight on specific university courses, in addition to getting 3D professionals to reveal how they got their break in 3D.

“We are thrilled with 3D Artist,” said Jo Cole, Editor in Chief. “We wanted to produce a magazine that reflected the passion and talent of the 3D community. The result is a title that looks like a coffee-table book but is packed with inspirational advice and techniques for getting the best from 3D software. It’s the sort of magazine that you can dip in and out of, either for the professional features, interviews and tutorials or just to drool over the pages of artwork.”

To help build a strong magazine community, the companion website – www.3dartistonline.com –allows artists to create their own online galleries and leave feedback for other members. There is also a forum for in-depth discussions, and a high value CD-ROM that ships with each issue that features showreels and portfolios.

Issue one is on sale now, boasting a full version of Carrara 6.2 Pro worth £384. To discover more about the magazine, in addition to finding out about special launch subscription deals, visit www.3dartistonline.com.

Imagine Publishing is one of the UK’s fastest-growing consumer specialist publishers. Formed in May 2005, Imagine now publishes 20 magazines and 27 websites in the videogames, computing, entertainment and photography markets. An Imagine magazine is purchased every ten seconds.

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I’m very fond of Amber’s work and this one is a particularly great piece, showcasing her technical abilities with animal anatomy, fur and feathers while retaining the fantasy element present in her best pieces. The solar light in the background is particularly impressive, a mix of stylisation and more natural flare effects which gives an impression of bright glare. This image is virtually technically perfect, but it’s also fantastic (in the fantasy-based sense of the word) and expressively painted.

Like many in the UK I don’t know much about Native American mythology, but this image by Cheryl immediately caught my eye and fascinated me. I spent several days deciding on the Pic of the Week this week but eventually decided it had to go to the image I keep going back to look at! Cheryl’s notes about this image suggest that it’s the kind of mask used in shamanic rituals, and these masks, from all over the world, have always intrigued me. This one in particular is a glorious riot of bold colour and its horse shape is beautifully realised in streaks of backlit cloth. The little starry marks on the background here and there add depth, mystery and magic to an eerie yet oddly friendly image.

What initially drew me to Keith’s image is its very sharp contrasting shades and strong lines. Despite using a very restrained colour palette mainly centred on black, white and purple, this painting has a lot of visial impact. Part of that is thanks to the pop of red on the focal point of the lips. The clever contrast between using blue-purple for the shading and background and a true red with orange-red highlights for the lips provides balance, with these tertiary colours complementing each other and bringing each other out. The combination of formal, geisha-style makeup with loose windblown hair also provides another subtle but dynamic contrast, and the varying degrees of blurring on the snowflakes adds depth and softness to what could otherwise be a very flat, graphical image.

Elsewhere, I haven’t had many votes at all for the missing Pic from my extended out-of-the-office crises, so I’m going to be rather highhanded and make a couple of selections myself. Jordan Dill’s Herald was a breath of fresh air. The bringer of spring to Jordan’s imaginative Court of Leaves series, Herald is deliberately a much brighter and fresher character than some of the others, yet still retains a solemn and otherworldly expression. Anthony Pike’s Bastion showcases some gorgeous work with sky and water, and again, this is an image with a story behind it. Meanwhile, Meneliel by Alexandra Knickel is a lovely fantasy-character portrait.

Finally, thanks to all of you who emailed and PMed your good wishes to me while my partner was in hospital - this was very kind of you and much appreciated!

Hello all. I warn you now – this is going to be a rant-filled post. When you upload anything to this gallery, please, please, please, please, please make sure that it is something you have actually painted. We take copyright very seriously and if we find out that anyone has simply grabbed an image created by another artist and just made a few adjustments, we will delete the image and more than likely delete the account. There will be no exceptions to this rule. If you have any images in your gallery that you haven’t personally painted, I would suggest you delete them immediately.

That’s it – rant over! If you have any questions, please contact April or myself. Likewise, if you find that someone has posted an image that was painted by somebody else, let us know.

Thanks
Jo

The lovely people at Corel are celebrating 20 years of their fantastic CorelDRAW graphics suite with a great little Flash game called Balloon Racer. First released in 1989, CorelDRAW is a graphics suite combining vector editing, photo manipulation, and much more. The Balloon Racer game sees you floating the program’s logo through environments based on the years in which different versions of the program were released. If you’re fed up waiting for your copy of Painter 11 to arrive, entertain yourself for a while with this little gem. Visit http://www.balloonracer.com/?ibx_sc=1019 to play for free now!

Hi gang, I just want to let you know that this week’s pic is going to be delayed until tomorrow as I’ve had an emergency come up. In the meantime, you can use the comments section below to let me know about any paintings that you think deserve this week’s accolade!

For those of you who are fans of videogames (and there are a fair few of you painting Lara Croft and other characters!) Imagine Publishing is pleased to announce the launch of the NowGamer web portal today. From the people who bring you GamesTM, Retro Gamer, Xbox 360, Play and Total PC Gaming, this innovative site aggregates news, reviews and previews from videogames of all formats and genres and gives you access to over a decade’s worth of commentary right from launch. Its Publisher’s Premiership ranking system and fully searchable archives can be filtered by style and platform to focus on the areas of gaming you’re interested in. You can even fully customise its clean, mature interface, choosing theme, colour scheme and much more. You might even find a familiar face in the reviews section…

 Visit www.nowgamer.com to register, log in and create your own customised profile with all the games coverage you want!