I HAVE MOVED

This is no longer the home of Matthew Howley's artwork.  All up-to-date work henceforth can be found at visualintrigue.tumblr.com

The Venus Project

Finally ready to call this finished!  It's been through many rounds of adjustments and readjustments but I wanted to cap it once and for all.  This was a very involved picture requiring more pre-planning and less straight up planning then I'm used to, this was especially true when it came to the machinery and also with the flower.  I collaged a variety of different flower reference together to create my own flower that would work within this composition.  Reference collaging can be very helpful especially when you consider that any reference you pull can always be made cooler in some way, whether its through form, color, lighting, etc.

That's all I have to say on this one!

-ciao for now

Matt

Been Portraitizing Lately

The Drayleen

 Illustration number three of this semester!  It's a depiction of an alien I call the Drayleen.  Didn't come up with much of a story for him, I was much more interested in concepting and rendering him intensely.  The pure visual "cool factor" of this picture was what I was focusing on, whereas previously there was much more of a psychological motivation for making a picture...then again who knows, there's a psychological motivation for everything.

That's all for now!

Matt

Portraits! or as the Spanish say, "Los Portraitos"

Two portraits:  Top one I did today to beef up my portfolio for an upcoming submission deadline.  The second is a portrait which was used on the cover art I completed for my mother's soon-to-be-released novel "Return of the Heroine"

Ciao for now

Matt

The Promised Land

Here she is!  The culmination of the past while's work.  Drawn in pencil, and painted in photoshop.
Printed 24" by 12.5"

As with a large amount of my work, this picture was inspired and based upon my current "psychological weather" and how I feel about where I am at this point in my life's journey.  This character has weathered and overcome many challenges, and is leaving his present vessel to approach, on foot, the shores of new and perhaps rediscovered territory.

In terms of technique, alot of thought went into composition with this one.  I spent a generous deal of time on the thumbnailing and composition stage before moving on with the drawing.  When it came to the painting, a sense of a shroud of atmosphere was very important to me.   What I kept in mind constantly was the method of limiting information in my forms as they receded into the distance.  The further away in the picture that an object is, the more efficient and more sparing you must be with your information.

I will post worthy process work in the very near future.

-Matt

"We call them the Engineers"

"What did they engineer?"

"...us.  Humans."
 ~Prometheus, 2012

Painted this portrait of the main engineer guy from the film Prometheus.  Done from a screenshot in about 2.5 hours.  Below is a splash page of a bunch of poses I've drawn over the past year or so.  Presented it at the first DPSC (Digital Paint and Sketch Club) meeting of the year last friday.  The demo went great, and I look forward to doing it once again in the future.

Matt