Warrior horse

In the series of vector paintings that I am in the process of creating, I thought I couldn't make one  that didn't include a horse, since the average horse is a better person than the average person. I've no clue yet where this is going, so it may be worthwhile to drop in every now and then to see what has changed, should you be curious. So, while I horse about, do whatever suits you. At his point - July 30 2021 - this vector painting is a work in progress. Drawn in Affinity Designer of course. Not a single pixel included, because I don't use Designer's pixel persona. I wouldn't call myself a vector purist, but rather some sort of maniac with a cause, who has an evidenced aversion of creating pixel art.

The warrior part in this blog entry's title may give away what I envisioned this image to be(come) around the time I started the drawing. But few things in life are certain in this life. In fact, probably nothing is and I'm not even sure about that. I guess Heisenberg guessed quite accurately when he invented his renown principle. Therefore, enjoy things while you can, preferably without becoming a hedonistic headcase.

As usual the image progress order that you see below is from the bottom to the top. I left out the first two stages that didn't contain anything worth publishing. Below the third stage you see a vector outline view of the most recent stage of the image, if I don't forget to update it. But as I mentioned above: you never know. Oh, and by the way, for those interested, in the update paragraph in the previous blog entry some of the techniques are described that I use to create drawings like this one. So far my uncommon working methods haven't crashed Affinity Designer beyond the point of repair. Although my old computer has a hard time keeping up, the software has behaved surprisingly well.

Artists looking for versatile, demolition proof vector software to make artistic complex doodles, should consider giving Affinity Designer a try. I'm on the Redmond OS; I don't know about the Big Fruit systems. It has a long trial period (90 days) and for one sixth (50 Euro) of the annual subscription fee of Adobe Illustrator, purchasers of the Affinity program, own it for life after they parted with just a one time payment. This is especially interesting for newbie artists that don't have to worry about editing legacy files (created in AI or other software) and build their entire portfolio in Affinity Designer or for graphic veterans that are fed up with Adobe's rip off deal.

Square cut out of the horse August 1 2021

Stage 5 July 30 2021

Stage 4 July 29 2021

Stage 3 July 29 2021

*************************

Vector outline view of the most recent stage

Vector outline view stage 5

Secret of the desert - vector drawing

 

This time I went for a desert scene, featuring people and a camel, that has some strange (mystic) elements. Created entirely in Affinity Designer, it is meant to be a 100% vector drawing once the drawing is completed. Therefore no vector brushes were used, because they are not real vectors. The desert is a unusual place that probably harbours many secrets below the sand which contains vitrified matter, which basically is a type of glass that was created from sand that was molten by extremely high temperatures, similar to the artificial matter that was found in the Nevada desert where the US military tested its first (in modern history) nuclear bombs after which the composition of the earth atmosphere - notably spikes of the amount of Krypton and Xenon - besides in increase of other types of radioactive particles. Archeological discoveries in addition suggest that the vegetation and climate of desert areas once was very different from what they are today. It indicates that tremendously powerful events may at one point in time have had great impact on what currently are the desert landscapes. Robert Oppenheimer - nicknamed the 'father of the atom bomb' - quoted the Bhagavad Gita: 'I am become the destroyer of worlds.' where details of an event were described that seem eerily similar to that of a nuclear attack.

This obviously is a work in progress (as of July 14 2021). I have in mind many details that will later be incorporated in the drawing. The original drawing is 6 times larger than the image posted here - 183 x 103 centimeters, showing much more detail. The oldest stage is at the bottom of this blog entry, the newer once above that. Click on one of the images below to see them in Google's Lightbox, that allows you to scroll through the images, using the scroll wheel of the mouse.

Below the stages I placed some supporting files, all of which are 100% vector drawings, created in Affinity Designer. Some are embedded into the main drawing, others are copied, since embedding at times gives strange results.

Update July 27 and explanation of some technical details
At this point my computer is barely capable of rendering the image. Although I consider it still to be a work on progress, I feel I am forced to put this drawing aside for the time being, while I am looking for options to render the drawing at a reasonable pace. Bear in mind it still is a work in progress and that many effects were achieved by duplicating layers on top of each other, applying different filters, effects, gradient fills and gradient transparencies to them (to fills as well as to strokes of complex varying thickness). Also multilevel clipping of layers was done (clipping one curve into an other in many levels), duplicating them too, while various filters and effects were applied to them. Once I've sorted out and applied the best way to overcome the slow rendering (which probably means buying an entirely new rig or addition of a proficient GPU to my current machine), the entire drawing will be drawn in vectors to enable rescaling to any desired size without loss of quality and preservation of detail, this of course for a specific purpose that I'm currently not inclined to divulge.

Stage 10 July 27 2021 - UFOs, desert flower & tweaks 

Stage 9 July 23 2021 - foreground detailing

Stage 8 July 22 2021 - Guard & girl's hair adjustment

Stage 7 July 18 2021 - experiment with background

Stage 6 July 17 2021

Stage 5 July 16 2021

Stage 4 July 16 2021

Stage 3 July 15 2021

Stage 2 July 14 2021

Stage 1 July 14 2021

************************************************

Embedded Supporting Vector Drawings
Ultimately all parts of this drawing will be hand drawn in vectors. But as mentioned before, my computer is not up to the task at this point (July 2021). Once this issue is fixed much detail will be added to the components. Below you see the vector support drawings that I embedded into the main drawing so far. I have not used vector brushes at all in this image, because they are not real vectors in Affinity Designer. This drawing only contains hand drawn vector curves and strokes. It makes this document infinitely scalable, preserving quality and detail, plus it allows to make changes afterwards with an ease that is impossible to achieve in pixel art work.

Arabian sword - 100% vector support drawing

Saluki, desert hunting dog - 100% vector support drawing

Guard - 100% vector support drawing

Desert  flower - 100% vector support drawing