The Art of Lamin Martin: Solitude

On Friday October 7th,The Art of Lamin: Solitude gallery show will explore artist Lamin Martin’s fantasy concept art hosted by Toronto Cartoonist's Workshop and Guerilla Printing. The Art of Lamin: Solitude will be a creative networking experience showcasing 18 beautifully immersive two and a half foot by three and a half foot canvases, from Lamin Illustration & Design, framed and presented in a gallery setting in Toronto's trendy and cultural College and Bathurst (at Clinton) area. Books featuring collections of Lamin Martin’s extraordinary work, and prints will also be available. For more information please click the flyer below!

See you soon!

Blood and Lavender

One of the first images that I worked on when I began digital painting was Blood and Lavender. I always considered it to be one of those images that got away because it never really came out the way that I wanted it to. The lighting, the colour composition, the values never really gave the haunting sense of strange beauty that I was initially going for. Since then I've learned a few new tricks, new processes and new painting techniques that I felt I could finally apply to this illustration to do it justice. Below is the before and after!


Blood & Lavender After

Blood & Lavender Before

Blood & Lavender Line illustration

Electric Playground Interview

Recently Electric Playground visited Czyonoft Studios, the game studio where I'm working as a concept artist,  for a preview of the work going into our upcoming game Yinasia.   We were featured in EP"s "First Look" segment and as one of the concept artists on the project I was fortunate enough to be interviewed on some of the creative process that went into the character designs.  Below is a clip taken from Season 21 Episode 184 featuring a "First Look" at Yinasia as well as a link to full episode.


Low quality clip from  Season 21 Episode 184

High quality full episode from Season 21 Episode 184

Yinasia Concept Art

While working with Czyonoft Studios as a concept artist on our upcoming title Yinasia I had the great opportunity to come up with designs for weapons, armour, creatures and the main character Leo.  Below you'll find promo material that I painted where those designs are put into action!

Alamptria 1 - Bloodstone Crypt

Here is another novel cover that I completed for Alamptria 1 -  Bloodstone Crypt, by Canadian fantasy writer Richard A. Valicek.

For this image Mr. Valicek was looking for a classic embrace between a vampire and a human.  In keeping with that tradition I researched tons of romance novel covers before coming up with something that is mysterious and seductive.

Baroque

In my journey to find new and exciting ways to conceptualize my images I took on the task of learning Maya. The reason I decided to start using Maya was for me to be able create and maneuver 3D objects through space and then arrange them into environment mock-ups that I then paint over in Photoshop, kinda' like sketching in 3D. It's a quicker and more efficient way of establishing my perspective in a 3-dimensional plane without having to plot vanishing points and draw perspective lines which can be very time consuming. The learning curve for such a powerful application such as Maya is pretty steep but if you love what you're doing you can find fulfilling enjoyment in every challenge. Below is the process!

Christabella

In my development and growth as a concept artist it's of course necessary to be able to render environments. To be able to come up with believable spaces for characters to exist in wasn't really a focus of mine but the more I look into the importance and necessity for it the more I love it and the more I want to work at it. What's interest about my dive into environment design is that I'm more daring in my approach to the process, meaning I'm more willing to dive into photoshop without sketching anything out first, which is what I usually don't do. Instead I fire-up Photoshop and start painting shapes allowing accidents to happen. Below is Gothic environment that I came up with that is a blend of architectural design elements. The cathedral is influenced by a mix of french and italian design, the iron grid in the foreground is a design element found in Bordeaux airport in France and the narrative is inspired by Silent Hill of a lost traveler who unfortunately stumbles into the foggy mysterious town and quickly learns that the shadows are not always as they seem and that the only light needed to cast off the darkness is found in the refuge of the church.
If you haven't come across the Silent Hill game series then do yourself a favour and check out the movie HERE or check out the games HERE.

Lamin