Portraits

Here are some traditional portraits I painted using soft pastels. I generally enjoy exploring human gestures, eye and facial expressions, as well as values and colors to achieve an interesting rendering. Since childhood, I have observed my environment and the people around me extensively to build my visual memory over the years, and I have always felt the need to draw everything.

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Another art course I created focuses on teaching colors and values through the design of a cute kitten. I believe this is also an excellent way to explain how to paint fur digitally without using downloaded brushes.

Here are some traditional cat portraits I painted using soft pastels. My focus was primarily on painting fur and accurately interpreting colors—after all, a black cat isn’t just black! There are many other colors in its fur, such as greens, blues, and browns, which, when combined with values, create a more realistic rendering of the fur. The first drawing was made using sanguine pencil and charcoal while observing my cat, serving as an excellent exercise for capturing feline expressions.

Here is a cartoon character design of a bat that I had in mind for a while. I wanted to use it for my art classes to teach the entire process of character creation as a gentle introduction to character design and development. I believe it is also a good way to cover some key points in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

Long ago, one of my very first digital paintings was inspired by Aaron Blaise, an animator and artist, along with his engaging YouTube channel and course content on his website, creatureartteacher.com. I felt so inspired by him that I binge-watched all the videos he uploaded, discovering many commonalities between his artistic journey and mine, as well as his perspective. I learned great techniques from him. Here is a cute composition I created, primarily focusing on storytelling, colors, values, and, once again, fur. The only photobashed element in this painting is a photograph of the leaves from my hazelnut tree, taken in my home garden in Saint-Jeannet, which is visible in the background. I thought it was a nice and easy way to complete the illustration, while everything else was digitally hand-drawn.

As an art teacher, here is one of the many digital drawing and painting courses I created to explain values and how to use colors on a simple shape. In this course, students will learn to render a proper apple under a chosen lighting atmosphere, such as a spring morning outdoors. I also provide valuable digital techniques in Adobe Photoshop to replicate traditional art in a digital medium. Once students have completed this painting following my guidance and demonstrations, I generally encourage them to attempt the exercise using different lighting atmospheres.

The goal was to draw inspiration from the original Saint Seiya manga character from the Knights of the Zodiac anime, using its iconic gesture. The challenge was to change the lighting from the reference and create an entirely new composition from scratch that does not exist among the reference images available online. The focus here was primarily on studying composition, gesture, and values, while also enjoying the process of drawing a manga character I admired greatly in my youth. I created this drawing using Adobe Photoshop and completed the final rendering in Adobe After Effects. I have uploaded a timelapse of my entire drawing process here.

Warhammer 40000

Here is a fan art painting of Warhammer 40,000, which you can see at the bottom of this page. My drawing is not a reproduction; I created it to study values, layout, perspective, dynamics, and camera view. The focus was to make the composition more dynamic while drawing the same character along with all his details and accessories from a different angle, using only values.

Here is a very simple cartoon character I designed for the drawing classes to gently introduce students to the art of character design and development. I generally start these courses with basic shapes to ensure that the material is comprehensible for everyone, including complete beginners. This course covers a variety of digital techniques and emphasizes organization in Adobe Photoshop. After gaining knowledge from this course, students can advance their skills and tackle more complex designs for their film school projects.

Jerry Mouse HNY

Here is the complete process of a short animated clip I created featuring Jerry Mouse fighting COVID-19. This project served as a course to primarily teach the use of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, as well as how to work in Adobe Animate and Adobe Premiere Pro. Throughout the process, I provided advice on the basics of 2D animation, referencing both of my all-time favorite books by Preston Blair and Richard Williams.

Spidey Infinity

In this course I designed for my students, the challenge is to draw the Spidey Infinity toy, focusing on replicating the superhero landing pose from the provided statue photo. Students will start with a rough sketch and develop it into clean line art. Using the same lighting direction as in the reference, they will create their artwork in a comic style, incorporating hatching and action lines into the composition. The final step is to animate the character in a seamless loop, followed by post-production enhancements.

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