[Malachi Maloney]

"Ancient Obsession"

This painting has been a true labor of love.
I've been working on this piece for the last month. I've put too many hours into this to be able to keep track of how long it took me, but trust me when I say, it was a long time..
I've worked harder on this than any other piece I've ever painted in my entire life.
I personally feel it's the best thing I've ever produced as an artist and I think it's a big step forward for me as far as the direction and quality of my work is concerned.

In this piece, Amy (the standing girl) is a very old and powerful Vampire. Nandi (the girl on the ground) is her slave to feed off of for the evening.

I used reference that I took myself of my own models for the girls. Everything else, (i.e. costumes, lighting, surroundings etc.) is of my own design.

View the creation of this painting HERE.

On with the show...

Painted 100% freehand in Photoshop 6 on a 9x12 inch Wacom Intuos tablet.

A closer look.

Full res cut-outs.

Let me know what you think.


Take it easy,
Malachi

[ April 24, 2002: Message edited by: Malachi Maloney ]

[scylla]

oh

my

god

*falls off chair*

[arkoh]

*eyes wide open*

Jesus christ... ohh well I dont know if this is the right time to bring him into the game here, but... THAT is PRETTY god damn horrifying!!!

Amazing piece of art man!!! The composition, the lighting of the scene, the rendering, the general feel of the piece...

I absolutely adore the contrast between the still burning fless of the slave, and the dead porcelain feel of the Vampire's skin!!! And the look on the slaves face is... well what would be the right expression?... honestly disturbing!!! - The calmness and the pacified attitude!!! I dont even think you needed the sword to express the balance of control and power in the piece... the look in their faces says it all!!!

I bow in humble appriciation of art like this man!!!

*bowing*

[m703-324]

next time turn flash off when you take a picture for reference... or just figure out some more interesting lighting...

[Malachi Maloney]

Thanks for the comments.

m703-324~ The lighting is my own. The reference photos were taken on separate occasions with different lighting set ups. I made the lighting for this piece off the cuff.
Thanks again for commenting.

Malachi

[Daijoobu]

Amazing, simply amazing

[strata]

I don't think I've ever seen anyone take such an amazing leap in skill... this is truly awe inspiring malachi... truly wow...

say, is Amy modeled on your wife, and nandi on the girl you used for that sitting pose picture you made a while back? I recognize them both I thinks... =)

[Thuduil]

wowowowowoowow

looks great...skin esp!
umm one crit i have is the blood on the slaves skirt or clothing...is the blood splattered onto it or is there a cut there?

cause i was thinkin if it was a cut then...wouldnt the clothing be absorbing the blood kinda like when u put a tissue on a wet surface?

so it should look more blotchy i guess
but if it wasnt supposed to be like that then ill shutup

neway it looks absolutely stunning!great work and hope to see more

[NiM]

Awesome! Just freaking awesome!! I've got a new desktop background Only thing that cought my eye was Emy's left breast, there's nothing really wrong there but it stings my eye a little bit... but oh my god do i ever love this piece!!

[Anthony]

Very nice, great work! The slave girl's face is a little more like airbrush than the rest of the painting-makes it sort of ambiguously rendered. The vampire's right knee looks a little off perhaps, considering her body type otherwise(slightly boney). The blood splatter on the slave's dress seems a little superimposed, a little flat. Overall beautiful work, your best by far. Congrats!

[wigin]

N
I
C
E

anyways just one crit... the shadow behind the girl laying down bothers me.. It make the whole background look flat. As if the background is a painting on the wall and her shadow is being casted on the wall. Just doesnt seem to make sense for me.

[DeathJester]

Simply amazing!

*dumbfounded*

I love to see a peice like this everyonce in a long time.. something that someone spent so much time on and the final product is aww inspiring! Nice Job Malachi!

Keep it up man, I cant wait to see what you bust out next.

[Silverwolf]

Hey!

Let me first of all say nice piece. It shows that you have put a lot more work in than the other pieces and it's come out pretty damn sweet.

However I think that I have to push the same point that I made last time that I replied to one of your posts which is that the whole frontal flash lighting thing is a killer!!!

Quote Phil

Reasons:
1. Good Composition
2. Consistant Lighting
3. Solid Style
4. Good Color Range

End quote

The above points seem a good place to start especially as I don't really agree with most of them...

The composition doesn't really do all that much for me, (that's more a personal thing than anything tho), I think I agree with someone else when they said that the sword seems to be an over statement, someone like that doesn't need to keep a slave at bay with a sword. I think it would have given the piece more power if she was carrying the sword negligently or not at all.

Nandi doesn't really seem all that affected by the bite. The look on her face seems slightly miffed if anything and she is leaning on the arm that the vampire has just bitten into which would most likely hurt a lot. There just doesn't seem to be the depth of expression in her face to justify any real reaction to what has just happened. I think that even an expression of stunned disbelief or spaced outedness, would give the piece a little more of a story.

In the background the dark archway looking thing on the back wall beteen the two pillars looks just like that, not like Amy's shadow which I assume it's supposed to be, (my girlfriend just pointed that out to me, I was having trouble making head or tail of it...), and I think the reason for that is in the way that the shadow has been rendered. In general shadows are a lot darker on the inside than they are on the outside. The shadow on the back wall seems to have a dark smudgy line around it's outside which to me at least gives the illusion that there is an alcove in the wall there. I think there is a bit of a perspective problem on the door in the background.

Consistent lighting I think I have to disagree with the most. When I first looked at the piece it sort of struck me like a photomontage does, part of this is the color, (get to that later), the other part is the inconsistency in the lighting.

The lighting seems to be coming from a single point below and slightly left of the observer in the piece. When you look at the shadow cast by nandi it seems that the light source is further to the right than for amy's shadow which hint's at there being two light sources, one for each model that doesn't effect the other, but they're pretty close so I'm kinda splitting hairs there.

The bigger inconsistency which really separates the characters from the background is the shadows on the pillars. The light source on the first pillar seems to be coming from slightly to the right of the observer, (especially on the first column), and at about head height. If the light source was the same as for the models then the top of the big square piece would be a lot darker than the face that points towards the light. The rounded bits just above that would either be centre lit, (bright in the middle to darker on the top and bottom), or underlit creating a bit of shadow on the ones above them.

Aside from this there are a couple of other little things that catch my eye like the sharpness of the light source on the models, (pointing to a very small but bright light source) and the shadows on the back walls especially right down the back which blur a bit too much. For them to blur that much the light source would have to be bigger or there would have to be more bounced light around than seems to be evident on the models. But these things are a little less important than the others.

Solid style, I can't really comment much on, as it looks fine to me, very consistent across the piece and from your other pieces as well. I'm terrible with the whole consistency of style thing so I think I'll leave that right here.

Good color range. Well I can't really argue with that as I think that there is a nice range of color in the piece. However I do think that there are a few problems with the coloring of the piece.

The first of these is the color of the light used. It seems that the color of the light is a flash bulb which is pretty much the whitest light that you can use and like flourescent lights it is very rarely seen outside human habbitation/intervention or a photographic studio. Even then most photographers place filters on their lenses to warm, (tonally), it up a little as it has an artificial feel, very sterile. This modern man-made feel sorta pulled me out of the "in the past" feel of the picture, really clashed. Any place like that before 1940 would have been lit by burning torches or reflected sunlight, not a halogen bulb so it would have been a lot warmer feeling light. The colors of the whole piece are good but I think that there should have been more reds in the background. At the moment the only reds and oranges in the piece are on Nandi, there aren't any in the background or on Amy and it really sets her aside from the rest of the piece, almost giving the impression that she has been cut out and stuck in. I think that a few warmer colors in the background would have provided a little more consistency in the piece and also really brought out the coldness in the vampire's skin even though the whole piece was warmer.

Other little things with the color are, that the jewellery's color is half way between bronze and gold, maybe rose gold but I still don't think so; the blood doesn't really look wet owing to no pinkish white spec highlights , the highlights on Nandi's hair don't seem to be consistant with the lighting of the scene and the highlights on the gold leg straps seem to be a touch over done.

Anyway, sorry for the long and seemingly nit picking reply, it's just you didn't seem to be getting many crits and a lot of the things I mentioned above are things that really did jump out of the page at me, and I know how hard it is to see things after you've been staring at something for a couple of weeks or more.

I hope some of this has been useful and keep plugging away at it as you seem to be improving in leaps and bounds! Huge ones at that. Perhaps it might be helpful to go down to your local library and get out a couple of books on studio lighting for glamour portraiture, portraiture and product photography as I know it helped me an amazing amount even though I really only flicked through them.

Well have fun!

Tim.

[Phil]

Hey MM,

I would have to say this is the best painting I've seen you post.

Reasons:
1. Good Composition
2. Consistant Lighting
3. Solid Style
4. Good Color Range

This is the type of work you should be doing all the time. With this quality you'll have no problem getting published consitantly.

PH

[PixHortHiT]

The picture in itself is amazing, but I�m having problems with the blood splatter, it looks really weird, no offence but I dont like the way you did the blood, not saying I could do a betyter job myself but still....

[Toaster]

I agree with Silverwolf... for most things

While technically a very well done picture...
I find I dont like it for most of reasons stated: lackluster lighting, the blood (i dont mind violence in paintings, just dont like this blood), and the fact that although Nandi has a teenage body her face strikes me as a middle age person who was once beautiful.

Though it is indeed technically amazing... I know I cant do anything quite like it now

[Malachi Maloney]

Thanks for the comments, critiques and kind words.

I'm actually very happy with how this piece turned out (not the norm for me).
So, I'll be leaving it as it is, but I did want to thank all of you for taking the time to comment and giving me your suggestions. Whether you left a message of praise, a message of constructive criticism, or just plain tried to rip the piece apart , I'm very happy not only for the fact the you all took a second or two out of your day to comment on my art work, but that this piece got you to think a little.
That in it's self makes it worth it for me.

Thanks again,
Malachi

[Little Beefucker]

Dunno if the door is still open for marble-smacking compliments, but holy Jesus weasels of flesh-eating hot chick, BATMAN!

Beautiful, awesome, gorgeous artwork.

Whew!

[Malachi Maloney]

Hey, thanks for the comment.


M

[Ian Jones]

Wow! pretty godamn amazing!

The slight transparency on the lower womans skirty thing is so effective! awesome work!

So much blood too, very er.. weird and scary, lots of gory detail.. impressive effort!

The background is a bit, well its a 'background' if you get what I mean. The perspective of that pillar seems a bit odd I think. The angle is too wide, if you could see that much of the front of the square base, then you wouldn't see so much of the side or vice versa.

Hope that helps.

[fuel_99]

both figures are really nicely rendered. I like the skintone on the standing figure especially. great work on those.

but.. one huge crit: background!

this picture could be amazing, and sellable too, if you would take some time to work on the background. get some ref for that and work on it, its worth the time.

on another note, i am not so fond of the lighting you chose. its a very cold light and it makes me wonder where does it come from? what does a vampire make light with usually.. candles i guess.. or some other kind of warm light source.

right now it looks (because of the sharp shadow and the color) like someone came in there with a flashlight.

[Malachi Maloney]

Thanks for taking the time to comment guys. I appreciate it.


M