I started messing around with Alchemy back in October. Here are a little over a dozen pieces from my first stabs at working with it, with times ranging from 2-8 minutes a piece (most were under 4). All of the following can be clicked for much larger versions:
Just in those first few pieces, you can see where I’m starting get comfortable with it. Of those, everything was under 5 minutes. After that, I opted to work strictly in grayscale, rather than with color, to push the starkness more…
Obviously, I’m working with a lot of mirror mode here. Be forewarned– mirror mode isn’t exact, in that it will often do a stark color on one side, but a somewhat translucent reflection of it. At least, that’s been my experience with much of it. Then again, it forces some uniqueness to each side, which isn’t a bad thing.
If you haven’t figured out yet, I’m more comfortable with working entities than I am objects or scenery. I think that, when you’re learning something, sometimes the quickest way to get a starting grasp of it is to attempt to do the things you’re most comfortable with first.
At this point, I got comfortable enough to start working with asymmetry, and as such, I dropped the mirror. The following 3 pieces are more open-flow, with the intention of being quick thumbnailing:
None of these were drawn with starting intention. I didn’t go in saying, “hey, I’m going to draw this robot/person/whatever”. Rather, much like some of my speedpainting in ArtRage, I just let the shapes define themselves, and build upon what starts to form in my mind’s eye, so to speak.
For who are now curious to use it, you can find it here, and it’s FREE. This means you have no excuse not to at least download it and attempt to try it out.
Finally, watch the videos on the site. They’re a really good live demonstration of how to use the program, and also illustrate that the program is intended to foster creativity, starting drawings/ideas that can then be imported to other programs, not to create finished drawings.
Tags: alchemy, art, character, speedpaint