I'm triumphant! The painting is far from perfect, but I've finally gotten to a point where I can send it off and be happy with it. All I did in the past week is blend, darken and touch-up. I also lowered one eyebrow so he looks angrier and add details to the gun. I can't quite call it a success yet, we'll see what the celebrity says about it. Keeping my fingers crossed!
Blogging today as I wait for jury duty. Whee.
This past weekend and the week preceding it, I worked on a bunch of different stuff.
I stalled and did a random watercolor of Darth Maul. By the way, watercolors should be blended while they're still wet. I went to blend some things after it dried and well, there was some major correcting. Maul is gonna be an extra piece to sell at a booth in the future. I never have extra art to just sell.
I then tackled the oil painting for Mr. Rao. It's a good thing I didn't ship it. His eyes were way too far apart. Way. So I went in and moved them almost a whole inch. Geez. Added some shading, but mostly fixed his eyes. Eyes should be an eye-width apart. Any closer or farther, their face will look weird.
I also started a fairly large painting that'll eventually have 2 Air Force seals on it. Did the background in acrylic, pretty basic. Glad to get away from oils for a while.
Lastly, I began another piece last night. It's Yoda...but he's made up of really tiny words. All Yoda quotes. It's gonna be awesome, but it'll cramp the heck out of your hand! Once done, it'll also be an extra to sell. It's nice to do some nerd art for a change.
While I was waiting for Mr. Rao's oil painting to dry, I began converting my colored pencil anime drawing to a more final painted version. Though I'm certainly not an expert on watercolor, I like the subtleties of it. I knew I needed stars, so I went out and bought some masking fluid.
If you recall, last time I tried masking fluid it was gloppy and horrible. But it turns out that masking fluid that's not on sale is liquid and not gloppy whatsoever.
So I set about painting the girl and loved, loved, loved how she looked. Ignoring my husband's advise to test the masking on something else first, I painted it over my girl. Once it was dry I painted my wash background...peeled off the masking and...ruined. Oh ruined! The masking had peeled off the paint underneath and some if the wash had gotten through! Gah! There was no saving it.
I knew the error was completely ignorance on my part, I remained positive and tried again. But not before consulting some experts. Turns out, you have to mask a clean, dry, unpainted area. Mistake one. Your brush must be dry. Mistake two. Then to ensure paint doesn't seep through, 2 coats. Mistake three.
My second try was a complete success! I'm so happy about the tree and stars! It might not be the final product, but it's close. And I learned a valuable lesson in the process.
Valuable lesson: hot glue is not an alternative to masking fluid! My thought process was thus: "Watercolor paper is really heavy and the hot glue will only be in little dots...so it should just Peel right off!" This I did in an attempt to make a starry sky watercolor wash.
No...no. it doesn't just peel off. Of course it took a layer of paper with it. Not all the dots did this. The very tiny ones worked just fine. The bigger the dot, the more paper ripped off. Also, this watercolor paper is heavier and of a bigger grain than I'm used to. I got some pretty streaky looking washes as a result of not soaking the paper enough. Also because of the harsher grain, my trick of using salt to create star-like marks barely shows. :/ Lame sauce. I'm glad these are just being used as examples and not for anything serious!
Oh blog...my dear blog. How oils are not my strong suit. The progress I've made is pretty good, but I need SO much more practice. The biggest problem by far is not having a decent picture of my subject. I've been splicing 3 pictures to try to get this face looking remotely like the celeb. And I do mean remotely. I gave him eyes rather than shadows which I regretted at first, but I think I made the right decision.
The inside of the van is one big question mark. I see like... a steering wheel in there... and blurry ...blurs? My husband goes: "Why does the background look like crap?" Well, cuz that's how it is in the picture...blurry and distorted.
It's a mess. But less of a mess than a week ago. His face is close. Close enough I think. But for now I'm worrying about the background and the crazy amount of fudging I have to do. Epic amounts. At least I'm learning to improv!
I've decided to split my art load into 2. Less pressing drawings are going to be done at work. Paintings and such are worked on when I get home. This way I'm still getting something done on my down time instead of staring at the ceiling like usual.
So today I worked on one of 15 air force drawings for which I have no picture. I think I've learned from my mistakes on the first one. Oh it's so nice having a compass! Instead of struggling to freehand circles for 2 hours, I drew them in 10 minutes. Yes! Then it's all cake until I reach the font again ...but I'll let you know how that goes.
At home, I'm still laboring away at Dileep's oil painting. I decided to work primarily on the hands and background today due to the fact that I'm just sick of staring at the facial features. You look at something long enough and your brain seems to see what it wants to see. Not what's there. That's exactly how you get things that are way off.
His fingers had to be lengthened and might be too wide. I can't tell yet because it may be a trick of shading. The background is pretty easy. Just blurry parts of a bridge or something. My only problem with the background is that the picture I'm looking at cuts off some features of the van. So I'll have to improvise and guess. I don't like guessing!
It's been a busy couple of weeks! I'm doing two things at once and switch between them when I get frustrated.
The cup o' coffee meter on my inception painting is up to 9 now. I'm more and more pleased with it this week. There's still SO much to do on it. I ended up turning on the movie and pausing it again for comparison. Well, the biggest thing is color. The hues in the movie are dreary. They're more bright in my painting but I think I like it that way. I can't see his freaking eyes at all! Stupid screen resolution! I really wish I had a good high quality picture to paint from.
To me, the painting doesn't quite look like the actor; so I've gone and saved 3 or 4 pics of his face in a similar angle. This will give me things this screen shot won't like skin tone and all the things that distinguish him.
The anime is much easier of course but I must admit that I'm struggling with a background. I had this idea of a multicolored, multi layered night sky. With deep purples and blues and black. It kind of, sort of worked. But it's too dark. Too much black. Also, it needs stars. So I thought, watercolor! You can get some pretty awesome sky effects when you do a wash.
As it turns out, the watercolor paper I just bought is pretty heavy and amazing. But I've never done a wash on paper like it. To do an effective wash, the paper pretty much has to be soaked. I had issues keeping this paper wet. And so it's all streaky :( but it's ok. I think I can fix it later tonight by going over it again. I'm going to try to make "stars" using salt when the paper is still wet. We'll see!
Well it's back to oils tonight. What an improvement! The biggest thing I did was move the eyes down about an inch. Sound like a lot? It really is. But that's what was wrong. Now that the eyes have moved, it's started to look more like the actor and I'm not horribly embarrassed by it.
Although I'm well aware that oils are opaque and the layering must be strategic, I can't seem to break my acrylic habits. I've had to paint over a lot. Ugh. Also, the picture I have to go off of is complete dung. I can't find this particular scene online to reference for better detail. So there's more guesswork than I'd like to admit.
It's starting to take shape though so I won't complain too much. I will trudge onward.
