Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Jan 29th: Watercolor Washes

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!

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.10

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Jan 18-29th: Inception Oil Painting

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!

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.10

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Jan 17th: More Air Force and Inception

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!

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.10

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Jan 7-13 Anime, More Oils and Bad Washes

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!

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.9

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Jan 5th: Inception Oil Painting

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.

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.9

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Jan 3rd: Anime!

There are few things that I could just draw all day.  Anime is one of those things.  I think it's because anime is easy.  Which is really a terrible thing to say.  I should be happy to challenge myself, but I think I've had enough challenges lately thank you.
Today I'm doing some concept art for a good friend.  He's publishing a novel and has asked me to do to cover art.  Nervous as I am to have the world out there criticizing my stuff, I'm excited.  I'm going to probably have around 7-10 concepts by Friday.  My guidelines are: anime girl, sad and short hair.  It's going to eventually be painted with acrylic on a black canvas.  I think it's also going to be like a neon green color.  Much like the acrylic Luke Skywalker I did a few months back.
Anime is great because you really don't have to worry about proportion.  If people really looked like anime, they'd be freaky.  So big, huge sparkly eyes with huge pupils (small pupils are usually used for villains), tiny mouths and really the hair has no rules.  Or gender.

Beyond this 3 day anime project, I've really got to work on my painting for Dileep Rao.  It was put on hold for my insane Christmas project madness.  I also recently got an order for an anniversary present that'll be done before March.  Sometime during my off-time at work I'm going to begin a very late Buffy the Vampire slayer for a friend.  He doesn't know he's getting it and it was supposed to be for Christmas.  Better late than never I suppose.  So yeah, I'm freaking busy!  But I'm glad.  Usually when Christmas is over, I have no more orders.  Not so this year!  Happy 2013 everyone!

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Dec 29-31st: Graphite Air Force Symbol





Sometimes  I get all full of myself and I think:  yeah.  I'm gonna be a big deal.  And I strut around with my artist self.  Not so with this drawing.   Simple as it may have seemed, the font on this piece got the better of me.
Basically, this is from an Air Force patch.  Since it was ordered as a black and white, I decided to make it look more on the realistic side.  It's a very simple design, but I gave it form.  All that was pretty standard.  
I learned 2 valuable things after all the symbols were drawn.  1) I can't freehand circles.   2) I can't freehand a hollow type font.  If the font were a solid black and not an outline, I may have been ok.  After searching the house for round things to trace, I found nothing that was the right size.  I eventually had to give up and buy a compass.  I don't know what I did without it.  Do yourself a favor.  Buy a circle template and a compass and save yourself the frustration.
The font...oh God.   I really, really had problems.   I ended up with too skinny letters and too short.  Spacing that's off and just an all-around nightmare.  So, I tried using my projector and superimposing the images to fix it.  There was no saving it.  So, I fixed what I could the best I could and then did the only thing I knew how to do when I screw up.  Distract. 
I added a white strip down the middle of where the words are.  I made it look like light glare and accentuated dark edges, making the surface look curved.  This "light glare" hides some of the bigger mistakes.  I also added cast shadows underneath the letters for greater depth.  All in the name of misdirection.
Underneath,  I had more font to print and guess what?  I traced it.  Yup.   Completely traced.  When it comes down to it, I'd much rather trace a font than end up with a horrible end product that someone regrets ordering. 
I'm unhappy with the font and I really need to find a better system.   I would be fine with stencils or even rub-ons.  My skills haven't improved enough with letters.  I'll work on it.
Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.9