Easter break

I'm taking a few days off for easter week, so here is a wip of what i'm working on at the moment.

Those wonderful men in their flying machines

Non-digital art people that i talk to, (thats most people really) seem very confused by the idea of painting digitally, so i thought i'd post up some pictures of me painting on my Wacom Cintiq12. I've also been looking for some youtube clips of it in action, but they tend towards two ends of the spectrum, A: The dry flat approach or B: The trash metal 'rocking out with my cintiq' approach, so i think i'll go with it and post two links. Here are some pics of my hand and the cintiq:

And here's the finished painting:

Here's the first youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwhp0Yf6-k0&feature=related

And here's the exciting one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm5Jb-lmZEA

Yes, watching people digitally paint is alot like watching analogue paint dry...

Things on my CD's

Did two fairly rapid pieces today and yesterday, more like colour sketches rather than finished pieces, tho it might be just that i'm getting faster at painting. I cleaned up my desk, that is i took all the rubbish off it so i can see my cd collection again! I got the idea of using the stacks of cd's as a platform for small little objects that are sitting around the house unappreciated, and i can paint them still-life style. It means that i'm not relying on photographs, which given i'm not a great photographer, tend to loose colour a bit, or look not quite right, yet anyway, until i learn how to take a good reference photo. Anyway thats another days work.

The main benefit of setting objects on top of cd's is that i can get to paint text, without the text being the main object of the painting. I am really enjoying painting words!! Also it means that in one small piece i can appreciate an object be it a fruit or a vegetable or box of something or whatever as well as looking closely and appreciating graphic design as well. Although i always say this, i think i'm going to explore this angle further, i think i really mean it this time!!

Here's the two pieces, both left a bit sketchy and both could be improved a hell of a lot but i kind of like them as they are so far. The pear one was drawn first, and the cd's were at a slight angle, and yeah the pear does look a bit like it s sitting squashed down on the cd, but hey, enjoy the colours!

Get your measurements right!!!

I started off this week painting a take-away coffee cup, but i had to abandon it after about 5 hours, cause i didn't get my  initial measurements right. It probably wouldn't have been a big problem except there was a lot of text involved and a curved surface, so the details had to be spot on and they weren't. Here is what i had got done...

I'm sure that i could probably rescue it, but i'm better off just start again from scratch. If i was a traditional artist using a canvas i could have just smashed the thing to pieces in frustration, but if i was to pick up my cintiq and whack it off the ground, i'd never forgive myself!! Anyway i did a very quick sketch last evening, took about an hour which is very fast for me, and i'm happy enough with it considering it didnt take long. And i will more than likely do a bit more with it, like add some more cd's to the pile.

The print out of it is a bit dark tho, gotta get some lessons on how to use a printer better.

Ok already!!

I did a little bit of , what would you call it, 'text' art?

Its a little button on a card reader that i got when i joined Postbank a few years ago, they have since gone bust like just about every other bank in this country!! This was a very relaxing piece to paint, cause i really like circles and i really like text, tho i dont recall painting text ever before. No WIP for this one either cause i did it on just 3 layers, namely 'backround' 'button' and 'text', in all about 5-6 hours work.

I decided to paint this after reading about a woman in the back part of the sunday times magazine who paints 'naive' art, i forget her name, but i kinda liked the idea, it helped me relax a bit and paint something i thought was fun.

Ive now started a new painting, its a take away coffee cup...

This week i shall be mostly....

This week i shall be mostly doing, nothing. Very slow and unproductive week. Was feeling very tired after work on saturday and this continued into sunday. And then in general felt very unmotivated to do any art work at all monday and tuesday. But i did buy a bike!

I found the peace lilly painting really slow, so i have hardly done any work on it:

So then i started a quick sketch on top of a DAZ3D model head which i sometimes do when i'm bored or cant seem to get focused on a bigger piece. But it nearly annoyed me more than what i was supposed to be working on! Here it is:

So i'm not sure where i'm going to from here, maybe i need a break from painting, or just a holiday in general. I'm back again thinking about 'objects' again. Like spark plugs or take-away coffee cups etc and drawing them centered on a coloured backround, similar to my AK47 that i did last year:

Now this piece took a LONG time to do, and i used an initial 'tracing' at the start to make sure it all held together nicely. I tend to not use this 'tracing' device anymore, but i had started a few other works using this system, one being a 'plan view' of a red onion, the other being a water overflow inlet from a household bath, and a 'plan view' of a small brass screw:

These three pieces also took a long time to do, but i like them! So i might return to painting these type of single objects, but i have to try and find a way to do it a bit faster yet still keep the detail. So should i finish the peace lilly? Or should i leave it sit for a while and start painting spark-plugs? These are the questions that keep me awake at night...

Peace frog

I've started a new digital painting, a pretty hard one too. It's of a flower called a peace lilly, which is sitting on the kitchen table. I'm using a photo of it as reference, as i draw stuff on my cintiq 12 which i have plugged into my pc in 'the computer room' upstairs. The cintiq is really great, and i would recommend anybody with the cash to buy one. I'm drawing this time again using the hard edged brush only, so far anyway, i might use the airbrush for sections of the leaf. There is a lot of detail in this one too so it is very slow work, about 5 hours so far, and i reckon it'll be up on the 20 hour + mark if i manage to stick with it! Also it is back to the more 'realistic' style, previous piece was meant to look slightly 'cartooney' or 'illustrated'. And i'm working at the 100% level, which means that instead of drawing fast large strokes, i'm zooming right into full view to draw the detail, takes a lot longer but should look better, provided i don't go mental during the process!!

Here's what it looks like so far...:

Fairly quick drawing

Spent about 5 hours on this quick portrait, not really a portrait, i was more trying to get an 'illustrated' look to it rather than a 'realistic' look. I didn't want to spend to long on it, so it took about 5 hours i think, and i used the hard-edged round brush this time rather than the soft-edged airbrush i usually use, and i think the result is a much sharper image.

I suppose a combination of the two brushes would lead to the best results. Here is the WIP, much smaller than usual as i did this painting over 2 days:

The mouth to the far left had to be re-drawn cause it was in the wrong place! The ref pic is from a stock photo artist on deviantart called Miss s stocks.

Major Hostilities Are Over

Ok I've finished the Caravaggio piece, learned a few things along the way, namely, detail detail detail! The more patience you have and the more time you have the better, hence i could have kept on improving this one but it would take another week or so and my head would be well and truly wrecked!

And here is the WIP for the piece:

Hill-Walking

Well i wanted to get out hill-walking today but the weather was like something out of the apocalyptic end of the bible so instead i stayed in and did a bit of work on the Caravaggio piece. 

Having lots of trouble with it but i might be learning a thing or two maybe as well. The hair is really difficult, and im using the airbrush so it looks alot smoother than the original which has obvious brush strokes. Anyway...

Not content to fail just once...

Yes it seems i'm not content to fail just once this week, after not being able to paint a little bird, i have decided that i will copy a small section of a Carravagio piece. Logic? No logic involved. Here is what ive done so far, note the disastrous attempt at the lips:

I hope it will look better later on... Its taken from this painting:

It is really good practice tho, the shading is really subtle and difficult. Hopefully i will fail better with this one..

Fought so poorly and gave up so easily...

Perhaps its my mood or something, but i'm getting slightly bored and a bit annoyed with this bird study, so it's starting to feel a bit like work, unpaid work at that! These two pic's will illustrate how far i've got in the last few days:

That's right, not very far.. So i'm gonna look for something else to draw. 

Thanks to Nick http://du1l.deviantart.com/ for putting me on to a guy called Frank Reilly, i'm looking at his method at the moment : http://www.dhfa.net/Artiststatement2.html

Not sure if i can follow a lot of it tho, i remember as a teenager buying books along the lines of 'How To Draw Amazing Comic Book Characters In 7 Days!!' and they would seperate the body into balls and rectangles and things like that, i could never follow it. Tho i really like his ideas on light and planes and shadows and so forth, so i'm gonna do my best to understand them. Wish me luck!

Works in Progress

I'm going to post some works in progress (wip) as i go along, because i think they are a great help later on, particularly when starting something new. It can be very daunting looking at a blank space and wondering how on earth its gonna be filled! Iv'e started a new pic: 

It's pretty difficult, but i wanted to try something different. The only time i tried wildlife before was a rook i painted a few years ago, plenty of detail around the eye and beak but kinda wishy-washy on the body, lacking a bit of detail:

So i'll see where this one takes me, iv'e 'paid employment' on for the next two days so might not make much progress...

Getting back to painting

Finished this yesterday, but not sure if it really is finished, it could do with a lot of sharpening up, but i will leave that to another day or days. I'm trying to make my work look as 'realistic' as possible at the moment, i bought a book on Carravagio recently and he always kept things real (yo) so i guess i'm just trying to improve my observation skills and really learn to look properly at what i'm painting.

And here is a work-in-progress (wip):

I've been watching a fella on youtube who has free tutorials posted up on how to draw portraits, and i think he's really good!! I had stopped painting there for a while and after watching a few of his lessons i kinda got the confidance to jump right back into it. You can find lesson one here if anybody is interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGzr_hlKcsg