The Bird King

I decided to start my "mobile" sketchbook for 2013.  I have one at home that I draw in all the time.  The paper in my "mobile" one is better and can take multiple mediums.

Anyway, I continue to study and learn, and drew this guy today and painted it using acrylic washes.  

I always see lots of issues once I put it down.  I like this a lot, but it isn't polished.  I would have to start over.  It was really fun to not care and just be really loose.  

I started out with a blue-violet ground and carved the figure out in white.  then used a yellow-orange mixture and went back and forth.  I added red at the end in a few places to bring it to life a bit more.

Abominable snowman

I found some "traditional" brushes online that I absolutely love.  I have tried to make my own, but hadn't been truly happy with them.  I decided to try these new ones out.

it is really fun to work with a limited color pallets, and I tried to be hard nosed about not using any layer styles or tweaks, and to paint it as if it were paint.  I was successful for the most part, but I did use some desaturation on the background and some layer opacity changes, but not much at all.  mostly on the background.  I did color pick at times, but it was minimal.

Foot soldier

This was a lot of fun.  I had made a texture brush a long time ago, and I decided to make a painting using only that texture brush.  I wanted to try and paint it only in greyscale and then apply color.

This is what I came up with.  I also used some dodge tools at the end as well as some color balance tricks.  I really like the feeling of this, and may do more.