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.

Krampus demon...person

working on another piece for illustration before the end of the semester which is next wednesday.  eeeegads!

needs serious polish but this is a WIP.

Updated 12/12/12 woooooooooooooo I just noticed the date.  spooooooky.  eh.

Santa!

I finished it.  I neglected it for awhile, only working on it here and there.  I really like the way it turned out.  There are some areas that I simply didn't know how to work, but I think those things will be learned in time.

I have 2 more to do in 2 weeks.  yikes.

Santa Concept WIP

A billion trillion Santa Clauses have been drawn and painted, and so mine won't be anything special except that I did it, of course.  haha.  I haven't done a santa in a lot of years I don't think.  I could
be wrong.

anyway I read an excerpt of Krampus the Yule Lord by Brom, and Santa had a muscular chest and arms, and I thought that I would do a character concept based on that.  So far it is pretty fun.  I plan on doing 2 other pieces inspired by the excerpt that I read.  Im not sure how true I will stay to what I read, but that doesn't really matter.  It will correlate.

anyway:


I got excited so I did some more today instead of working on other projects that I should have been working on.  I may put a hat on him similar to this, but I haven't decided yet.  I also made his chest larger and stomach rounder.  I'm starting to get excited about the direction this is going.

yay!

Sargent study

I've been in the worst rut this semester.  I'm not going to complain about it here.  Anyway, after plenty of tantrums I decided to just sit and do some studies, and finished them up with a digital painting of one of John Singer Sargent's paintings "A Spanish Woman".

I couldn't dream of doing it justice, but for my own education it was a good exercise.  It really helped me understand color a lot, as it appears he did it in mainly 2 colors.  at least the digital image if his work was about 2 colors.

I took plenty of liberties, and started off with a different color for the background.  I like his background better, obviously.  gah.  now that it is up here in front of me Im seeing some really obvious issues!

it's just a study...