Stick boy

Just a sketch I did while listening to general conference.  I just used one brush - the charcoal brush.  It's always a fun challenge to use a brush with a heavy texture.

Anatomy for the Artist with Stan Prokopenko

I've been trying to follow Stan Prokopenko's anatomy series since a few years ago.  I wish that I was more aggressive with it, but this is a sample of what I have learned/am learning right now.  the figure drawings are older.  right now we are looking at the spine structure.

I have learned a lot, and if I keep at it I know that I will improve.  a lot of these are just exercises, but were really fun and I continue to learn a lot!

  

#Proko#humananatomyfortheartist

Poo Factory

I did this for my Brother and sister in law who just their first baby--a girl! her name is Emery.

I've had this idea in my mind for a couple of years and finally got around to it.

on the inside of the card is reads:  "but probably not!"

hehe.

St. Patrick

So I moved on from Paper by 53.  I just wasn't thrilled with it, so I bought procreate, and I can't stand how cool it is.  I did this piece using that program, and I'm also including a link to the recorded video of me painting it.

here is the link to the video 

Orc-thing

Another Paper app post.  I'm struggling with whether or not I feel like I want to keep using this app or not.  It's fun.  But the brushes don't play nicely together.  Markers don't color over top of brushes very well, for example.  Colored pencil and pen seem to be the only tools that can go over the top of other tools.  It's a fun challenge, but is it a challenge that I want to take or is it a challenge that I'm forced to undergo because of the limits of the program?

Struggle bus

I'm playing with the Paper app by 53, and I'm using the Pencil stylus.  I'll admit that it is pretty fun, but it lacks a lot of things that I would think very important in a digital sketching app.  You can't color pick, and there are no layers.  You also cannot import pic or photos.

 The Pencil stylus is buggy for me at the moment.  Sometimes I will be painting, and all of the sudden it will smudge or it will erase.

Anyway I did this sketch of a bus.  I named it struggle bus because, well struggling.  

I will keep trying this app out, but I may return it before the 30 days and save for a stylus that offers pressure sensitivity.  We will see...

Coal Express

Merry Christmas!  When I set out to do this card I wanted to do a gamut mask.  As I was trying to figure out which colors to use, I started to get frustrated, and it wasn't going in the direction that I was seeing in my head.  I'm still trying to get comfortable with the whole gamut-masking technique, but I decided to try David McClellan's blog post about wams/cools/saturation.  I don't completely grasp it, however, I learned so much!  for example,

below, the image is completely done in blues, but the more desaturated, the color appears more red when next to the rest of the more saturated blues!  It's pretty fantastic.

I'd also like to note, that it was fun not using any layer effects or even any layers with opacity changes!  I used a gradient on the background, and I did a levels adjustment at the end because my monitor causes me to print too dark when I go to print things.  other than that it was our digital paint and no trickery.

above:  This was my original attempt with a gamut mask.  As you can see, I originally had a completely different direction in mine.  I hadn't gotten far before I got frustrated and wanted to try something else.

above: This was a little bit of value lay-in before I realized I needed to reach out to understand what I wanted to accomplish.  I didn't want it to be just blue, but wasn't sure how to introduce more color in to it so the image was color-cohesive.