A session in landscape.

Ok, I know I post about this class a lot on here but I felt it would be nice to give a run down of why I'm particularly fond of it and how it affects how I work.  

Now, being an illustration major, the majority of my classes are, well, based in illustration.  Which is fine but it gets to be particularly frustrating when you realize you're just as behind in composing original images as you are in painting the final product.  Last year I took landscape painting not knowing what to expect.  What I got out of it was an invaluable opportunity to play with paint.  It wound up building not only my ability to compose competent environments, but also my style.  

When you're put on location for (at most) 3 hours to create a painting that is compelling and could be considered finished...you're not quite sure where to begin.  It only takes some practice to get in the swing of things and this painting class pushed my skills on my illustration projects so much farther than if I'd been left alone. 

Needless to say I signed up again.   When starting, I kept with my habits- earth tone palette and underpainting, "fuzzing" painted areas to draw the viewers attention to where I wanted, etc.  Then something important happened (at least, I'm assuming it's important).  I was told to (a)- not blur areas unless completely necessary, and even then reconsider. (b)- break my comfort zone with earth tones and play with color.  I agreed, acknowledging my weak points and lo and behold, there was color.

Intimidation.  Pure highlighter green and simple.

Ok, I've chosen my view, have my borders mapped off, some quick pencil work to indicate where things should be.

Quick underpainting consisting of cobalt blue/paynes grey.

Laying in colors.  Ugly?  Yes.  Expected?  Yes.  Moving on.

And right around here that start-off color is throwing me.  By being so bright, anything I put down appears in comparison to be nothing more than vaguely differentiated hues of mud.  This is not good.

Still pushing forward you can tell how mad I'm getting at a painting by how much I've scratched guidelines into it with the opposite end of my brush.  Questioning what made me think I could paint.

It's going downhill.  Rage quit foreseeable future.

Colors and brushstrokes in general have been softened, adding a bit more warmth and consistency.  (apologies about the difference in photo color- adjusted my lighting settings and forgot to change them back)

Looks like the nasty has come to an end, with some sky popping up and more work in the foreground.

And where she lies now.  Still need to go back and fiddle with the sky (ran out of time in class).

In the end, I need to continue with this "color" thing.  It's taking me to unexpected places and I'm curious to see how it pops into my illustrations this year.

2012 thus far.

Alright, just going to post a medley of stuff that I've been working on so far.  Will do a more in depth post on a single something or other this weekend!

Painted film.

Anyone who knows me knows it's no secret that I have an obsession with movies.  It was only a matter of time before that finally found it's way into my art, and it's finally done so with a bit of a bang.  Looking at how these pieces stand up next to my work from the rest of the year, I have no idea what took me so long to finally get to this subject.  That being said, I think this will be a common subject choice for future work.

Now Alien had been dwelling in the back of my mind for a while this year and while I'm not entirely happy with it (wish I'd thought out more thumbnails and compositions, making it more experimental at the start) it still turned out fairly decent I think.

There was still a lot I had to force myself to push color and contrast-wise, and even then I was fairly leery of it.  As a result, a few paintings in the near future will feature more strict color-palette choices and more experimental values (no more of this hiding in the middle norm, I need to push these things that I'm finding I'm uncomfortable playing with). 

All of that being said, the second movie piece I wound up doing kind of at random has made me absolutely giddy with future experiments.  I had no idea what I was doing half the time while working on this painting, so when things kept winding up looking great I was a bit astounded.  Eli is therefore my encouragement to get the hell out of my comfort zone and start playing more.  My paints are demanding more spontaneity and they're quite right in doing so.

And some detail shots for those of you who are just as obsessed with paint strokes as I am.

   As always, if you want to see more progress shots or other various projects that haven't made their way to this blog, check out my tumblr.

The Griffin

So far this summer I'm surprised at how productive I've been.  Now that I'm done moving until the end of August things have been kicked up another notch and the first piece to be finished is this particular painting.  Overall I'm rather pleased with how it's turned out!  Initially after drawing out the line work for the underpainting I had to cut off more from the sides for a much better perspective.  Beyond that it's been a fairly trouble free journey.  Why?  As I'm quickly figuring out reference and best of all lighting is your best friend.
After creating the drawing on the board and cutting down the edges, I shot several different lighting scenarios on a quick little sculpt I did of the pair.

Following those shots and my culmination of reference ranging from various antelope and deer to owls, hawks and eagles the underpainting progressed and was finished within a couple of hours at most.  

Not quite my usual method but it worked nonetheless.  

At this point colors are the biggest obstacle.  And I've kept it no secret that I'm pretty terrible at colors.  But between advice I received from Tardigrad (whose work you should definitely check out by the way) on another project and a painting I've always adored it wound up being fairly straightforward.  

The painting I'm referencing is Horace Vernet's The Lion Hunt.  I realize my colors are more muted than Vernet's palette but I would be remiss to not credit this work with this post.

In the end the brushstrokes just fell into place better than I could have hoped for and I'm glad whatever my style's become is finally finding a happy place.

In the end I've wound up with a piece that I have learned a lot from and that also made me remember how much I really do enjoy painting.  I couldn't have asked for more.

Sculpture

Up until recently, sculpture has (unfortunately) been on the artistic back-burner.  However, with new personal choices and much more free time it's come back to the forefront of things that I enjoy.  I'm hoping to keep up with a much more productive schedule this summer and next school year when it comes to 3d illustration, and honestly I don't think it's going to be much of an issue.  

I did do a decent little blip of sculpture work this past school year but I didn't have the time to take pictures before I left CBus and I didn't have room to bring them back home with me.  The last sculpt I did was a little orc bust that turned out pretty well in my opinion and once I get back to school in a few months I will get pictures of him and previous projects posted.  In the mean time though I just finished another bust of an anthro-ferret dude.  A bit Redwall inspired he was a lot of fun to work on and I'm excited to do more busts in the upcoming weeks.  He also has a removable hat because he's just that cool.

Illustration Final

Ok, well this wasn't my only final but it held the most weight in my mind and turned out pretty well (one of those rarities where you're pleasantly surprised by it).  The assignment itself was very open ended- essentially we were told to turn it into our dream project.  As a result my brain went for the obvious mash of awesome movies and oil paints.  The final decision on my front was to do a mural for a movie theater (we had to have a practical application somewhere) of science fiction through the ages. 
I determined I wanted to rule out aliens and more organic life forms as I felt it would really get far too complicated and wind up with a very strange clash between organic and industrial shapes.  If I had had more time it would have been a fun challenge but with only a few weeks I wanted to keep myself reined in (something I desperately need to improve on).  But I'll shut up and post some progress and final pics of it here.