Rest

This will be the last post on this blog for a while.

I still want to make art.  I will continue making art.  I want to take time off to think about what kind of art I want to make.  I haven't given that concept as much thought as I should have.

So for the rest of this year, and probably a few months into next year, I will be revisiting art basics–anatomy, perspective, gesture drawing, life drawing–and thinking about what I like to draw, what I want to draw, and what I want to accomplish in life.

I hope my art was inspiring to you in some way.  I will be back.

 

Dragon on a Book Cover

Songs of My Imagination is now available here on CreateSpace!  It's a collection of fantasy-themed poetry by my friend Alena Morgan, and she graciously gave me the opportunity to paint the cover.

If you want to know how I created the cover, check out Part 1 and Part 2 of the process.

Blooming Crocosmia & Update

This is the flower of the Crocosmia "Lucifer", which I mistook for a Bird of Paradise at first.  (A botanist, I am not.)  The painting is watercolor, what I believe are the anthers are picked out in white gouache.

I am going to be updating this blog every other Monday from here on.  I haven't been satisfied with the quality of my art recently, or my blog posts; both the art and the posts are too rushed for my taste.  I want to put a little more time into these paintings and make them better, and also put more time into these posts.  Regardless of what comes up, I hope you have enjoyed my art so far.  I intend to keep making good and worthy art that other people can appreciate.

Goliath Beetle

Needed a change of pace from gouache.  I went back to my love of insects and drew the goliath beetle, the most well-known largest and heaviest beetle in the world.

Midwestern Evening

This is a watercolor from a photo I took while on the way to Mesa Verde.  I was going to do it in gouache, but the first layer turned out so well I thought "you know, let's just roll with it."  I am glad I did go with watercolor.  Gouache is easier to hide mistakes with, but watercolor really has that inner glow to it.

Snowy Owl Finished

Now that is one fluffy (and probably cozy) snowy owl.  Progress is slowly being made, I learn a little more about gouache each time I paint with it.

I started with a preliminary wash of watercolor across the paper, to set the mood and give me a background that wasn't blinding white.  (Blank white is intimidating to paint on, and makes it harder to see the real hue and value of your first layers, which makes eyeballing, er, planning your painting a little more difficult.)  I laid the very first layer of the owl in with watercolor as well, getting an idea of how I wanted to put the gouache down.  With the watercolor as my guide, I divided the base colors of the owl into zones, outlined them in my first layer of gouache (kind of like paint-by-numbers) and then filled them in with the second layer.  I laid a third brighter gouache layer over the base layer, and the fourth and fifth layers blurred together as I diffused the owl's outer feathers, adjusted the lighting, added the stripes, and covered up the remnants of the previous layers.

The GIF I created by following the extremely handy and hitherto unknown Photoshop technique demonstrated by illustrator Howard Lyon over here.  It centers your process images and makes the GIF animation a lot nicer.

Back on the Branch

Hey!  First off, I am so sorry for missing last week's post.  It was a busy weekend, things snowballed, and I fell behind.

This feller here is a white-cheeked (I think...) long-tailed bushtit.  The guinea pig of birds.  No neck, all head...or body?  Basically a golf-ball-sized puff of adorable fluff with wings.  Ink and watercolor, this went really fast, only about 2 hours from start to finish, thanks to the hair dryer for speeding up the painting process.  

Marina Watercolors

A couple quick watercolors I did on a recent trip.

Sketches 8/30/15: Model Watercolors #2

Got back to life drawing after a few weeks' absence, bit more abstract this time.  Update on the blog split coming soon, within the next day or two.

Space Amazons

The companion painting to go with the "Bold" post.  These space Amazons are the manly men pilots' counterpart, and they team up occasionally to clean out the pirates infesting the local shipping lanes. 

Sketches 6/22/15: Model Watercolors

I've started going to a local life-drawing studio on weekends, and the model this week very graciously gave me permission to post these watercolors.  While I do make some sketches for the gesture poses, doing watercolors for the longer poses is really what I enjoy.  I can capture shapes much better with a brush than a pencil.

Bold

These bold, brash, manly pilots are members of a starfighter squadron, which I hope to write a story or five about some day.  I'm planning another three paintings like this one, with other characters associated with these guys, to make it a series.

Red Stem Blue Sky

This painting of a plant I photographed a year ago was started about six months ago.  I put liquid mask down to outline the plant, blocked in the sky, and then worried and procrastinated for several months more and failed to finish it.  I was afraid of making mistakes, afraid of it becoming imperfect painting.

Last week I read the book Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland.  Then I sat my lazy behind down in my chair, and finished this stubborn plant.

It's not perfect.  It has mistakes.  But it is done, it is good enough, and I like it.

Keep on truckin'.

Lighten Up

This was the most finished piece I turned out during a recent workshop with illustrator Omar Rayyan.  He is a phenomenal watercolorist, he paints dozens of unique animal characters in narrative scenes wonderfully, and puts his own twist on the Northern Renaissance and Symbolist painters he's inspired by.  His shtick is building a painting up from extremely light initial layers to a progressively more saturated and detailed finish.

That was also my most valuable takeaway from the workshop.  Lighten up.  Water your paints down (way, way, way down) and go in with a couple exploratory layers.  Not every painting needs multiple preparatory sketches and a pencil underdrawing.  I found it particularly freeing to simply start in with a few shapes, and coax something out of that.  And since it's watercolor (and so light) it's a lot easier to scrub out mistakes you make.

If you want to know more about Omar and TLC Workshop, you can see Omar's work here and read up on the workshops here.

Petunia Practice

Practicing for an upcoming watercolor workshop I will be attending.  This one started out a little too casual, as you'll see in the first frame of the GIF below...I got serious about it on the second or third wash, gave it my all, and I believe it ended up as a decent painting.  The petunias themselves I am most proud of, the background I'm not so sure about.  Lesson learned: take the painting seriously from start to finish, even if it's "just practice".

The watercolor workshop in question is hosted by TLC Workshops, a wonderful little program that takes place in Bothell, WA.  They bring professional illustrators and artists in to teach workshops over the course of several days.  Give them a try if you're interested in a small-class (ten to fifteen people) setting for learning illustration.

The Hunter Process

The Hunter, from start to finish.

The Mercenary Mecha

They have no friends.  They have allies.  They have enemies.

The superheavy mercenary mecha prowl the post-democratic world, searching for their next pit stop, their next contract, for whatever goals they are vying to achieve.  Some fight for glory.  Some fight for pay.  Some fight for purposes unknown.

They are the mercenaries of the savage future, and every army wants one on their side.

"The Challenger"

"The Sniper"

"The Trapper"

"The Commander"

"The Hunter"

The Hunter - Finished

And there it is!  Five out of five, right on the deadline.  The Mecha Mercenary series is done, posted, and available on various products on my Society6.

The Hunter, Part 4

Almost there...

The Hunter, Part 3

Finished with the inks, going into the watercolors now.