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'.

Power Metal Trinity

Sabaton, Battle Beast, and Hammerfall.  If anyone asks me what the pinnacle of power metal is, this is my answer.

Flyin' On By

Whoa, it's the weekend already!  Best I've got right now is this archetypical and irrepressible fighter jockey.  Thanks, Top Gun.

Hellcat Spirit

I put my recent lessons in watercolor to use with ink, and I think it worked out quite well.  This is my little tribute to the F6F Hellcat, a homely-but-reliable carrier aircraft from World War II.  It's not the most handsome aircraft, or the most famous, but it got the job done.  Besides, that name.

This painting pretty much went 1) blob in underpainting, 2) add lighter shades, 3) add darker shades, 4) add black.  Straightforward enough that the biggest problem was keeping my rear in the chair to paint it.  The one addition I would make to this is a few highlights with gouache (whiskers on the cat, shine on the bullet casings, etc).

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.

Wizard #7

A fearsome necromancer reveals his true face on the eve of battle.  This one was inspired by pairing up medieval armor with the extravagant fabrics from the painting Napoleon on His Imperial Throne (Jean-Auguste Dominique, 1806).  It is on this dramatic note Wizard Week ends.  I enjoyed this, it got me back into daily drawing.  I will do this again next year (given I remember it, I hope).

Wizard #6

This scurvy sorcerer shares a smoke with his scallywaggish parrot.

Wizard #5

Today's wizard is my own character, Trudy.  She loves experimenting with her electrical powers, which sometimes leads to dead appliances.  Raw magical voltage tends to fry one's phone more often than not.

Wizard #4

Today's wizard is attempting to communicate with the spirit eclipsing the Sun.

Wizard Week #3

Day three of Wizard Week: pyromancer in a limited color palette.