Draped Figure - Self Critique

I came across another set of steps from a painting that I did years ago. It was painted in Painter Classic or Painter 5.5, back when the programs were owned by Metacreations. If I remember correctly, I was reading "How to Paint Like the Old Masters" by Joseph Sheppard. This would have been one of my first attempts at using an under-painting before applying color. All of the work was done on a single layer. Painter Classic only allowed work to be done on one layer. Painter 5.5 used "floaters" which I hated and avoided using like the plague! I would've been using a Wacom ArtPad II.

The reference was a small black & white photo of an artists' model that I found on the web somewhere. I believe that she was a model for a famous sculptor (Late nineteenth, early twentieth century?), but I can't remember who. Part of the challenge was to come up with a color palette.

The process:

1. I created a simple sketch using the pencil tool.
2. Painted the shapes for the background, which were drapes.
3. Blocking in the figure and draped chair.
4. Adding highlights and began to refine the figure.
5. Added color to the drapes and draped chair.
6. Finished the figure.
   

If I was doing this painting today, I don't think that I'd change much about the actual mechanics. I would add a deep red to the shadows of the blue drapes and dark blue to the shadows of the red drape. The figure's skin would have been created with more colors and some reflected light from the red drape. I'd work some of the skin colors into the hair. I'd choose a color for the main light source and lightly glaze parts of the figure and environment to unify the painting.

Hopefully, I'll run across more of these to share.

Advancing the Alien Sketchie

I try to draw or paint something daily, but didn't have a lot of time tonight to do anything new. I decided to work on one of the sketches that I posted yesterday. I went with the alien being.

I created a simple background environment (Using a couple of custom brushes to help speed up the process.), gave the figure some hard and soft edges, adjusted the shadows and mid-tones, did a little more work on the highlights and called it done.

I liked using gray tones for this piece. I think that the coloring gives it kind of a 1950's science fiction movie feel.

More Sketchies

Time for some more doodles. They run the gamut from dinosaurs to elves to aliens.

Lately, I've been adding some gray scale to select sketches. I think these little value studies are helping in my color work.

New Reality Series: American Artist

“Bravo has announced its developing American Artist, the working title of a new reality competition series for aspiring artists that is produced by the Sex and the City star and her Pretty Matches production company.”

“Each episode of American Artist will follow contestants as they compete in art-themed challenges -- such as painting and photography or sculpting and industrial design -- that are designed to stretch their preferred mediums.” Reality TV World 7/21/08

I don’t watch much reality TV outside of the “Cops” style shows, but I may have to tune in to see an episode or two of this one.

You just know they’re going to probably serve up all of the art stereotypes: The brooding artist, the starving artist, the tortured artist, the misunderstood artist, etc. In other words, the most quirky artists they can find. Still, it may be fun to watch and I believe this would be the first show to focus this aspect of art.

Alabama man still drawing murals at age 112

"...Frank Calloway spends his days turning visions from his youth into lively murals — and at 112 years old, the images of his childhood are a window to another time."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25774249/

...And still putting in 7+ hours a day drawing! This was a great story to read. I'm glad that I came across it.

Note to self for the "To Do" list: Still be making art after 100!

Here is a video of Mr. Calloway at work: "Take my time and do the job right."

Participating in Online Art Challenges

I like to participate in some of the various online drawing and painting challenges that are featured in many of the art forums. The challenges can push you out of your comfort zone by making you take on subjects that you normally don't portray.

This piece was created for the "Fly the flag" jam over at The Drawing Board.

Description: "This month' Jam is dedicated to characters who are symbols of their nations identity, or whose costume contains symbols of their nation."

This character is called Nuke. He first appeared in the Daredevil "Born Again" storyline. He is the result of the government's attempt to re-create the "super soldier" serum, which gave us Captain America. Nuke got increased physical attributes, but he also became psychotic.

A Quick Fantasy Sword

I've been looking over my website, artbykidd.com, making plans to update the content (Finally!). I'd almost forgotten that I'd added a couple of walk-throughs to the resources section. "How to create a quick fantasy sword" was done in response to someone in one of the forums I frequent asking how to draw a sword.

Its pretty basic fare, but maybe someone will get some use out of it. I'll be adding more resources to the site and providing updates on this blog, so you can consider this an introduction to my other "internet house."

View Tutorial: A Quick Fantasy Sword

Portrait Redux

While looking for something else, I came across a quickie portrait that I had done last year. It wasn't very good, but there was something about the face that had some potential. I decided to see if I could do a better version.

Part of the problem was that there was no indication of the underlying structure of the face. It was very flat. So I started "building" the head and face.

The darks and lights were nearly indistinguishable from one another, so I darkened the darks and lightened the lights. I liked the idea waves in the hair, but I took the hairstyle in a different direction. I toned down the shape of the eyes, though I tried to keep some of exotic feel.

I added some musculature to the the neck and shoulder area and created some jewelry. I used custom brushes to create the background textures and to add texture to the skin.

I used a blending brush to soften some areas and to shape others.

Overall, I like the way the redo came out.

Wind Elemental

This is a painting that I set aside and finally found some time to finish today. I'm going to count this as the first painting completed under the "Finishing Project." Its not the one that I thought I'd do first, but its helped me to get started.

Even though the figure is in a static pose, the painting itself is about movement. I tried to represent movement by using the swirling snow, flowing fabric and streaming hair. It is about cold,too, which is why I restricted the palette to blues, whites and cool grays. Finally, it is also about sound. My goal was to make the viewer almost hear the sounds of the wind.

Did I hit the mark? That's for the viewer to decide. I try to raise the bar for myself on one element or another on most of the paintings that I do. The act of defining the goals and the attempt to reach them is my personal measure of success.

Everything else is gravy.

The Value of Back Stories

As I briefly mentioned in another post, one of the techniques that help me with my work is developing a back story, history and/or environment for the subject that I'm creating. Once I have a sense of who or what the subject is, it becomes easier to develop the visual image.

For example, I was using a custom brush, just painting random shapes. Eventually, elements of a scene began to emerge from the shapes. As I began to refining the shapes, a back story began to suggest itself.

"No one knew how long the keep had been there. Legend was that it just rose out of the ground one day. It was said that a great and terrible wizard walked the halls of the keep and that he jealously guarded it's secrets and treasures. Many had climbed the spiral stair that wound around the gnarled column, eager to discover if the stories of great treasure were true. None returned."

The story doesn't have to be fully developed to be helpful.

Since this was just a doodle session, I kept the sketch loose and unrefined, to hold on to some of the original randomness.

Technical Difficulties

My Internet access has been down since I installed Microsoft's latest update. It seems that it interacted badly with some firewall programs. On the plus side, my computer is performing better than it has in a while. Before I found out the real cause of my problem, I ran all of my anti-spyware, adware, etc., defragged the drive and uninstalled some old programs.

Still, it was a bit annoying.

Patents Pending - Floyd

Another "Patents Pending" cartoon presented for your amusement (I hope!!).

Artist - A person who creates art

Its kind of funny. You spend time on a painting, working out the details, pulling all of the elements together. You finally get it done and decide to take a break. How do you spend your break time? Sketching. Sketching and looking at other artists' sketches. Getting inspired and sketching some more. Looking thru old references and sketch from them. Then one sketch starts to show potential. You develop it a little bit more. You start to see some possibilities. Its starting to show some personality. You take it further, adding details. You're moving from sketching into drawing territory. You're working lights and darks. You're forming a "back story" for the character in your mind. You're starting to think about settings and environments. Color palettes start to suggest themselves. You realize that your "break" has led you right back into the process that you were taking a break from. And you're flat out enjoying it!

I think, at this point, you can call yourself an artist.

And I think that this'll see paint sometime soon.

Painting a Fantasy Portrait - Final

Step Eight:

I decided that I liked the original dress design better and went back to it. The work that I've done on most of the layers won't be changing so I merge the painting down to 3 layers and save it as a second version, just in case.

I create a new layer and go to work on the leaves. I work with my fingers near the alt key to sample colors from the painting and the palette. I'm also constantly resizing the brush using the bracket [] keys. I'm switching between a hard edge and soft edge brush as I work.

I add veins to the leaves, not really being too precise while I'm doing it. I'm going for creative realism not photo realism. I decide to add the berries to break up some of the green.

Step Nine:

Now to add sunlight on some the leaves. I create a new layer and set it at 42% opacity. I select a lighter version of the sky color and paint the selected leaves with a low opacity brush. I group and collapse the layers that I've added. I use a blending brush and work the foliage. I soften some edges, work more color into the shadows and do a little shaping.

Step Ten:

I work the hair now. I add colors from the skin into the hair, shaping the mass of hair behind the braids. I highlight the hair with blue from the sky. I work on the shell of the ear, adjusting the shapes and colors. I make a few refinements to the face and begin work on the body. I don't go into the same amount of detail as I did with the face. I don't want it to compete for the viewer's attention.

Now I start on the dress. After its complete, I step back and decide if I need to add accessories.

I decide that accessories are needed. I do a image search on Google and look at several pieces of jewelry. I then make up a pattern for the jewelry and paint it onto the figure. I think that they do a fair job of framing the face and drawing the eye.

Finally, I use a custom watercolor brush to add some texture to the face. This completes the painting.


Hopefully, you found something that you can use in your own work. Feel free to leave a question or comment.

Thanks for sharing the ride!

Warm Up

I thought I'd post this quickie that I used as a warm up before returning to work on the fantasy portrait. It started out as a ballpoint pen doodle. I scanned it and painted it in Corel Painter 9.5.

Independence Day Painting

Happy Fourth of July for everyone who celebrates it. I know that I'm early but, Ive never been one to stand on ceremony! :-D

This is the result of an idea that I got yesterday. I finished it in pretty much one setting. I sometimes get a idea or concept in my head and just have to get the painting done. This was one of those ideas. It came out pretty close to what I imagined in my head.

Big

Yard work and other tasks ate up my free time this evening, so no new update on the fantasy portrait. Just so you don't have to look at an unchanged page, I'm posting this paint sketch from earlier in the year. I enjoyed exaggerating this figure. This was one that was stopped and started a couple of times, but I finally got it done.

I'm sure that I'll finish the portrait over the long weekend, so stay tuned.

Taking a Short Pause

It was a seriously busy weekend and I wasn't able to spend any time on the fantasy portrait. I'm planning to finish the major elements tomorrow and the final details on Wednesday.

Just so you don't think that I'm a complete slacker, I managed to dash off a quick elf doodle to stand-in until I get back to the painting.

It also gave me a chance try a couple of things. First, I sketched the doodle in blue, like the cartoonists do. The I opened a new layer and redrew it in black. That really cut down on the erasing.

Then used a few custom brushes to paint in the color and called it done.