Tag: painting

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Clockworld, It’s Done!

So it only took a little under 7 months, this weekend I finally wrapped up the behemoth that’s been hanging in the kitchen since January. The biggest change was wiping out the sun, which I spent so much time into getting perfect the first time around. However it just wasn’t working. Once the sun got off the canvas the remainder just fell into place.

While it was fun for the most part, I’m seriously gonna think twice before starting another canvas of that size. It just takes so long and so much effort you wind up just tired of it before you’re halfway, and then once part comes out brilliant, just as imagined, everything else seems sub-par. Thank god it wasn’t in oils though, or I’d just be starting the glazes.

Next up, a commissioned (I barter for exotic liquor) series of cute jungle animals for a cute little niece. Lions, gazelles, giraffes and a penguin(?) oh My!

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Springtime doldrums and overthought thinkings

So, I’ve been running around in the total overwhelmed mode for a while and it’s time to steer the frantic caffinated ADD besotted herd of cats that is my attention span back onto track.

Some basic concept art got created, and then I wandered off the project to illustrationland and then got mired down in EPIC project full of GRAND ideas etc etc and just essentially spent some time thinking myself to exhaustion.  Time to think less and do more.

I’ve made a list damnit!  With a great big list of bite size (a week or 2) tasks to do. I’m going to pick one and just do it and then simply rinse and repeat.   Theory being that this will decrease the amount of time spent bashing head on desk/wall/art table/sidewalk by not getting overwhelmed by any one thing or medium. 

Updates to follow.

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Painting update – day 8ish

So after a nice little hiatus with the game programmy project its back to work on the behemoth that’s been hogging up the kirchen for going on a month now. 

painting-day-8-002I really didn’t want to do this, which is why it probably took so long.  You see, I didn’t finish the background first… and you always start in the background and make your way closer to the viewer.   That way.. you don’t wind up having to paint over large swatches of the stuff you’ve already painted.  

Which I did.  Which sucks and isn’t a lot of fun knowing you’ve got to do something you were happy with all over again. 

I actually fudged over the planet area fairly well so there’s just a couple small things that are going to need reworking.. so in all reality it could have been much worse. 

So After that I started re-refining all the shade transitions on the gearwork and after I slopped a little shading on the planet guide beam thing I made up my mind to actually render out the gear works instead of the flat blue shapes.  

The base color for 2 of them done and some simple shading on the smaller one and a little detail and it’s a good stopping point.

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Short sharp turn in freetime utilization

Talking a couple days away from the biggo painting..  Kinda mentally stuck on what to do with the blues..

So I’m diving head first into another side project.  Which I spent the all of yesterday working on and plan on spending the evening on (after working out) to hopefully have a workable single level.

It’s all so much fun, it’s hard to pick just one project to focus on… Which, I guess, is why nothing ever gets ‘done’.

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Painting day 7 – Castle on the bottom

Well technically its day 8 but we’re not talking about the first attempt to paint the castle.   Next picture I do.. definatly no weird lighting.. standard 3 light..   Not 100% happy with it but Technically the blends on the castle are as good as they’re going to get until I get a bunch more practice.   I did a lot of blending and its still mostly luck wether I get the effect I want when I make a stroke..  sometimes the paint on the brush stays on the brush.. some times it decides to make a thick sharp stroke and sometimes it come out with this beautiful soft edged blend between what was already on the canvas and what’s on the brush..  

I guess that’s the whole ‘practice’ thing… 

Oh well here’s where things stand. 

painting day-7 castle-take-2

 

So Next up is the big blends on the sky.. that promises to be exciting.. but I need to buy some more pthalo blue and another tube of white and a thing of blending medium before I can tackle that.. 

So that means its Sunday at the earliest.. more likely i’m done til next week.

 

[Edit: almost forgot] 

Oh and here’s a picture of the palette at the end .. its actually kind of a fun texture and visual

painting-day-7-castle-take-2-plaette

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Painting – Day 5 Darkness falls.

It did waaay not flow easily today.  Not happy with it but its still an improvement so I guess that’s a plus.  

I’m going to need to buy some more blue paint before I start to play with the sunlit sky..   Gah  and I’ve used almost half a tube of white so far..  oh well.

Kinda weird tho.. I didn’t work on the parts I wanted to work on.. 

painting-day-4-darkness
Day 5 - The Darkening

{edit:  oops this was day 5}

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Painting- day 4

got a good 2 1/2 hours of slapping pigment around.. was nice but eventually aching feet and the palette told me it was time to call it a day.

 

when theres no more room on the palette its time to stop.
when theres no more room on the palette its time to stop.

I got 2 sides of the planet rendered… Not really happy about the empty hillside one… but not really sure what to add to it.  maybe something will come to me overnight.

painting-day-3-002

Kinda went totally ocd on the plantlife  (thanks wen) 

here’s a detail 

painting-day-3-005

Anyway.. it’s a good day’s progress i think.. tomorrow I’m seriously going to have to tackle the gears in the planet and figure out how to get things to work together.. oh well.

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Painting – day 3

Got a good couple hours in last night.  I was originally just going to put in the base colors for the earth and grass and block out the buildings… buuut.. I simply had to paint something instead of just filling in boring flat blocks of color.

I wound up having a great time, put on the headphones and tuned out the universe for 2 hours… bliss!

Anyway  here’s a crappy cellphone picture (color corrected in photoshop) (and the trees were still wet so that’s why theyre shiny.)

painting-day3
Day three- earth and grass
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Art weekend… succcess

Spent the weekend playing around with acrylics with Wendy.

Took the plunge and started on a big canvas..  It’s definitely a big project, maybe a little too big.. but it’s actually been a lot of fun so far..

first steps
first steps

here’s the (1) initial sketch done as a doodle during a meeting at work. (2) A brief color rough / enlargement done in about 20 minutes on the pc.  and (3) finally the first couple of scribbles to get it onto the freshly gessoed canvas.

art-weekend-002
Drawing on canvas.

Here’s a picture of the canvas with more of the sketch transferred.

Further blues

Laying down the base blue

Laying down the base blue
Further blues
Further Blues
And wrapping it up for the weekend
The Sun and Moon and the Stars
The Sun and Moon and the Stars

Not a bad start  Got most of the base colors for everything laid in..

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The end of the year.

So, It’s been a good year.  Overall… Though I’d say the first 7 months or so really…er.. sucked.. The last 5 have been absolutely spectacular.

The holiday’s are just about gone.  My christmas tree is still up and glorious and the presents are scattered around the house.  The remnants of nerf battles past lie scattered around in the corners.

The amazon wish list was a success Including an awesome score of a copy of Descent: journeys into the dark, Feersum Endjinn, a nice iPod alarm clock and other goodies!

But, it’s about time to start a pet project… and no time like the beginning of a fresh year to do so. Soo… I’ve cracked open some Ruby on Rails tutorials and am gearing up for the start of an actual development.  I need to crank out some milestones and a basic design guideline and then go from there.

But on the other hand… I did get some cool canvas boards that are just itching to get slathered with paint, not to mention my copy of painter has been doing good things.. so maybe that will distract me.. 

Boy, life is hard with too many hobbies… 🙂

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Playing Around With Painter

OOPs deelted this accidentally earlier.

Finally got around to watching some of my painter tutorials and just getting comfortable with the basic tools of painter.  Its way different from Adobe’s suite of tools but its finally starting to feel comfortable.  

Eventually I took this into photoshop to do some final tweaky bits and immediately it was noticeable how much extra work it is to introduce the texture in painting with photoshop.