Week 17 Ambles

 The lines for the second commission, my client's sister, are done. My next plan of action is to color the two that have been drawn and inked, and then do the third image for Week 18's art. Her sister is a cosmetics specialist, and my client said if her sister had a super-power she'd be like some sort of wonder woman saving people from bad make-up products. So...

Also I am proud to show that my Frida Kahlo painting is almost finished! Did I post the progress images here? I can't remember. All that's really left to be finished is her bow and her shirt. I have no intentions of doing anything further to her face and accidentally ruining it somehow.

Week 14 - Art-Ception!

This week I'm drawing a character who is drawing. Since I'm eager to start inking I just took a photo here at the school. Somehow everything is... bluish. I also wanted to attempt a different angle for anatomy practice's sake. I'll post my reference next time.

And more Liam Neeson-in progress goodness. I'm rather pleased with his shirt and aside from defining the edges better I have no intentions of touching it further and ruining it.

Week 13: A Howling Toddler and Liam Neeson

The bottom half of this seed of the underworld isn't cooperating so I'll draw her clutching the handle of the shopping cart and call it good. I'll also give the cart behind her more detail so it doesn't look like she's in a roller coaster. That would have been an acceptable reason for the unholy racket she was making.

I finished inking the other two drawings but they don't look much different than the last update. I will be coloring them digitally for the sake of tidiness and some people want prints of some of them.

Liam Neeson was not at the grocery store last Monday, but maybe if he had been the toddler would have been so in awe of his awesomeness that she shut up. Either that or my cousins and I would have been so distracted by his handsome visage that we wouldn't have noticed the constant siren wails.

I like how his face is coming along.

Week 10 Slept In

And as far as I'm concerned, Week 10 earned that extra sleep. I just dealt with the week of midterms and am looking forward to Spring break. Besides that I tried this drawing three times on paper before giving up and going with SAI. The last one was traditional media anyway so I might as well.

Also because of midterms, Week 10 is going to be sweet and simple. I'm going with a relaxing, comforting Father-And-Child image.

As for my painting, the professor suggested that the ax on the table was a little too obvious, and that instead having blood on the figure's hands would engage the viewer more. Also it saves me the trouble of trying to accurately represent a shiny metal surface so I'm fine with it.

Lastly for this entry, my latest printmaking assignment. Make no mistake that this class is still the ultimate low of my semester and the bane of my existence, but I'm doing what I can to stay a few steps ahead with it. I work outside of class a lot because when the instructor is around she's over-bearing and frustrating.

This is a copper-plate intalgio with lace used to make the background pattern.

Week 9 Is Looking Fine and Finished

Here she is in all of her semi-armless glory! It's common on character turn sheets for the side-views to be shown without the arm so that other details can be seen. I know, it looks really weird.

Also, I'm pleased with the progress on my Crime and Punishment painting. The lighting is cooperating beautiful and his skin looks consistent and smooth. There's still a lot to be done on the table items and his shirt but that shouldn't take too long. My class has an in-progress critique on Wednesday.

Week 9 Trips Into Action

This was actually started on Wednesday but I have yet to scan it, so I opted to take a photo before I added to it. The idea is to do a character turn-around chart as practice, since my ideal job would involve character design. My victim for this one is my purple-skinned alien Bit, whom I haven't drawn in a while.

The painting of Raskolnikov is also coming along well. I have a feeling it will turn out to be a strong piece, but I'm also waiting to be proven wrong.

Week 8 Is Dog Tired

Actually I'm not especially tired right now, nor am I tired of working on this but I ran out of bad dog jokes. I'm content with it and thus shall leave it as is. It's not meant to be perfect, just fun.

Also I've started my next painting. It's inspired by Crime and Punishment and will depict some symbolism Rodion Romanavich's inner conflict.

Week 7 Conks out and Week 8 Rises

Right now I'm caught between never wanting to see this painting again and seeing where I could easily come back and fix things. Due to poor Katniss' very masculine build here my professor thought it was a commentary on gender and could be a drag show or something of that variety. This made him happy, which is good, but that's honestly not what I want. I think when I come back to it I'm going to totally re-do all the places where you can see her skin as well as her hair. I do like her dress though.

Since I had the motivation and the extra time tonight, I started Week 8. Actually I re-re-started Week 8 after trying to put it on paper twice and failing miserably. Some things just have to be digital to work for me nowadays. That and after cramming a painting into six days I think I earned some tablet drawing.

The subject matter is fan art of a character I haven't drawn in a while. He's a werewolf of sorts and to me it would be a fun quirk if he communicated with dogs (including wolves) well enough to chill out with them. The wolves are possibly way too large, but that's deliberate.

Week 7 Crawls Towards the Finish

What I'm looking forward to the most this week is being finished with this painting. I took a break from it yesterday, which was a relief.  My eyes needed a rest from looking at all of the errors. This morning I did some touching up and added some flames that hopefully look like they are twirling with her dress. Tonight the game plan is to stay up until it's finished and then collapse into a satisfied heap in my bed.

Week 8 is going to be something fun and completely self-indulgent.

More of Week 7

This is growing incredibly boring. But, an assignment is an assignment. Also it came to my attention by staring at this painting too long that Katniss looks like a line-backer so I'm trying to slim her down considerably. This photo was taken with flash on so you could at least see more of it. The sad truth remains that there will only be a decent photo of it once it's in the studio at the school.

Week 7 Shuffles

There's not a whole lot added to this update, but there is some. It's difficult to time building up paint when the whole thing is drying slower due to the cold (oils dry faster in heat). But it is slowly turning into what it needs to. I'm confident in finishing by Wednesday. Tomorrow I hope to add the final highlights and low-lights to Katniss' skin and maybe start detailing her hair so it's actually visible. I took this one during daylight so the lighting is slightly less awful.

Week 7 Brightens Up A Bit

I apologize that this isn't as clear as I would like. My apartment has terrible electric lighting and I couldn't use natural light because it was dark outside when I took the photo.

Anyway, just blocked in some more details and the shape of the dress. Whoosh!

Week 7 Has A Late Start

The lack of updates over the past few days is due to school continuing to be a cruel mistress with high demands that are never met. These demands include having to start over on my painting for class. The other concept is actually too illustrative  and since it's a painting class, the piece needs to be universally readable, meaning you can make something of it whether you're "in" on the subject or not.

Though I'm going to take a different approach, The Hunger Games will still be the subject matter. I'm keeping the other painting because I like it for what it is, but since I have until Wednesday for my second attempt, it's going to be the Weekly Art this time.

The new idea is a portrayal of Katniss in her interview dress, doing the awesome twirl that shows the fake fire effect. You can see (maybe) an animated GIF of that here.

Week 6 Drags Its Feet

This week has been busy with little time (or motivation) to work on the poster for the contest. I toyed with giving up but after coming this far I will make myself finish even if I don't like it enough to enter it on March 2nd. Hopefully the girl looks more "Disney Princess" than "anime girl".

Also, started adding Katniss and Peeta to the top of the painting. She looks weird and blobby right now but hopefully once I add more highlights and detail to her hair so you can actually see it, she'll look better. Also the numbers are more annoying than I expected.

This is Not for Week 5

No, indeed it is not. It is, however, my current painting project for class. It's another conceptual book cover, this time for The Hunger Games. It's going to be far more symbolic than the last one, but the book itself uses a lot of symbolism.

The Roman numerals will all be white with dripping blood in them (hey it's a very macabre book), and there will be a forest on fire at the top with silhouettes of Peeta and Katniss at the top of the "clock" where the 12 is. I'm considering using a bow and arrow for the clock hands.

None of that probably makes any sense at all unless you've read the book or seen the movie, but I'll explain it more as the painting progresses and makes more sense in and of itself. Also my canvas was lop-sided when I took the photo. The numbers need work but they are straighter than that.

Week 4 Dusts Itself Off

 My Toshiba laptop of five years, Marvin, more or less passed away on Friday. He was a good computer, and far outlasted his planned obsolescence. Granted this was mainly due to my continually and stubbornly replacing parts on him. He will be missed, especially right now as I'm in the limbo of awaiting his replacement.

Right now I'm using my cute little back-up laptop. It's an HP mini that's mostly just used when Marvin is out of commission or when I'm really feeling the multitasking mojo. Alas, his 9X5 inch screen and small amount of RAM is not meant for graphic-heavy tasks like Paint Tool SAI, so I've had to take a different route with Week 4.

Basically I printed out what I had so far, transferred it onto clean paper with carbon paper, and inked it. Tonight and tomorrow will be the coloring phases and hopefully it will be finished on Wednesday as I intended. This is a photo of the paper so hopefully by then I'll have a better means of putting it on my computer too.

The Waterhsip Down painting, however, is finished. Hazel looks much better now and less like a donkey-guinea pig hybrid. I also tried to make the roots look more dirty and like part of the ground rather than just mutant worms.

My next painting is going to be a sort of symbolic image for The Hunger Games.

Week 4.3

There's not much to say today other than that I will be fixing that poor rabbit's face as soon as I can. It looks like a cross between a donkey and a guinea pig right now.

Also my space bar needs to start behaving better.

Week 4.2

After last week's blog titles it looks like it would just be easier to use lyrics from a different song each week because I clearly lack the motivation and energy to give them decent titles most of the time. Will make note of this for Week 5...

For now, however, I made an acceptable amount of progress on the anatomy comparison. Somewhere between last Spring semester and this one I clearly forgot how to draw legs, however. Clearly it's time to sit down and draw two pages of nothing but legs so it's beaten back into my memory.

Also the painting is back, for better or worse. It figures that the most important part is the most challenging. Sigh. We have an in-progress critique tomorrow.

By the way, I typed this entry around a cat who is very insistent upon having her cuddles. You're welcome.

Week 3 Is Looking for Adventure...

...or whatever comes its way. I wasn't going to try and use that part of the line in a title by itself.

Something is still off about this lovely man's lips, which is why they aren't inked. They'll probably remain that way and just be implied with shading and color. I'm still undecided about the rest of the car interior but I really don't want to draw it. Maybe a nice medium gray background will make it unnoticeable how lazy I am.

Also, here's more or less the big reveal of the painting. It's a cover for Watership Down by Richard Adams. The rabbit (Hazel) won't be black when it's done, but with oils the key is to start dark and build up the light colors, so black seemed like a good way to sketch him in. He might also need to be larger.

I also added some more realistic trees in the background and put highlights on the roots, though they might need some toning down. They're a bit distracting.

Week 3 Heads Out on the Highway

You're probably seeing what I'm doing there with the titles for this week. Supernatural fan art is involved, I can't help it.

The only thing that still looks off about Dean is his mouth, but the lips will be less pronounced when it's finished and I'll move them a bit and that should solve things. Yes, he's looking out the window of his car but it's undecided how much of the interior I'll bother drawing.

The painting has made quite a leap just with the roots in the hole and the start of the lights and darks as well. Don't worry, the roots will have shades and highlights so they look less like veins/possessed worms/something else horrific.

And no, Amanda, it's not a cover for "Fraggle Rock". You're getting colder. ;)