Cloaked

Random sketch of the night.
mmmh...steamy...

Roadside

Thumbnail of an old idea finally seeing the light of day, or rather a flashlight.

The dance

Found a direction and put in a little bit more time today. Channeling Brian Froud...





















and a close-up

Start

Here's the start of something...I tend to start a lot of things and take forever to finish, hopefully this won't be the case here. I still don't know what I'm doing yet, so that might be a problem though.

In the land of the red earth

you'll find the red Buddha. I didn't quite capture the mood I had wanted, so I will have to further this idea.

Warning! Likeness not guaranteed.

Life drawing from Monday night. I wasn't able to made it last week, so I was glad I was there this week. We had a great model, very lean and so I was able to observe muscle in action. This was the 3rd male model I've ever drawn and I have to say, it was a nice break from the female form.

I notice while doing the longer sessions, I relied more on shorter, angular strokes rather than fluid lines. I don't know if it's because I'm drawing a lean male form or if I'm just working differently. I was a bit anxious to do some long lines, but it just didn't work out. I mostly used the side of the charcoal stick to indicate the lines, rather than drawing them.

I'm kind of disappointed with the one holding the stick; I got a bit lost there.

Through the woods

Working on my environments. An obvious theme.

OC Portrait

This is the file to one of the first sketches at the beginning of my blog. It was done in OpenCanvas, but I decided to record it so that you wouldn't have to download the right program to see it. It's kind of choppy, sorry about that.

Aarrg

Ooh-la-la

Colored a couple of pencil sketches the other day:]

Snooty Alice

Another version, I'm trying to get comfortable with pencil again. Ironic, since not so long ago I was trying to get comfortable drawing with the tablet, and now that I am I'm trying to go back. The frustrating endless cycle continues...

Pencil, colored with Photoshop.

Alice

Just for fun, not much designing really. A couple of versions. Done with photoshop.

Even more life

What can I say, I haven't been do much to show, so on with more life drawings from the nights before. I've been learning a lot by doing these, very glad I decided to go to these sessions. I would highly recommend it to everyone. You can't beat having a living, moving person in front of you to work from.

Tangerine

9x12in
Oil on canvas.


This piece was done about a month ago for a show. I'm still waiting for the weather to get better to do some plein air, but it doesn't look like it for awhile. Usually, it's summery by now in Iowa, but it's been raining for two days straight. Whatever happened to global warming?

Sargent and Cecilia

Quick studies of John Singer Sargent and Cecilia Beaux's paintings. I was at the Chicago Art Institute museum a couple of months ago and stayed around these two for some time.
I also caught the exhibitions on Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper. It was overwhelming how many paintings there were, especially Homer's, I liked his watercolors the most. I wasn't very familiar with his work, so that was an awesome introduction. Too bad taking pictures wasn't allowed.

More life

From Monday night. I had forgotten my eraser that night, and although I don't use it often, I was still pretty nervous all night. I will have to do it more often.
The last two were 4 minutes each, and the line drawing was 1.
Charcoal.

In Oils

This one was done using on of the digital sketches as reference. Shown in actual size.
Oil on masonite

From Demo

I did a digital painting demo last night at the gallery where I show work. I had a great time just painting and answering the odd questions then and again. It got a bit repetitive, as I had expected, but it was great to see so many happy faces when they find out they can do this with photoshop. I also found out was I more comfortable painting in public than I realized.
A lot of portraits, of course. The last one was from life and the rest were from my imaginings.

Life Drawings

Been keeping the old noggin sharp by going to a weekly life drawing group. These were from the most recent one. They were around 20~25 minutes each. I might post the quicker ones sometime.
All done with charcoal. 18x24in

Madame X

Me like Sargent a lot

Photoshop CS2

A dryad

A work in progress, pretty far along, but still some ways to go. Might edit out some branches, add critters...