Tuesday 9 November 2010

Onnaboat

The Animation students at Durham College started a weekly drawing challenge via Facebook and it looks like the instructors are invited to participate. First up was a pirate pin-up.

I gave myself an hour to turn this around -- which is still more time that I could really afford. Started with a quick sketch:

Then I played with it in photoshop until time was up:

I prefer my Belit from a few years back for a sexy pirate, but I'm a little wary of putting any sort of pin-up style nudity over on facebook.

Monday 1 November 2010

International Self Portrait Day, 2010 - Final

Seven hours from photo reference. Worked 12x12@300dpi.

I ended up fixing most of the problems I was having in Painter using the water rake blender before popping it back into Photoshop and continually tweaking the values (popping in and out of greyscale).

I'm so used to making tight greyscale images and digitally colorizing them into paintings I really don't know what I'd end up with it I tried acrylics or oils again.

International Self Portrait Day, 2010

I have too much other stuff to do, but I really hate myself when I miss this!

I was commanded to not do another moody/gloomy self-portrait this year, so I have to use photo-reference otherwise I really can't draw myself happy. Not sure why I can't. Perhaps it's some sort of emotional shortcoming or I just can't maintain the same happy look long enough to draw it.
So, me happy in my studio.


Started doing my tonal study and realised how late it was already getting. Last year I think I started much earlier and had time to do a tighter tonal rough to scan and paint over.

Decided I didn't have time and thought I could fix things while working in Photoshop and maybe Painter.

Scanned, colorized and the starting of painting. Decided it needed some other light shape compositionally. Colors need much, much more work. I might try to get that same washed-out look as the ref since I'm not too experienced painting skin with that much light in it.


Going to run some filters, adjustment layers and variations then port it over to Painter for a bit (primarily for the water rake and other blenders) and see what transpires.

Got four hours left. . . .