Warmth.

Revisited an old piece from my senior portfolio. I'm getting a better handle on a digital painting workflow for myself, at least for mostly character-based stuff. Things are feeling less...mushy.

I'd like to think that my skills have improved since I graduated college, and there were so many things about the original that bothered me over time. But looking back, while the technical execution was lacking in the original, the fundamentals of the value structure and colors were relatively sound. I'm sure over time I'll look at this and it'll bother me just like the original gouache version, but for now I'm mostly content.

Summertime.

A friend of mine said looking at this illustration made him want lemonade. I seem to get those kinds of comments more often than I expect; it's nice to know that my artwork can have that effect on people.

Goggles.

I’ve been participating in a Daily Draw challenge on the Satellite Soda forums (you can see my thread, as well as in-progress stages of this image here. )This started out as a random sketch that I decided I’d try to take a little further. I don’t really know how that coat works, but I kind of like it.

Study from a photo.

More Breeze in the Clouds art. Still trying to understand this environment thing...

A little indoor plein-air painting of the view out my window. That tree was just begging to be painted.

Some friends and I started a group daily sketch/doodle blog. Here are a few of the things I've posted there so far. These are on the messy side, but at least I'm back to drawing something every day.

My Digital Drawing from Observation class is one of my favorite classes. Not so much for the fact of what we do in the class (though I do enjoy the still lifes and figure painting), but for the atmosphere.

It's so quiet.

Usually my studio classes are filled with some combination of the chatter of conversation, the sound of lecture, and music filling the empty spaces. It's a lively symphony of noise, and as nice as that can be...

....there's a beautiful sense of tranquility in the relative silence of my Fridays in Digital Drawing. No music, very little conversation. Just the quiet hum of computers and the soft scratching of pens on tablets. Sometimes there will be the muffled sounds of someone else's music on their headphones. Not that we're not allowed to play music, I think people just become so focused on their work that they don't really notice the lack of music.

That's what's so great about this class. The concentrated focus, the zen-like state of being in the zone. I know I've said this before, but it's really quite relaxing to turn off the boiling, churning forces of imagination once in a while and simply observe and analyze. And keep those basic foundational skills of drawing and painting sharp in the process.

I got a chance to refine one of the speedpainted skulls from a previous session.

The great thing about painting digitally is that you don't have to paint over any silly stuff you find yourself doing when you get bored with what you're working on. :)

I realize I haven't posted in a while....school's been busy this semester! Here's some stuff I've been working on...

For senior portfolio, my theme is "Slices of Life"; basically slice-of-life style narratives revolving around food. This is the first piece I've completed for it. Untitled for now, I haven't been able to think of a good title for it. Mostly just been referring to it as the 5 panel piece. Gouache on illustration board.

The full size piece is fairly big (full size of painted area, not including the border, is about 25 in x 8.5 in) makes it hard to get good pictures of it since there's so much small detail.

Detail shot of the middle panel.

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I'm also taking book illustration this semester. Our first project was to create a few pages from an alphabet book. My theme was travel, so each page is designed like a travel poster. Gouache on bristol board, ink for the letters.

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 Also taking a digital drawing from observation class, working entirely in Corel Painter. It's been a while since I've painted from observation, and even longer since I've painted still lifes, so it's been kind of relaxing in a way to spend a few hours just painting what I see. There's thought and analysis involved, but not as much as when I'm trying to make up stuff, so the painting seems to go faster. 

Also, I rarely get much opportunity to work in Painter, so getting the extra instruction and time to experiment has been nice. The "dessert snake" piece was done over the course of 2.5 class sessions. The skulls were done in about half a class session each.