Friday, September 26, 2008

A Few More Hour's Work

And more progress on the digital portrait.

Here's after about a couple more hours' work -- I thought I'd show it with and without the sketch side by side for easier comparison. Having the sketch on top really showed me that I needed more darks. I've been trying not to be so hesitant with this portrait -- hence all the crazy colors, I guess.




And after a couple more hours of work, I've pretty much dispensed with the sketch -- it was covering more than helping. I'm still bringing it up, but less and less as work continues. I've also blocked in something remotely resembling the final background:





I'm hoping to be finished with it in a couple more days. If it doesn't finish me first.

Nah, I'm having fun.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Digital Painting! Mothers, lock up your computers!

Just to show I'm not being a complete bum: I've been playing around with the GIMP for digital painting, and have a couple progress shots of what I'm doing so far.

Without sketch:





With sketch (as a multiply layer overtop):





Trust me, they're less rubbishy than the oil paintings I've been doing lately. This is after about two and a half, or maybe three hours? I'm not sure, I haven't exactly kept track.

Just to prove I haven't just been sitting around baking cookies.

Ooh, cookies.

Um, gotta go.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

More Drapery

From drapery week. Graphite on sketch paper. I spent an hour and a half on it before I started to lose the light.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Drapery, sans Figure

I miss school already -- having just moved into our new house, and considering its distance to the campus -- well, there's no way. Short of teleportation.

Anyway, one of the things I've done this summer was to spend about a week studying drapery. I'd much prefer if the drapery were, well, draped around a figure, but one must adapt. Usually, in the figure-drawing class, we only get about twenty minutes per pose (thirty if we're extra-special good!), so I usually end up blocking in the figure and spending the majority of the time trying to capture the folds of the fabric. Twenty minutes just ain't enough to do it, sadly -- this little study took nearly two hours, and is a great deal smaller than what I normally work when I draw the figure.




Derwent Drawing Pencil (Chocolate) on manila paper, 7.75" x 10.5"


Although I must say, it was kinda nice to work with something that didn't need a break.