Monday, May 30, 2011

Tiara of the Phoenix


Here's another gouache I finished last night. It's 4x6" on 300gsm w/c paper.

Girl in Poncho Thumb

One I did the other day, couldn't help myself with the coloured pencils :D

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Paperface Thumb


And here's another from today.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Vulture


Here's another gouache study I did last night.

Paperface Thumb


I was a little unproductive last week but here's another "paperface" from our local newspaper.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Still Life Thumbs


This is some childs plaything that attaches to the end of a pencil...what the heck do they call those things anyway?




Just love these old wooden dices.







Monkey, monkey, monkey!



Ok, so this ain't a still life but his face made it on the front page of our local newspaper. I love the wrinkels and large nose and ears of the elderly...such character in thier faces!

Eowyn and the Nazgul: Finished


So here is my effort for the Artorder challenge. Have to say I did learn a few things while doing this painting.
My outlook on how to increase my skills and knowledge about painting has change also. Trying to learn to paint on your own is a pretty hard slog, and knowing which direction to take can be a mystery, or illusive to say the least. But as they say 'painting is an old man's trade" so I'll keep gnawing away at it...no matter how long it takes. Anyway, I have a few experiments I have to try out soon with my paints, so keep watching and I'll post them in the near future.

Eowyn and the Nazgul: Almost done.


Well, at this stage I'm really close to the deadline so I'm doing my best to get most of it done.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Eowyn and the Nazgul: The Background.






Well, it's that moment where I throw on the colour. I have to admit I was starting to worry as I wasn't sure if I knew how it would look but throwing caution to the wind I kept at it. There was one stage I wasn't sure how to blend the dark clouds into the blue sky and decided to leave it for awhile. When I was outside feeding our animals, I looked up and studied the clouds for a bit and found my answer there, doh!


On my preliminary drawing I added in Minus Tirith to work out the perspective and placement. Once done, I used tracing paper to transfere it over onto my painting. I dry brushed some raw umber on the back of the tracing paper and then carefully placed it over my painting. I then ran a pencil over the lines which left small traces of raw umber lines of Minis Tirith...wahlah!


So here I've started on the Nazgul's wings...and still a long way to go.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Preliminry Sketch for Eowyn and the Nazgul





Here is the preliminary sketch for the Eowyn vs. the Nazgal. As you can see it looks a little bare without the details but I'm not concerned at this point, as I can add that later in as I go. The main compositional elements are there for me to begin.




The next step is to take my drawing and transfer it to my oil sketch paper(Canson). I'm fortunate to have a huge light box which was an old cigarette advertising display. I've had this packed carefully away for several years untill I had room to put it somewhere, now it's in my "studio"...if you could call it that :D




The last step before the real fun starts is the underpainting. Here I use burnt sienna, I've always used this because I love it for it's warm undertones, especially under flesh colours.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011