Paperface Thumb

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

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.

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.

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.

Lion's Pride