ArtCtrl

I’m currently filling up a sketchbook but won’t post images from it till I’m back in Levin where I can scan in the works.

For now I’ll like to post some older paintings and reflect back on them.

This was a quick landscape that I gave to my brother, Luke for Christmas. Looking at the now makes me want to take the colored pencil landscape sketches from my journal into paint. I still have several large boards of wood in Levin that I need to do something with. I think landscapes will be best but certainly need to focus on more detail and concepts with the new paintings. A oil painting that I painted one year ago. My Nana and Grandad on their wedding day. Last time I tried painting portraits it didn’t go so well and I ended up painting over with a landscape. When I’m back in Levin everything will be fresh and I’ll like to perhaps work on a portrait.

Oil painting of my sisiter. Sadly I lost this painting - it just disapeared from my home. I have no idea where it ended up. I hope it is hanging in someones bedroom or lounge as I was quite proud of it and would hate for it to be chucked out. This was a large portait I worked on of my Nana, explored transparency with building up layers of paint. Currently this painting is sitting in my Mums room as I gave it to her for xmas. I seem to give away all my paintings.

Getting towards the end of the portait. My pallette and brush that I painted the majority of the painting with is to the right.

More paintings later in the week…

I’m currently in the South Island. I left my laptop and Wacom tablet behind - I needed a break from them. Too long I spent working on the laptop, not getting much done. When I return it will be fresh.

I do have a A4 visual diary that I am planning to fill up on my trip. So far I’ve mostly just drawn 3d figures from imagination. On Saturday me and my Uncle Donald attended a drawing class. Portraits was the focus. I spent two hours drawing portraits of my Uncle. The tutor - Kare had exercises for the class to do. Many of these exercise I had done before - such as blind contour drawings - and drawing with your opposite hand. One I hadn’t explored before was creating using the media to create planes of the face - darker for deep and lighter for forward. This was interesting - rather then looking at the light and dark look for where areas come forward. This is something from the class I’ll take away and experiment further.

The final drawing of the drawing class. I had drawn Donald several times and wanted to include someone else in the drawing. The woman beside Donald is a regular for the drawing class. I decided to include her into the drawing. Here she is drawing  the person oposite her.

The exercise for this was looking at the planes - darker for closer and lighter for further. It was a exercise I hadn’t explored before so great to give it a go.

This was spose to be one continious line. I tried my best to keep the line going but may have forgotten at times and taken my pencil off the page slightly. People commented in the nose. 

Blind contor drawing. Tried to add some colored pencil in there as well! Instead of just doing the portrait I wanted to include areas of the shirt as well.

I worked on this further afterwards, adding color and tone to areas. I know Dan is a big fan of this - keeping some areas loose and going in tighter in other areas.

The town I’m staying is Takaka. The hills are inspiring, tomorrow I’ll get out and the landscapes in the area. No point being stuck inside with Freeview and dialup Internet.

On Wednesday there is a life drawing class - 15 dollars for three hours. I haven’t had the chance to do any life drawing for a LONG time. 15 is quite expensive compared to the cheap 5 dollars at Vincents but what can I do!

So I’ve been in Takaka for several days now, and drawing every one of these. It’s been nice taking a break from Levin and being in a different setting.

Here’s some of the artwork that I’ve done out and about in Takaka:

I drew this yesterday morning when up Pig Gully - my Uncle owns a mountain there. We drove up, giving the dogs a run. Once at the top I stood around for sometime before realizing there was a cold wind, and decided to get back in the car. This is a drawing of the view from the car. Sadly I didn’t bring my green colored pencil with me so had to use yellow instead of green. 

Another drawing from yesterday. This was in Takaka town district after I had lunch with a wonderful woman - Victoria Davis and her Mother (her mother is in a wheelchair and reminded me greatly of Nana). Lunch was delicious - I had a flat white, salad, and wedges. Great to catch up with Victoria and met her Mother.

After lunch Victoria headed off and I stayed in town. May as well enjoy the beautiful sunshine. I sat across from the building I had lunch - The Wheatmeal and drew the building. I love drawing buildings so much and I think i’m lucky to be able to document my trip with drawings rather then photographs. Drawings say much more then a photo ever will.

This is a view from the house I’m staying at. It was a beatiful sunny day so I decided to sit outside and draw the view. The hills are inspiring and this can only help my digital environments once I return to Levin. 

I want to show a sense of scale - by drawing objects in the distance as well as the foreground.  Sitting on a bridge in the morning I drew this of the mountains in the distance. The blue is spose to be white, but putting some color into it made it feel finished.

I sent some of my artworks to Catherine to work on as a collaborative project. She recently made the blog post - William Mckee to show the work.

Here’s the result of her doings:

I love the story telling elements that’s in this piece. Two characters, the left one pull on the mask, when it comes out they are both wearing it. My work lacks this storytelling elements, so it’s great to see Catherine work at this. All this needs is more development - maybe color and detail - especially to those characters. Background could be developed further as well - adding them into some sort of environment.

Wonderful control over the line work, something I feel is weak in my work (normally I paint rather then draw with digital). That fine line work is something I need to work on - using my whole arm to create the line rather than just my wrist.

I wish I had my tablet with me to work on this further, but I have to wait till I’m back in Levin. Two and a bit weeks till I return.

Hello. This week I’ve felt very lazy in terms of artwork. Still no Blender works, but at least I got into some GIMP work. I want to go back to reference images and develop my digital painting further. I get distracted bad, and sleep too much. Sigh. I’m heading down to the South Island later this week with no computer, just my sketchbook. I’m looking forward to sketching the Island, should be exciting.

Here is some digital work I have been doing:

I had fun with this. I used an early attempt to warm up before progressing onto this.I focused on an area. Roger Key would always suggest this - that It’s better to focus on a smaller area and get it right over working a large area and making a mess.

So I focused on the mountains in the background, and trees in the foreground. Of course I didn’t stick to these and the image changed completely, but the main point was still kept - focus.

Taking these studies from my sketchbook into digital will work better for me then working from photographs.

I wasn’t going to upload the warm up, but really I should be uploading all the artwork I do, even if I’m not a fan. Here you go: Background turned out to be a dark red as it was the color selected when creating a new layer. I kept it there instead of switching it to a mid gray, working a mid gray over top. It was going great at first. I’ve had problems with the white and back. It just isn’t mixing together. It just wasn’t working so I gave up and created a new one…. and that worked great. I like to treat these like gestural drawings… something thats good to do but at the end of the day I’m going to screw it up and throw it away (not really true as I tend to keep all my life drawings - my room is full of brown paper some dating back to 2010).

The reference I used for the previous paintings. This was in Upper Hutt mid 2011. It was during one of the class trips - Dans Friday Class. Wonderful class, the life drawing and trips were the best bits. Both something TLC must do more of!

And finally here’s some sketches I did in GIMP to warm up. I’m not sure if I’ll work on them further but just sketching and treating digital like a sketchbook works well for me. Allows me to practice ideas and creative thinking.

It’s Wednesday. Today I need to organize my trip down South. I was planning on heading down Saturday but have needed to change to Thursday. I’ll try to schedule some posts when I’m gone so this blog isn’t left empty.

Have a good day.

When I was in Wellington I visited DeviantArt.com and went on the DrawPlz forums. It has been months since I’ve worked from them… it was fun.. something different and fresh.

Draw the item to your left. This was when I was sitting at a Bench… so had an empty cup of tea and my 2nd moniter setup. The lack of different brushes (or custom!) is limiting. Also I don’t have the pressure working on the DA Client…. Must be able to config it to work though

Someones Rabbit type creature that I drew. Practicing envroiments in the background with the long blue marks. This could be worked up further with a lighter blue color to contrast with the dark blue. Other colors wouldn’t hurt either - yellows and reds.

And finally a portrait of someones character. Out of all the paintings I did on DA, this is my favorite.

I still have yet to scan in my sketchbook to Wellington. I started it over the weekend but had problems with the format. A jump drive would do me well… or at least get cloud storage sorted… I should be able to use my webhosting for it.

More updates later in the week….

So back in Levin after the Wellington trip. I havn’t gotten alot done since I’ve gotten back. Mostly rested and cooked a little. I’ve started getting into a route with digital painting. I’ll get there

Attempting to apply a few techniques from Bridgman - Guide To Drawing From Life. I looked though it when in Wellington City Library and back home got hold of a digital copy (though a physical book would be great). I’ve mostly been working in a new visual diary, making copys of his drawings. I’d like to do the same with digital drawings.

Portrait practice. Was inspired to try a new color palette. It’s very different to what I usually work with. Needs more yellows.

Exploring the robot. Yellow and reds on the figure are familiar. Plenty of focus on the environment - sketches of areas.

I have drawings in my visual diary that I should upload. Thought I’d better upload something tonight, and this was the only art I had done.

Hello thest

Took a break from Unity today and worked on just digital painting. I also left the house and went for a trip to Upper Hutt. The view overlooking the Hutt was quite stunning. I got a friend to take some photos so I have some new reference for digital painting.

These are all much the same as my recent digital works. Keeping with the single layer and 60% to 80% opacity. conceptart.org has been a big inspiration… I’m inspired to better my artwork because of the works I see on the site. Practice, practice, practice!

Using the same colors and ideas throughout these paintings helps create a series and harmony. Feng Zhu suggests working on multiply paintings… so I do!

My least favorite of the bunch. Might be the angle I don’t like. But something about this I don’t like. It’s just not working.

Here’s a lapse of these digital paintings. No sound sorry.

Some of the process of the paintings is missing, but the video shows the switching between paintings. I’m going to produce more of these videos - I’m just having trouble with file sizes and types. I’m using the software CamRecorder but it saves as .avi - making it useless to take into Windows Movie Editor (crappy I know, but it works for me). I’d like it if CamRecorder was able to save it as a compressed movie file that I was able to edit in Windows Movie maker. If anyone knows how to do this - please let me know.

Tomorrow I’ll be heading into Wellington for two days - I’ve been in the Hutt. I’m looking forward to heading back to Levin. The Hutt has been fun… but so cold.

I’ll try to get in some digital painting tomorrow… and maybe some sketches in my sketchbook I have taken some photos of recent sketchbook work and just need to upload to the blog. I havn’t put up any traditial drawing works for ages so it’s about time. I do like working digital though - it’s fast, cheap, and not messy (not that working colored pencils is messy@)