A short break

Well, school is finally out for the summer! Yeah, I am finally free... woot!

I have set some goals that I want to achieve over the summer in the world of art. My goals include finishing a few paintings that were started during the school semester that were never finished due to time and other projects. Both of these were for my Illustration Media Techniques class. Up to this point I am very excited about these two pieces because I feel that they have a lot of potential to be very good. I really want to post them, but I will refrain from doing so until I think they are done and presentable.

One of my other goals is that I want to work on portraits. I went and bought some canvases to work on. I want to get about 6 or 7 done over the summer. I even have the subjects all picked out, but I will not say who they will be at this point for fear of ruining the surprise. In case you didn't guess, I will be working from photo reference on these, but I think that will actually be a benefit to me because I can spend the time necessary to make sure they are good without the need to have someone sit for hours on end while I paint them.

And finally, I bought a new 6x8 Intuos3 Wacom Tablet. This has to do with my final goal. I want to learn to use it effectively and try my hand at digital painting. So far I am not very good at it and need to work on my control. The pen feels a little odd at first and I need to get used to the way it feels on the tablet surface. I am trying the different pen tabs to see if they make a difference, and I may even try taping a piece of paper over the tablet area to try and simulate the feel of actually drawing on paper. I have also started tweaking the setting to make it respond better to how I use it. Anyway, this will be fun and I am looking forward to playing with it more. So, in the future you may start seeing digital paintings here as well as all the other stuff I have been posting.

Anyway, that is all for right now. I have been taking a break for a few days, but I will be getting back to work on painting/drawing tomorrow.

Lady Walking Dog in Crosswalk

Acrylic. 9" x 12" on Canvas. 2007.

I really ended up liking this piece. It has some problems, but overall I like the composition, the colors and the feel. The picture didn't quite capture the true colors, and so it this peview isn't as nice as the real piece.

This was one of the two final pieces for my Illustration class. This project was to make a composition with multiple figures in an urban environment.

What Is Your Time Worth?

Acrylic. 9" x 14" on Illustration Board. 2007.

This is one of the final two illustrations that I did for my Illustration class this semester. I am not completely happy with this piece, but it was fun trying a new style. I think a lot of things worked, but not enough to make it feel like it is complete. But oh well, I had quite a bit of painting that I had to squeeze into a short amount of time and so it was only natural that something would suffer, and this one is the one.

Not my best work, but definitly not my worst.

Ladyhawk

Adobe Illustrator. 1997.

This piece was done for a friend of mine. She asked me to illustrate a character from a story she was writing. So, I got all the information about her character and this was the final piece. The only complaint I had was the character actually had red hair... oh well, that is what you get for free.

I was actually quite happy with the final results. I did quite a few sketches for it, and after deciding on the final piece I simply drew it in Illustrator. I did not scan the image to get the lines into the program, I just created it from looking at the sketches. I have since found that I like to do the sketches in a book and then scan them in. It really helps with speed and accuracy. Now, If I can just get around to buying a scanner so I don't have to always use the one at school...

Sunset in Watercolor

School is finally coming to an end, and as a result I have been pretty busy trying to get all my final projects done and ready to be turned in. But, since none of them are in any sort of finished state I thought I would share another of my paintings that I did a few years ago.

This painting is watercolor on Strathmore, 18"x24", 1998. I actually painted this at school, not as a project, but because I had an idea and wanted to see if I could portray it. Anyway, the idea had to do more with the trees, and how they are a silhouet for the most part. I wanted to see if I could reproduce that in watercolors. This was the result. I actually like this painting, the water could use some work, but overall I think it is very pleasing.

In the future I think I will just start adding paintings that I have done whenever I am inbetween current pieces. This allows me to keep up to date on my postings, and allows me to continue to showcase my work (since that is the real purpose of this blog).