FFvi mood

Made the leg too short.

Unicorn Cavalry

Quick sketch after work. Haven't done High Fantasy in a while. Was listening to some Two Steps from Hell and got inspired. Unicorn Cavalry charging? Had this funny idea that only pure maidens can ride them, but once they actually killed someone, they got thrown off. Maybe these unicorns don't have to be stereotypical?

Frazetta Study

Just working on some basic colors and studies from the master.

Art at Joe's

Finally got some figure drawing in! Been a few months and I am rusty as hell. Great mobel tonight. Every pose was beautiful and I tried to do her justice as best I could. This is probably my best for the night. I need to concentrate more on linework and form. This was after I switched to a TomBow pen, which I should have been using from the beginning. Another pen I used just butchered everything. Ah well. There is always next week.

Art at Joe's

Keep Going!

Female Run-Cycle

Been wanted to get into some animation, so I've been studying up on some run-cycles. I think I'm getting a little better. Critiques welcome.

Study of a White Ball

Study of a white ball that I did. It’s alot harder than it looks! White spheres are a pain in the butt!

Two hours 
Oil on canvas

Color Study

Just a color study of the sketch I was talking about before.

Corel Painter 11

Painting Class 6.15.2011

My latest study of planes of the head. Here is an earlier version.

And the final.

Oil on canvas pad
Class at Binders with Charles Walls

Thumbnailing

I've been off the horse for a bit here. Busy with my job and probably working too hard outside of work. Anyway, I've been thumbnailing some ideas and here is one of my better pages. I've had this idea for a zeppelin docking bay for around a year now and I'm gonna try to make it happen :-)

Playing with Light

Did some plein air with a model today. Probably one of the hardest things I've ever painted. The lighting changed every three minutes, so I had to work from my imagination a lot. It was a ton of fun though and I got to meet some amazing artists and models. Wish this was a two-day deal!

Plein air part two.

Went out with some guys from work today to work on my painting some more. We were doing pretty well until we were attacked my mosquitoes. Looks like it's that time of year again. Where did spring go!?

Painting all afternoon!

Got off work and went plein-air painting, then came home and worked on a self-portrait that I started over the weekend. I'm pooped.

Painting Simple Shapes

I'm trying to get back to foundations and this is one of my attempts. So the thing about painting simple things is that they're not that simple. This guy turned out to be a pretty good challenge. I'm getting better at mixing compliments to make various shades of neutrals. Work has trained me pretty well with saturated colors and painting class is getting me better at desaturating.

Plein air at Flatrock Park

Went home for easter and did some painting at flatrock park. Haven't worked with oil for a few weeks now and it shows. Need to practice more.

Painting class

Here is my latest painting. I wanted to upload the underpainting last week, but it was stuck in the trunk of my car that was getting worked on. Should have taken a picture when I had a chance. Anywho, not bad for two classes, but I need to work on some more things.

Palette and Chisel

Went to figure drawing at Palette and Chisel in Chicago. Pretty cool place and a lot of fantastic art and artisits. I'll try to post a link when I get home and can access my computer. Doing all of this from my phone. It's so cold up here! Here are some of my better drawings.

Painting Update

Just an update to a painting i'm working on. Need to add some more color.

Another Painting Update

Been busy as hell at work lately and I'm forcing myself to take a moment and breathe! Here is my latest update to my still-life. Next week I'm really going to make that flower pop!

Color Theory Pt. 2!

I'm SO TIRED. So what do I do when I'm exhausted? Take a nap? No. I take a break from drawing and painting and look more into color theory! So yeah, I know I'm a little obsessed with this whole color thing, and I know that there really isn't any way to prove it one way or the other, but I thought I'd take a crack at it. By the way, if anyone really is interested in color theory, get James Gurney's book, Color and Light. It will open your mind! 

So here are some experiments that I did with some oil pigments. Trying to adapt pigments to the RGB and CMY color wheel really is hard because I lack a control. You could also say that these experiments work for the Munsell Wheel, and that'd be fine because both color wheels are pretty interchangeable.

So how do you create a control? Well, I need a primary color and a secondary color and I seemed to lack  either/or. Probably the closest color I could come to recreating was Yellow. I mixed Cadmium Yellow and Cadmium Yellow Lite (Cadmium Yellow light probably would have worked just fine). Cadmium Yellow Lemon, although brighter and more saturated, just seemed way too cool to be a pure yellow. I proceeded to mix yellow with Permanent Violet (purple was always taught to be the compliment of yellow in school) and got a brownish color, not a pure gray.

I tried Ultramarine Blue and Cadmium Yellow next. Many people online have said that Ultramarine Blue is close to true RGB Blue in hue. This is not so. Of course, I got green. I know RGB Blue is a very warm blue, so I mixed Ultramarine with Permanent Violet and then mixed that with my True Yellow concoction. Eureka! I got gray! (the mixture looks a little too violet on my tray because I didn't mix the blue and violet very evenly on the left side). I did a few more tests with Ultramarine Blue and several yellows, Yellow Ochre being the closest, but still too green to be a gray.

Red was next. I don't have cyan, so again, I had to improvise. Gurney says Phthalo Cyan is the closest thing to true cyan, but that only comes in watercolor. I mixed Viridian and Verditer Blue (Cerulean Blue and Titanium White). I know RGB Red is a warm red…orangish, so I used Cadmium Red Lite. Remember, Lite doesn't mean it's a lighter tint, it means it leans toward the yellows. Deep leans toward the reds. My mixture made gray!

I also did some orange tests, even though orange is a tertiary color for RGB and CMY. Cerulean Blue and Cadmium Orange takes the cake.

Magenta. Where to begin? I tried my Rose Violet, but it's just too warm for Magenta. It's a shame, because I love using magenta to paint digitally. It mixes so well with reds and blues. I also don't have a green. I used a Viridian and Sap Green hybrid. Oh well. I gave up on that one.

So, what did I learn out of all of this besides the fact that purple and yellow are not compliments and that the RYB color wheel doesn't work? I think I learned that it really doesn't matter. You're never going to need three colors to make all the colors, so who cares? As long as you have a good set of paint, and know what colors are next to what and what combinations make gray, you'll do fine. It doesn't matter what is primary because the true gamut is so far beyond what pigments can actually reach, you might as well just remember that all color is relative. In fact, that is the golden rule: All color is relative…period.