Watercolour Moody Portrait.

Ive been watching a lot of lecuian freud recently and i understood that he wanted to portray a sense of feeling into his paintings and in this one i was a bit moody and frustrated because i couldn't get the watercolour to work. Then a woman came upto me and said i was doing it all wrong. How could i be doing it wrong its art and its about expressing yourself. I believe that a good artist can portray anything they want into a painting and still get a likeness of the model. I cant tell its me and so did others when they saw it. anyways once i got past the frustration i started to experiment with all kinds of colours and sorts and i began enjoying my painting a whole lot more. I still need to learn a ton about watercolour but i cans ee more coming in the future as i really enjoy this type of work and get a great sense of stimulation from it.

Concept Cookie Mother Nature Challenge

I found a good concept website calle concept cookie and they usually have some little challenges going on here and there and To push me into actually making some work i thought well why not try on of the challenges. 

This wa sa mother nature challenge concept so i decided to go for the whole giving birth to life kind of situation. The mother is represented by a goose because for some reason "Mother Goose" came into mind and i thought it worked quite well :).

I made a few custom brushes for the trees and tried to play around with more cool colours for this drawing because i feel that nature is more cool than warm

Master Studies

These are my first attempts at some master studies, the first set is learning some composition done in just  black and white and second is some colour studies. It was a very good practice in terms of being able to pick colours and understanding just how the masters did them.

First attempts and they do need some improvement and i really really need to learn to just calm down and stop trying to push it so fast and really sit back and focus on what i am actually looking at rather than quickly get it done and move onto the next one.

The portrait at the bottom i forced myself to take my time with it and i feel it came out well.

The nose

This is a few sketches of noses from learning the parts of the nose like the nasal bridge, wings and the lateral wall. To simplifying the nose into 3 basic shapes to remember for drawing in future sketches. I even studied how noses have changed onto different characters and tried to come up with a few of my own.

Museum Sketches

Yesterday i took my girlfriend ot the museum, however it was not just for the sake of looking at things. It was an opportunity to study things from life i did deliberately take longs breaks in between because i did want to see the museum because it was my first time there and i was late upon arriving. These sketches were about 5-30 mins each depending on how i felt but i learned a lot from these sketches.

Arm Study "Triceps"

This was a quick study of the triceps, the process here was actually drawing the bones first, the muscles 2nd and then adding a bit of tone and colour on top with some revision of naming the muscles.

Portrait Study

Another self portrait from the drawing class tonight

40 Minutes Arm Study

During my lunchtime break I decided to do a 40 minute arm study of the top half of the arm from different angles, unfortunately i couldn't find a full turn around but i do have it in my book back home so it will be on shortly.

Line Study - 20 mins

Tonal Study along with naming 20 mins

I definitely need to work more on my toning but the focal point here was the study of the arm and to be able to lay down the landmarks and remember the major muscle groups.

Self Portraits

Here are a few more slef portraits that i have done, these have been 1 every week, i feel like i am getting better every time i do these.

Owl in Watercolour

Just a quick sketch of an owl in watercolours

Candle Light

This was sketch of a candle in a dim lit pub what i really like about this piece is the reflection on the table and the glass structure. However the actual candle itself could do with some improvement i could have tried to bring out more of the value to me it seems to be a bit flat and doesn't have that roundness to it.

Saturday Morning Landscape Sketch

I drew today in the morning i was walking to work and past it on my way so i thought about coming back here to try a painting of the clock tower. I don't really paint a whole lot of landscapes in fact ive only ever donw about 3 in my time. There is a definite need of improvement for example perspective and even trying to identify values in landscapes.

Colour Study 25 Mins

This was a very quick sketch i did in my friends house while he was making his dinner the goal of this one was again a colour study but it was to grasp the cool colours coming from the left which was indeed an open window coming to near night time.

Portrait Sketch

When i came home last night i decided to do a very quick sketch of myself its not particularly pretty but i feel tat i managed to grasp the colours coming from both sides of my face, If there is one thing i don't like doing which i will never get rid of is drawing my glasses. They are such a pain in the butt, But...they are very good practice on form and proportion now there are a few things wrong with the painting. The eyes are a bit off and the glasses are too thick but that wasn't the point in this sketch, the point of it was to try and sculpt a recognisable image of myself using only colours so this was done with hardly any construction.

Second Lighting study

Every thursday night i took a trip down to the art bar and decided to look around for some lighting to study, specifically a warm light because i wanted to experiment with warm colours I still feel that i need to work on these a lot more. I saw this light that was covered in dust and was giving off a warm colour on the wall but it was also making a cool colour within the glass. This was my final reslt at the bottom which took about 2 hours, don't forget that i was also in a room full of students so it was very noisy and pretty busy.

Life Drawing Study With Wacom Cintiq

I Made a few late night sessions and decided to study fluorescent light it was giving off a warm yellow colour from the bulb above bu what was interesting was that it was bouncing from the laminated floor to the model on the front along with the red from the couch which was giving off these very warm colours. I wanted to experiment and see if i can introduce a cool colour so i gave the model a purple shadow which i believe was helping with the red couch and contrasting the oranges. This was about 2 hours and was drawn on my cintiq in sketchbook pro

Anatomy Study The Breasts

Iv always found it quite difficult to draw the female breasts, it either might be because I am embarrassed of getting them wrong or i just don't know the anatomy of the properly. I decided that I needed to get the book out and learn. I found out that the breasts are separated in the middle by the sternum creating a narrow gap so the easiest way to draw any size for construction is to think of them as an upside down heart shape. I figured out that there are 2 types of breasts, the flushed and raised type flushed is where the nipple is lowered down and pushes the form of the breasts downwards and raised... well you get the idea.

I see a lof ot illustrators draw the breast high up the chest and make it to believe that they sit near the pectorials major but they are below them and they actually sit somewhere in the middle to the lower region of the chest.

Depending on the size of the model or breasts, the breasts move and form around the female body and actually push more outwards rather than in, also in this picture below, the female has a raised arm and in doing so has in fact ascended the breasts position because the shoulder has stretched the chest upwards. this has caused the breast to slightly move upward.

It is always important to think of the proportions of the body and when it comes to the breasts big or small, they will always be in different positions. However this diagram below can give a good indication of where to get a general idea of where to place the breast or as i call the big heart. So i show below here that 1 1/2 heads down starts the point of the big heart which is to the bottom of the collarbone. Again depending on the size you can then start to judge the size and where the breasts rest on the pectorials. for this one it is about 2 heads down is the nipple. I also wrote a reminder that if you want to start off the torso you can place a line down from the connection of the breast and armpit.

There are still questions to be answered like what do breasts look like on larger women or different raced women. A few more studies and i should have the answer.

Colour Study 2

Hello Folks

This colour study is a few days old but i haven't had the time to post it onto the blog yet because i have been busy moving to a new flat during the hour that I spared i managed to get a quick study of this drawing. It was drawn with the natural dusk light from the left and the TV coming in from the light as a secondary light source. The challenge was to focus purely on colour and light and to work quickly so I got the natural lighting. This was drawn on my cintiq using sketchbook pro and i tried really hard not to blend any of the painting but to only select values and place them on.

Colour Studies

I have not worked on my blog for a long time but it needs to change so that you guys can see my work again trust me I have been doing a lot of work its just that i place it on my facebook or dont have the time to upload but this will be more regular.

So this is a colour study that I underwent, it consumed an hour and was to understand colour theory. This is a shot from "Rango" The exercise was to try and accurately match the colours of the shot i was not really caring about proportions and form here so it is a bit off. I feel that this was a good study and i managed to grasp some of the colour especially within the eye of the toy fish. I noticed that the colours changed further down making the toy more saturated to red as it wend darker in value. it doesnt need to be black all the time to get a sense of dark and even a slight change to a more monochrome colour can affect the tonal changes like under the eye for example.

from the original image under i can understand that the drawing could make a lot of improvements, for example the tail is too harsh and can be toned down a bit the water is a lot more greener that I made it out to be and the eye shade is too saturated in the blue spectrum.

However it was a successful study and more regular studies of this will come.