Girl dancing

This was mostly some more experimenting with lights. I have had the idea to paint something like this in my head for several days now, but I thought it deserved more than my watercoloring skills. So for that reason, I used the tablet :)

(I know it seems like I use the tablet a lot, but I get the best results with it.)

I'm still really looking forward to using oils, though. I'm determined that tablet and oil are fairly similar, but I don't really know for sure. It seems like they would be.

I also took many screen shots to show it as a WIP so people can understand how these things come about. This is done with a few different colors, the smudge and blur tools, and the burn and dodge tools. Most of it is taken step by step after every different thing I did, though I didn't bother to show the creation of the background, mainly because I was just making lines and colors to fill blank space.

My only complaint is that I didn't really get the expression I wanted out of her... but she doesn't look bad, regardless. Also (not that it matters), she's sort of slow dancing and waving her arm back and forth hula style. NOT fast crazy dancing or anything. She was supposed to look peaceful, which is why the expression was important!

click to see it as a WIP

(it is originally a larger image, but everywhere resizes if it's too big... I am currently searching for someplace to host the original size.)

Something is off with that raised arm and the missing shoulder... but it's done, I'm not going to mess with it!!!

Portrait (some guy)

I've said before that since this blog is new and I missed a lot of art challenges on different blogs, I wanted to try to go back and redo them, even though I can't submit them. This one is for the Different Strokes from Different Folks year end challenge. Obviously, I don't have anyone to swap portraits with at this point, so I just chose a headshot of somebody in a music video I was watching on Youtube. I could have done myself, but I know there's a self portrait challenge also that I'll get to eventually.

I chose this image specifically because it has abnormal coloring and lighting effects.

I did it all on the tablet. Its fast and mess free, and a breeze to correct errors. I haven't used oils yet, but I like to think this is similar to them as far as how you blend colors and shadows. Anyway, I don't think anybody that's been doing these challenges have submitted anything done on a tablet, and I don't know if people even realize what these things can do. The only real downside is that you have nothing tangible... except a print.

Hmm... my art looks so much more confident in this medium compared to in others. But I'm going to try oil painting soon, so that's exciting.

Detail || Reference

Shading

Wanted to try some simple line shading. I'm afraid I don't have the patience to do it really well, so my lines are more like quick scribbles! But I did get some sloppy cross hatching in.

(By the way, I drew this on a Wacom tablet, which is why some lines are so thick and some aren't, and why you can't see eraser marks everywhere, ha!)

The Ashcan School

For the Following the Masters challenge

I might have completely misunderstood the concept - "gritty urban scenes" is one phrase the challenge used to describe the art, and my picture is hardly that. The challenge also describes the Ashcan School as a group of artists who wanted to depict real life, and even if its not gritty or urban, hopefully this picture does that much. Because I looked at Robert Henri's art, and I saw many portraits, a few city streets showing the weather, but nothing that really seemed to stand out as a representation of what the Ashcan school was about...

So I did a picture set as America enters World War I (1917 - the U.S. declared war against Germany), and the first soldiers are off to war. It's supposed to be this guy and his wife and kids, but I'm afraid the soldier looks too young, and his wife looks too old (I think it's just her hair style, which I tried to keep accurate for that time period, but it turned out with bits of grey in it...). It almost looks more like a son/big brother than a father :P Oh well.

I also got a little impatient with it, so that my lines can still be seen and are extremely messy in some places (like the little boy, or the soldier's hands). And I didn't mean for that boy's eye to be sooo dark. I had to look up what the soldier uniforms looked like back then and everything, and I tried (and failed) with the lady to do clothes in the right style... by the time I got to the kids, I gave up, obviously. The boy is nearly naked. I'm not as much of a perfectionist as I thought I was :)

I probably won't submit it. I kind of like just doing it for fun and leaving it at that. If I did get the wrong idea from the challenge, its okay, I kind of like the idea of this picture anyway.

(I don't like drawing people. I get their proportions right, but they always look cartoonish.)