Progress: The Doctor

[logansrogue]

Well, the painting is slowly and surely working out.

I tell you, there's nothing more difficult than rebuilding your palette every time you sit down. That's the bummer with acrylics. Acrylics are fast drying, give you bold, deep colour and it's hard to muddy up a painting when you're using them.

They're fucking impossible to blend though, and oh boy howdy do you have to work fast. Thankfully, I'm best when I don't dawdle and slap down the paint.

Now, I'm not dissing digital painting, you know I wouldn't do that when I work so hard to get good at it. Being a good digital painter is a whole different ball of wax. But I do have to say that having to mix the colour you want before you're able to lay it down, and then running out of that colour and having to mix more? Not something I miss when using my wacom tablet and Photoshop. But it does give me a cocky sense of accomplishment when I can get another palette running in the next session that's working with the one from before. Digital artists don't know how easy they got it! *shakes cane*

So here's the state of the canvas at the end of session two:





As you can see, the canvas is still wet. I did a dark wash to cover up the yellow behind the dry strokes that made up his hair. Mum was like, "What are you doing?" and I told her I was blocking out the canvas so that I can deepen the "black" (I use quote marks because I very rarely use black in a painting - a trick I learnt from the Impressionists) and then when it's dry I come back with the lighter colours and put in the highlights. This is why I love acrylic - I can do that in a matter of two days instead of many many days and possibly weeks with oils.



Here's a shot in the natural light. I loved the effect of the lamplight on the piece. Sometimes the lighting of a painting can just make it come alive. Keep that in mind if you ever have one (Print or original). Presentation is key.

Now, I know his nose looks weird now, but that's basically cause I moved the bottom of it up a bit and haven't had the time to go in and render it properly. This session was concentrating on getting the shape of his face right and to fix up some errors I saw in the last session. It took me like, a week or so of staring at the painting to figure out what I did wrong. Thankfully, the painting still has a vital magic to it. I am so glad I've gone back and worked on it some more cause I think it's much better than it was.

I'm having a lot of fun painting this, and I'm also enjoying sharing the process with you guys. I don't know if people do traditional art on the net much, and when they do I don't know if they go step by step like this. One of these days I'll have to video tape myself doing a quick portrait. Would you dudes be interested in that? Lemme know.

Oh, and I'm making myself a book where I am writing ALL my commissions in. The ones I remember are:

- Rainfletcher's Luna piece.
- Mel's picture of her as an Amazon with her dude
- Doug's picture of the Space Bar dudes
- Leviathan's picture of the Trio being sexy
- Bree's picture of her characters for her book **urgent**


If there's any more, do do DO let me know. I don't mind a poke and a reminder - I'll never remember otherwise!

Comments

[sir-devans.livejournal.com]

I would also like to put my hand up for a commission, so how does it work? an email description? back and forth? Give you a slight idea and let your artistic muse take over?