Sketchbook #9

Another dip into the old sketchbook. Just a typical page. I just draw whatever strikes me as interesting in whatever space is available. I like to expirement a little, trying a different approach with each. You'll notice the left one is a little more graphic/shape oriented, the bottom more focused on line, and the top a little stylized and stretched.

Drawing awaiting paint

A new drawing I am doing in preparation of a new oil painting.I am all of the sudden having trouble finding the right size Masonite board or I may have been finished with the painting by now. I really like painting on board because it allows for so much of my style to show, without fighting the canvas texture. I am excited to get started with this one because I am happy with the drawing, that is probably the most important thing to keep you going with a new painting through the long hours.

Manly women

A painting done for the Avalanche blog. I don't know where my crazy ideas come from. I just start to paint and the ideas develop with the drawing. I used a man as reference which is still a little too apparent, though some of the manly features work well for the subject.

Kristina

You may recognize this painting as a color version of this previous painting. I thought it would be a great idea to do a black and white painting to get all of the values out of the way before I started into the color beast. I learned that is not a good way to paint. I went over the face with the colors then continued onto the rest of the painting only to discover the face was very very gray. So basically I ended up doing 3 or 4 layers of paint to get what I wanted. The black and white underpainting turned into a huge time waster, maybe it could work with a sepia tuned value study?

New Brush

A quick paint up of the previous drawing. I tries out the Cali brush style. Now obviously they are nowhere near her brilliant use of colors but I am happy the direction.
It was really a very handy tool. I loved the colors that I got from the method and I will absolutely use it in the future, at least to get my preliminary colors. It helps by gradually building up colors in a direction rather then putting down the color immediately, and it follows art's most universal rule of working "general to specific".