Black and white photo challange

A few cards up on Etsy & painting ground

So first of all I've finally got a few cards up on Etsy, you can see them below. Just three different types for now, still waiting to get the cards from my mum's. You can find them on my Etsy store here.

It's rather nice to have them up and ready to sell. :)

I had my first work shop day with Prince's trust today and as expected it took up too much daylight time, so don't expect me to progress much on this painting over the next few days. I have managed to get a base ground layer down and tonight I'll work on the biggest problem I see with the painting so far: No transition between the foreground leaf layer, the tree trunks and the background/ grass. Everything is a bit too sharp and smooth between them, I really need some grass in front of those tree roots.

Trees, foreground leaves & Printed.com's Trucard paper

Yesterday I didn't do as much work on it, I had other things to do during the daylight hours, just blocking in the base colours for the trees.

Today I managed to get on with a little bit more though I don't think I'll finish it by Tuesday, I've got a four-day workshop with Prince’s Trust starting then and it's going to go right over my daylight hours so I'll either just have to wait or risk working on it in the dark.

I've added some texture to the trees, I'll add more later, and added in the foreground leaves. Both the trees and the leaves are a bit to opposing, I'm thinking tomorrow I'll add some more purple to each of them just to make them merge a bit better, actually first I should add in a basic ground layer. Until I do that I can't really tell how dark I can push different arias.

Starting to paint

The finished sketch, I ended up having to number the layers of trees...then add shapes along with the numbers to tell what branches belonged to what trees. 

To be honest I'm not much of a landscape person, I can enjoy looking at them but painting landscapes from real life always frustrates me and It takes a lot of work to create something from imagination when it comes to landscape, my imagination turns into this thick soup I have to pull a landscape out of. Drawing from pictures is fine but boring. What I did here was probably the best: half imagination and half reference.

Forest references, colours and sketches

So above is a quick little painting I did about a year ago and I've been asked to do another painting based off it. I'll admit I'm kinda nervous, I always find it really nerve wreaking to do commissions but at least this one's fairly cheap and she doesn't have to take it if she doesn't want it.

A Light In The Dark

Well...that's it done, that's my painting finished. :)

There's things I like about it and things I wasn't able to fix but I learned a lot from doing it...including don't spend so much time on one painting you get bored. 

I added some more gold to the crown and green beads in different arias of her dress, I couldn't find another colour that worked, and then mostly just pottered around playing with tiny details.

Since I've been working on this for so long the gum tape holding it down was a nightmare to remove and tore up the paper underneath pretty badly but at least that will all be hidden when I frame it, but it took a few hours to get off.

Fixed her skin, background, gold and little details

So for the most part I've fixed her skin...it's still not right but I can't place why it's not or how to fix it. I guess this will do for now. I don't know I've just been staring at this painting for too long but I'm growing dissatisfied with it, most of the problems I'm managing to partly fix but not completely, I feel like I can't quite see what's wrong. Still, it's nearly done, it didn’t stick to what I imagined but I suppose these things rarely do.

I darkened down the out trees in the background, trying to reinforce that the light source is the lamp, I was somewhat reluctant to add more paint to the background but the trees still had a weird pattern to them from the masking fluid and I could only really smooth that out with more paint. It would have been nice to keep the lightness they had before in some arias. 

The shawl's been lightened and I'm not sure if it's better, it definitely looks worse now in the photo but that's mostly because the gold when not reflecting is the same darkness as the shawl, in sunlight it looks better. I'm still not sure if I've made it better or not...at least it's not worse, the shawl was just too dark before but now it feels too unsaturated. 

From now on I'll post every two days

I've decided I shouldn’t' post quite as frequently on here as I have been, for a few reasons I guess.
With the low light levels right now I'm not managing to get much painting done each day, I don't feel it’s really worth to to show each day the little progress I make and I'm not really sure what else to talk about to fill in the days when I don't post about a painting,
Secondly...I'm just really busy right now. these posts can take from a few minutes to an hour to do depending on the subject, if I need to find reference and edit pictures. I don't know if anyone is actually reading these posts either which to be honest should make my blog far further down on the list than it has been of things I need to do.
So a post every two days, gives me a bit more time and gives you less filler content.

I have  made a little progress on the painting though, even mostly managed to fix her shin which was terrifying and working on fixing other arias...so much undoing and redoing...watercolour's not meant for this.

I think I've messed up her skin. :/

So I think I've messed up her skin, it's really muddy, grey and dark. I really should have done it earlier, and done more tests and practised...I might be able to save it but it's disheartening to have to fight with so late in...and her shawl still needs fixed somehow too. 

The above picture's a really bad example for how it looks, with the camera's flash on the painting it actually looks okay. When I saw that though it did help me realise one of the problems... different arias are lit differently and I'm not sure which way to go. It's a fight between realistic and stylised really. In a dark forest with a one light source point of the lantern you would have the dark shadows on her face and the shawl but I'm not sure if I want to commit to that realism, it would take away any of the stylised-ness I was hoping for and it's not quite my tastes and doesn't fit the mood either...making it much more spooky.... I was going for serene. The under lit face might not help much there....

I guess I'll need to work this out tomorrow. 

Current life plans

I was going to post about my painting today but well, I slept in really late and only got a short amount of time to work on it with daylight so I've done the gems in various places on her and that's it...I figured I can wait till tomorrow to show that to you all.

To be honest I've been finding it really hard to work on the painting over the last few days: partly due to just working on it, or on it's tests, for so long I've gotten bored and because with everything else going on in my life I'm just not able to sit down and work. I feel like a deer caught in the headlights, I can't move, I can't get out of the way of my problems and I can't work on fixing them.

I've been trying to start up a business, selling my art on cards, but I've been ignoring the fact I need to make money to continue renting my flat and survive....I guess after two sluggish years of college I just really really want to progress a little and everything just feels like it keeps wanting to hull me back to the starting point.

Colour tests for the trim

I didn't manage to get much more done today, for the most part I was undoing and redoing yesterdays work, the red sleeve and the shawl were just too dark so I had to lighten them.

I also did these tests to work out what to do with the details in the orange zones on her, still not sure completely but nearly there....

With the short hours of daylight and so much else to get on with progress on this painting is slow..

Details and hair

First of all I was just finishing off darkening the shadows on her sleeve and shawl.
Shadows on the brass powder is pretty slow, you have to put down a first thin layer just to give it some grip on the brass and then slowly work up, it's as easy to accidentally take the paint off when you add more layers on of it, you also can only really blend out sharp lines with a ever so slightly damp brush, and again it's easy to move too much paint.

Then I added in the orange, the quinacridone sienna, to the details on the sleeves, neck and train edge even if I don't know yet what colours the gems will be on them.

Shawl and sleeves

To be honest I was expecting to progress far more today than I did, but it takes time to put the layers of paint on the brass mix and smooth out and it's starting to get dark early now....I predict I'll really hate the small levels of daylight over this winter.

So the shawl is permanent magenta with indigo in the shadows, I'm still working on adding the shadows over the brass.
Working with the brass can be visually annoying, from some angles it's really cold and makes the whole painting look worse, but if I line it just right it can be really warm and shine.
The sleeve is alizarin crimson with permanent magenta shadows, also added a bit more alizarin to the inner sleeve.

Artists I like: Hellobaby

So for a long long time Hellobaby was my favourite artist, she's still one of them and by far my favourite using coloured pencil. I'll let you have a look at her work before I continue:

 Devil and Jester by Hellobaby (2012)     Assassin Girl by Hellobaby (2011) 

Taste of Fall by Hellobaby (2014)

 

Sinking mermaid sketch

I did most of this one when I was up at Orkney a few months ago but I didn't have access to internet so I couldn't find references for sharks and ships. I found it again a few days ago and decided to finish it off.

 I was originally thinking of doing it in watercolour, all blue apart from red blood...now I'm considering painting it on wood. I guess we'll see when I get around to it.