Aureate WIP & Finished work

So this one was fun. I also went about it completely different to how I usually do. As a starting point I wanted to do something somewhat inspired by Klimt, I just wanted gold and jewel colours, I didn't even have a pose at first; which I almost always normally start with.

So I had a look at the sort of patterns Klimt used (a lot of triangles and rectangles) and hunted for a pose that looked a bit Art Nouveau. I ended up using Divine Sword by Liancary-art. Didn't even really mean for her to have wings...just sort of happened when I wanted to break up the space behind her a bit. 

It was so different for me to have what patterns I wanted to use as a starting point instead of the actual character. In a way I feel the character is the weakest point, she's really not that different from the original stock photo. I just made her slightly more warrior like, I wanted her to feel like a warrior queen who wouldn't normally be dressed up like this, giving her a dragon tooth crown helped add to this a bit (somewhat inspired by the jagged crown? from Skyrim.)

A small mistake I made right at the start was forgetting the stock photo had the sword sheathed, therefor the sword blade was actually smaller than it looked....ended up with a blade way to wide for its grip. I did manage to fix/hide this a bit later though.

Grey Lady

It's been a while since I posted huh? Sorry about that, at first I was too ill again, then too busy catching up with things and then to be honest I was just out of the habit and kept forgetting about it. I've also started job hunting again, as much as I want to I really shouldn't be focusing on my art or blog right now…great fun.

So what I've been up too...I finished the first page of the Terrier Studios comic, I'll probably post about that next since I have the permission, so I'll leave talking about it till then. 

I've been doing quite a few granulation tests, haven't had many useful results without using granulation fluid and I've got very little of it left now. Still I have enough to do a few more test and it goes a long way. I'll talk about that more once I finish those tests.

I wasn’t completely happy with how my last black and gold painting came out so I did this one, greatly cutting down on the amount of gold used. I like the overall effect, I like the granulated background...I think in general it could have done with more polish and time spent on it. 

Lady of Sunlight

I did this one just before New Year's but I've not been well enough to upload it anywhere until now.

This was mostly to test out the ArtGraf watercolour graphite and the Finetec gold watercolours to

together. I was planning on using the ArtGraf pencils in there too but it didn't seem to happen that way. 

I actually took quite a lot away from painting this. Most importantly...I really like just doing small quick paintings. I keep doing big long projects but to be honest just doing something that's A4 and takes a day and a night to finish.... it's so much more satisfying. I get so bored of most of my paintings by the end of them so surely that results in worse art over all. Besides just doing loads of quick paintings would surely improve my skills faster anyway, at least for things like anatomy and composition...both things I need to work on. 

ArtGraf watercolour graphite & water-soluble pencils

First of all sorry I disappeared for a while... I just keep falling ill again. I thought I was getting better the last time I posted but a second round got me the day after. I've been too ill to do much for two weeks now. It is getting rather annoying...

But I'm finally up for writing again so hopefully it's finally going away.

 So for Christmas I got ArtGraf watercolour graphite and water-soluble pencils. Both my mum and I love the work of Yoann Lossel so after getting me the gold watercolours for Solstice the graphite was the logical next step (well logical looking back at it, at the time I had no idea.)

I've wanted to do greyscale plus one other colour (preferably metallics) paintings for a while now. It's a style I really love but I've barely touched outside of little doodles.

But for one reason or another I've never quite been satisfied with my black tools, pens only give one shade unless you crosshatch, I seem to have problems ruining my paper trying to get darks with normal pencils and I dislike the graininess of the 6B and higher pencils, I also don't like the shade of my black paints both acrylic and watercolours though Payne's grey could work.... there’s something very muddy feeling about black paints, I'm not sure I could really explain it. 

Finetec coliro pearlcolours

So first of all: that's me back. I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays, I spent Solstice with my mum, Christmas with my family and Hogmanay with friends. Over all pretty good.
I was planning on returning much earlier, I was thinking the 2nd, but I've been really really ill for the last few days and completely unable to think or properly talk to people. Still have it a little but at least I'm able to write now.

So for Solstice my mum gave me a box of Finetec coliro pearlcolours.....these things are amazing.
I've really got into metallics recently after using the brass powder mix (that I used on a Light in the Dark) however there was a couple of problems with that method: If I mixed too much I couldn't reuse it and it used up a lot of my limited amount of gold calligraphy ink...I don't have enough to do something big with it again but my mum was thinking of testing out the brass powder with gum arabic (I think?) so I'll see how that goes and if it's worth it for me to try.
Anyway, after I finished that painting I was actually thinking of buying these, or one of the cheaper versions out there, but my mum had the same idea and decided to get them for me. :)

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. 

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..

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.

Train detail and gems

Sorry for the bad photo, it was taken at night and my flat doesn't have a good light.

So...starting with the red train aria, I added in the birds and the rest of the flowers in with a mix going from naples yellow to permanent magenta, I'll need to add more to them since they don't quite stand out enough.
Then I added in the green gems with the picture below as a rough guide, starting off with masking the aria on the gems I wanted to remain white and then doing a transition from sap green to winsor green to indigo....as soon as these were added I was really happy with how it all looked.
Then I added in the brass powder/golden calligraphy ink mix with a pen nib, it took ages and I had to do a few layers since it wasn't coming out the pen nib enough...turns out it would have if I pressed harder, wish I knew that at the start.

Colour palette and patten tests

Some more of the tests. I did a lot of tests for this painting. There was a lot of things that could go wrong.

Mostly working out the gold to other colour ratio in my patterns… And how to get the gold to stay on, not get everywhere and have crisp lines. I ended up going with a brass powder/golden calligraphy ink/water mix for the gold, it gave a nice shiny result and anything else I tried came out very cold looking. it also could be pre-mixed when I added it so I didn't have to try and drop brass powder onto PVA and watch it go everywhere.

Inspirations: Sulamith Wülfing & Gustav Klimt

For the painting I'm currently working on I was inspired by Sulamith Wülfing and Gustav Klimt, well not exactly Klimt. I don't actually like that much of Klimt's work, the painting below being one of the few I do:

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt (1907)

 

I love the patterns but there's a muddiness to the skin and it's just so hard to tell what's going on in the painting. I suppose that instead of liking Klimt I like art inspired by him, modern takes on his use of gold and patterns with more contrast.