Good Saturday evening people; I'm going to be playing a lot of Zelda:LTTP over this weekend, and just generally relax down. It's been a busy week. Thankfully this past Thursday I got an urge to once again pick up my acrylics, b/c quite honestly I've been getting a bit tired of being on the computer all the time for my artwork purposes. In fact, this could be a turning point in how I carry my art out forward for the foreseeable future.
Truly, I'd rather not talk much about it, but let's just say I'm nowhere near done w/ my traditional painting yet. Never said I was, and I really love the sense of 'freeness' it provides. So, here's a few paintings (alla-primas) I did over the past few days, w/ a very small title and description for them. The constants in these paintings are, quite simply:
-Galeria paint: Crimson, Ultramarine, Cadmium Yellow Medium Hue, Burnt Umber, Mixing White, Titanium White, Ivory Black. That's it.
-Paper: Forget the specific name, but it's Canson brand, likely 200/250gsm, linen sort mainly for watercolor, but obviously I wasn't doing watercolor techs here.
-Brushes: Mainly my flat 5, sometimes my short and the fan brush for parts of one picture.
My goal in doing these was to rediscover my interest w/ traditional painting and my acrylics, which sorta died down a good deal over the summer. In retrospect it's probably b/c they were a bit beyond me and I was too methodological w/ them. Maybe I'm too methodological w/ painting in general, so it was a very pleasant break to just grab the brush and lay the strokes where they may. Each picture follows a basic idea of small palettes, and I did most of the mixing directly on the support. If I could learn a bit more about how these colors interacted w/ each other and which ones could form good palettes together, I was set. And that's what's happening.
The Boy: The first one done. Used a three-color palette of Earth hues. Wasn't focusing on peak retention or strokes as indication of movement and energy. Reminds me of Ed off Cowboy Bebop x3.
StaringMan: 3rd one done; flesh tones are always a bitch, but in this case (and for the others) I had a general idea of what colors to pick up on the brush and in how much a load. Also, since there was no attempt at precision it went pretty well x3.
Icy World: 2nd done; worked a lot w/ Ivory Black. Black's usually shunned w/ traditional painting but I'm not stupid and latch onto common myths for the hell of it. If used sensibly it can work very well for mood. I'd love to have some Mars Black around to see how these two differ. Also worked w/ what I would Consider Payne's Grey, and a sort of purple; can't remember exactly which purple I mixed up tho.
FruitSet: One of the last done yesterday, really just wanted an excuse to use up the rest of the paint on the palette. This and the rest below more or less shared the same palette set-up, but that will probably be obvious even w/o me mentioning it.
ThatGirl: I guess these are the same women, different hairstyle notwithstanding. I like the bottom one much more, just wished I gave her more of a damn face!
TheBird: Out of the alla primas here this one's my favorite. Got to do a lot of neat peak retention tests and use brushstrokes to indicate energy and composition in most details. That was always an issue w/ me before; using brushes ill-suited for their job, and not playing enough w/ depth. I'm over that problem now ;).
-----------------
So as you can guess, I have plenty more of these to get around to doing. If things pan out soon I'll be buying back up more paint supplies, b/c now it's really dawned on me, I can't go w/o traditional. Blessed as I am for what I have been learning digitally and continue to learn there, I'd feel a bit cheap w/o my brushes and tubes of paint. Of course, each of the two have their own merits and use, so I'll continue doing fanart digitally (in terms of painting it) but will be taking a much greater initiative now to do original pieces traditionally.
Speaking of fanart, I have a new post for my Alita pic, and some sketches of Cerula (aka Daymn She's Fine!):
After a little more clean-up and inking I'll finally get to painting her on Monday. Eager to try a few new things w/ her, mainly dealing w/ transparency. I'd also like to attempt not using the lines so heavily (I started the process of that w/ Bilstein), since a lot of lines is starting to be counter-productive to my process. As for when it'll be finished,...welp, before the holidays sounds about nice (there a couple other pictures to work on too, but I might skip coloring them in favor of just inking).
Cerula is one of my favorite BAA characters; she's powerful, has heart, cunning skill and intelligence, and most importantly, a nice pair of bosoms ;). Oh, and she's a vampire, but not of the lame Twilight variety. Playing up on sex appeal aside, I dunno if I'll proceed w/ finishing these ones out, or just proceed to other renditions of the girl. The "sketch" mentality is taking over my whole process, and I'm not making it a mandatory note to finish up every picture I draw out anymore, just do what I feel like (but of course having some sense of direction along the way). Seeing as how I do like how the one on the left looks tho, I will most likely finish her up, before maybe drawing her in proper canon outfit or w/e.
Okay, that's it for my update. I'm off to cook lunch and watch Eatman and ATVOTOMS. Stay warm, awesome, and edged. Until next time, l8r out.
Happy Saturday morning peeps; altho I tried my best to complete the two pictures I had planned to show off today, it wasn't enough. They are very far along and near-finished, but are lacking that final spit-n-polish. Therefore I won't be uploading them until early next week. It's better this way, tho, than to post what progress is done now...surprises are fun ;). But yeah, my apologies on that one.
Actually I won't be posting any art until next week anyhow, but you probably already saw this coming. It's not easy actually trying to finish a piece when constantly switching between upwards a dozen of 'em simultaneously..that's...still a thing I need to get used to doing more often. Neverminding when a roadblock presents itself and slows any work down tremendously, bleh!
For this entry I just got a few quick blurbing points. Beavis and Butthead was just relaunched on MTV, and I checked out the first episode via a stream this morning. It was nice seeing them again, and they do still *feel* like they should. But I think there could be some big issues in the future episodes that have more to do w/ the material they're ripping on than the characters themselves. What made B&B fun for me back in their heyday wasn't just their (oft-time insensitive but damn funny anyway) humor, but that the stuff they ripped on were music videos that were, as a whole, collective of a better bunch of songs than the ones the show will be able to rip on now. I'm not one of those "everything's best in the 90s" idiots, but I do think mainstream music on MTV was much stronger back then than what they put on now, that much can't be argued. Almost as if admitting that weakness, the show will end up mocking their other shows more. Problem for me there, though, is that the shows MTV have now aren't that interesting to me. They're annoying, pretentious and just kinda boring to me (there's no interest in me watching 16 and Pregnant, for example, not even to mock it). I hope the show can manage well regardless minus these circumstances, and there's a good chance it can, given I found some humor (albeit more in the line of the B&B's interactions than anything they were making fun of) in the premier.
If shit hits the fan on that front, though, then I might as well kiss any Aeon Flux or The Maxx-or even Liquid Television-revival goodbye too; failure to make B&B work will inevitably point to MTV's inability to make any of those properties work again either. At least the old episodes are still around (in various ways hoho).
That ties it up for today. Going back out to DMV, and to have some fun (even tho it's raining atm). I'll be back w/ a healthy stream of art next week I promise you. So until then, have an awesome weekend. L8r!
