Mai Fin (ish)

  Welp, it took little more than a week off and on, serious and semi-serious (in terms of time investment) sessions and a whole lotta of testing and other shit, but she is done, at last.  Here may I present the finished Mai Shiranui picture...

 "Sure to give Chun-Li some food for thought x3"
(Ed. Note:  Please visit my deviantArt page here for the full version.  I'll post it there tomorrow)

   I said it before and I'll say it again:  she was a fun one to paint.  It's technically marred in more than a few spots for sure--and there's nothing saying what was done here will stick in the future--but it felt like an overall step forward to do.  Now that I've learned how to use mediums for dilution of the paint, I hardly think I'll ever be stepping back to the dark ages of using water alone, or perhaps water period outside of the thin initial underpaintings.  There, it seems like it can be very useful, but for final work I doubt it will make a comeback.  But hey, u never quite know.

   I also picked up some interesting use of mediums in ways I'm not sure they were intended for..on THAT front, there's much more testing to be done, but I do feel confident in that w/ them, I can get a greater range out of the limited set of tubes I got.  Even w/ that said tho there's no time to rest on laurels:  there's another picture I'm doing for a friend that I have to start from scratch again tomorrow (well, not really scratch, but I'm not using the line drawing sheet I had before, even if the pose will remain about the same), and in between working on that (and posting some bits of it here), I'll try experimenting some more w/ creating color swatches and getting a better handle of the mediums.

   Reminds me, too, that a new brush or two is in order.  These brushes are wearing down, and new ones are always more than welcome...

   That'll do it for this time; I hope u all dig my Mai piece.  Maybe sometime in the future I can go over the process, but as this process is ever-changing, all the future seems like an immature moment to pick for that topic.  Tomorrow I'll prop back up w/ some pictures and underpaintings for the new picture.  Hint:  we're taking it back to olden Norse times for this one ;).  Catch 'ya l8r...

Stuff For Mid-Week

  Heyzapeeps...Wednesdays are SO slow, aren't they?  Dead-center of the week, u know u have energy but the fact Wednesday's, well, Wednesday kinda drags it down some.  What a sucky day Wednesday can be, it aughta be banned imho (shorter weeks aren't as bad as others make them out to be ;).

  Anyhow, I have some more art to post, one's the Mai WIP which I'll poof up l8r, but in the meantime I have a special little tree here, done for my eldest sis in regards to her science class project for her college course.  I'm really proud she's attending school again (something I would love to do, if just for the purpose of having a degree), and I wish her all the best.  I know it's just a tree an' all, but hey, if it helps her get a smoking good grade on her project, I'm all for it.

  I had some fun w/ this one.  A long time back I bought some Prismacolor watercolor pencils decidedly on a whim.  There they sat for some odd months, only used for a now-subpar Hellsing picture I would rather not upload here (in fact I'm still struggling w/ the thought of deleting much of those older pictures b/c they might do more bad than good on reflecting where I'm at, but that's something for another time).  Sad indeed, b/c they were about thirty bucks and barely getting used (I should note by now:  I'm advocate the "get all for yer money" mentality.).  Seeing that I didn't want to break out the acrylics for a subject matter as simple as a tree--and having thrown out the pastels and color pencils and feeling a pen drawing was too boring (as well as aside from me)--I opened the tin and gave them another shot.

   Boy oh boy, when u start learning how to use these suckers, they can produce some phenomenal stuff.  Granted, I'm sure this tree is anything but the pinnacle of what these pencils can do, but I'm very inclined to explore them more as a side-media to my focus on acrylics.  In fact, they could eventually be useful for certain details and effects my acrylics can't pull off, but that's shit for another time and space well off in the distance.  It's still always intriguing to ponder on the thought, however, and I should consider investing in these more and using them on lower-scale/smaller-sized artwork.

  Oh, btw, despite kinda trouncing on the tree's "specialness", it is special in the sense my sis is using it for a family tree project.  So there's names and all that shit to add, but really ain't much more to be done.  For the sake of some internet-unsavvy fam, though, I won't be posting that final bit (which, again, won't be much of anything).

   Okay, so that's one.  Now here comes (slightly more tan than intended) Mai...ready, set....go!!

   Yes, I notice she's a bit more tan than most people consider her to be.  Granted, there's older spritework about in this range and I could lie and say that's what I was aiming for, but in reality I was looking to harmonize the skin more.  That was achieved, but due to an error in the initial laydown of the skin (relying on an old technique from older pictures that was proven to be insufficient for the methods being employed everywhere else in this one), I had to try and reduce down on the cracking and make the skin seem more alive.  Then again, I could've lightened the glaze some (but got carried away w/ having fun w/ the Extender...actually a lot more to that I'd like to go into sometime).  Ah well,..the rest of the picture will be shifting tone some to compromise, and it's still got a good ways to go so who knows what could go down.

    A side note:  working on this Mai picture has made me realize what I really want to do w/ my art.  This is the direction I want to go in full-term, and there are a lot of other pictures sitting around I wanted to finish, but wouldn't look right employing what's done here to them.  So I'm getting ready to batter down the hatches and re-envision a lot of WIPs (some of which are already fairly along) to try them in this newer technique.  Tough, but ultimately for the best.

   Another side note:  the Cresent illustration board finally came through, WOOT!!.  This motha's pretty big in person, and I'm already dreaming up what to do w/ it.  It'll be my first ever attempt on a ground this large, and I'm pulling out all the stops...once I get to it.  It'll likely be a few weeks out before doing anything, but that gives a long time for conceptualization.  Does outer space, spaceships and neo-futuristic jazz sound any good x?