Trying to paint the perfect skin tones.

 

Hey, hey people. After reading Jesper Ejsing’s post about painting skin over at Muddy Colors, I tried his suggest and stayed away from using black or paynes gray. I also looked at a lot of Carvaggio and Roberto Ferri paintings and tried to analyze how they handled painting skin tones. I still have a ways to go but I made an advancement with this study.

Thanks for looking in,

Bill

Figure drawing with Pastels.

Uff, after a week filled with stress at my day-job and felt ten-thousand things to take care of, and added to that, Hay-Fever and bad weather (no Plein-Air drawing or painting), I was able to settle down on the weekend and do some figure drawing. I tried to get the shadows right and then concentrated on the values. Here is my resource the lovely Lina Tsu (Katherine) from Deviantart.org. I used Pitt Pastel Pencils.

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look,

Bill

Painting updates and water color sketches

After being sick a week and three weeks of not being able to paint in the evenings I managed meager progress on these two. My two sons took control of my painting area during their winter vacation so painting was out of the question. I finally got some good quality painting time last week and made some progress on the still life and the wizard painting I just couldn’t leave that back wall alone and still need to work on the floor.  The flute looks a little lopsided now that I look at it. Sometimes it helps to take picture of your work and you see it in an all new light.

I was inspired to sketch with watercolors after seeing James Gurney do it on his blog. He takes his sketchbook everywhere and sketches in the most interesting places. The last two are from life (looking out the window and the mountains are the Bergstrasse, where I live, it’s mainly known for their white wines)  and the first one is from an anatomy book I have. I think I’ll keep doing this, it was fun.

Thanks for taking a look,

Bill

Drawing 40 women installment 5

Here is my 5th and last installment (here on my Blog) of my mission to draw 40 women. I will not be posting all 40 drawings, those interested, can see them in my online sketchbook on Conceptart.org. My thoughts on conclusion of this exercise are:

1. This did help with my drawing, but I think I was expecting more. I know you get out what you put into it, but I think if I had broken this down to certain areas of anatomy it would have helped me more.

2. I didn’t need to render-out every study, simple line drawing with shading would have been sufficient. I also could have left out the hair and other details.

3. I will need to do this again, because through these studies I realize where my weaknesses are. Faces, hands, feet, proportions,etc.

I will be starting my first oil painting next, I’m really excited about this. I’ll post my updates  every week. Either I will fly or crash-and-burn, but my motto is “the comfort-zone is boring.”

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look and keep drawing,

Bill

Drawing 40 Women Installment 4

I took some time for the important things in life last week, we went canoing, hiking and swimming a lot, just generally enjoying summer. Well heres my next installment for my mission to draw 40 women. I’m almost done with the graphite ones. I’m taking my time with the digital ones. I see some proportion mistakes that I’ve made (Small hands, short calves) I’ve got to watch out for those mistakes.

Thanks for taking a look and keep drawing,

Bill

Drawing 40 Women installment #3

I’m starting to have a little fun with these. I’m trying out some new techniques in Artrage with the digital ones and the graphite drawings are always fun to do. Time is playing a role in these like everything, finding time to do it is the hard part, but where theres a will theres a way.

Thanks for taking a look and keep drawing,

Bill