Three Moons

 

“Three Moons” finished acrylic painting on canvas, 8″ by 10″.

I based this character on a friend, who has the most beautiful ginger hair ever, major envy! In my painting she has magic powers, here she is casting a powerful summon spell! I’ve always loved magic, it’s always the class I go for in video games, i’m kind of surprised I don’t use it in more of my art work!

I’ve called this piece finished, but I’d ideally still fix up the hair a bit, I think parts of it look a bit too solid at the moment.

“Before My End” acrylic painting (nearly finished!)

 

I said 2017 is going to be the year of paintings, so here to kick it all off, this piece is called “Before My End” acrylic painting on canvas panel.

It’s only nearly finished because I’ve still got a few bits to do such as the ear and I’m not happy with the background, however my lack of experience with painted backgrounds has left me feeling unsure as to how to fix it. So I’m going to come back to properly finish this piece when I feel better equipped to!

Backgrounds aside, I’m happy with my progress with painting in acrylics, I’m definitely finding painting skin more manageable now, it was the hair that I really struggled with on this piece! But I finally got it to a stage that I was happy enough with.

Lumpy Space Princess inktober

Grumpy Lumpy space Princess! LSP is probably my favourite Adventure Time character ^_^ I don’t have any coloured inks, so I had to cheat and use watercolours (I don’t think LSP would be happy being left without some flamboyant colour)

I’ve been at work pretty solidly all week, I finally have some freedom to get some drawing done today 😀

Skeletal Seahorses

 

Skeletal seahorses, acrylic pant on canvas, 5″ by 5″.

I really wanted to do something small and fun before making a start on my next portrait painting!

Bioshock fanart finished

 

My Bioshock fanart painting is complete! I finally got round to doing those finishing touches. I’ve painted this for a friend so hopefully she will be happy with it, nothing ever feels good enough to me when it’s for someone else!

There were quite a lot of challenges for me with this piece, firstly the undead skin tones were a bit of a mare! Though as soon as I’d worked out how to mix the right colour it was fairly straight forward. Also all the metallic bits took a while to grasp, it’s just not a texture that I’m used to painting! So another great learning experience under my belt 🙂 this is the first piece that I’ve done for somebody else this year, so it’s a nice feeling to know that it’s not going to get lost in one of my cupboards somewhere!

The joy of making art

Example of prep work for a painting

 

While I’m in the final stages of finishing my current painting, I thought I’d take a short break to write about what I enjoy most about creating a piece of art.

Jumping straight in to it  I just LOVE not spending too much time planning my art works. I don’t know if it’s a rebellion against all the prep work that you are forced to do during school and college, I never much enjoyed spending days working through tens of thumbnails, then carefully working through colour and tonal trials, planning out every last detail. By the time I was ready to move on to the final piece I’d often feel fed up with the idea already.  Now I’l just do a couple of thumbnails to find the composition, jot a few notes about tone and colour then I’m good to go!

Listening to music is a really important part of creating art to me. 90% of time time I’ll be listening to soundtracks, if I find a piece of music that really suits the mood of what I’m painting, I can listen to it on repeat for hours. When I lived with my parents it used to do their heads in!

Underpainting stage for a new painting

Starting a new piece will never cease to be an absolute pleasure. Especially when it’s not all that thoroughly planned, even you as the creator don’t know what it’s going to turn out like! There is nothing like making those first marks on a new canvas, you’ve entered a world of endless possibilities.

When a piece finally stars to take shape especially if it’s been a very challenging process (like my current work in progress!) when you can finally look at your work and feel a sense of pride, it is a wonderful feeling. Throughout the past, and sometimes even now, a piece will never reach that stage and all you can do is walk away from it and write it off as a learning curve. One of the hardest things is to make failed projects a positive experience by taking a good hard look at all of the problems, and making a note of them so that hopefully you won’t make the same mistakes again.

There is of course so much more that I enjoy about creating art, I think I could go on forever! Can anyone else relate to any of these points, or add new ones of your own? 🙂

The importance of preperation

 

So I’m already preparing a new canvas for my next piece (taking advantage of the sun for speedy drying!). As usual I scanned my finished painting “Repentance” (previous blog post) and as you may be able to notice the scanner has reflected the textured surface of the canvas in a rather unflattering, distracting way. This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this when I’ve scanned canvas paintings, but it’s really annoyed me with this one because I feel it looks far better in person, which is a bit sad considering I’m probably the only person who will ever see it that way.

I did a bit of research, and tried playing with the scanner settings a bit, but even dust removal didn’t make much of a difference. Of course the ideal option would be to photograph the work, but that’s a  minefield in itself, and I simply don’t have the knowledge or equipment to do it justice that way either.

SO the best option for me is to not work on such highly textured surfaces. But I do love working on canvas hence the dilemma! When I next do an art shop I’ll be sure to buy some linen canvases as they have a finer grain then cotton canvases, but as I’ve still got a few cotton ones to use up I’m going to try to apply layers of gesso, sanding each layer as I go to see how smooth I can get the surface. This next painting is going to be more of a character study, but I still want to get it as good as I possibly can. Wish me luck!

Art haul!

 

My latest art supply haul: 185 gsm Canson paper, an electric eraser, a putty eraser, a Faber-Castell pencil sharpener, slow drying acrylic paint medium, and a small selection of series 7 miniature kolinsky sable paintbrushes by Windsor&Newton.

A totally random assortment of goods, but I can’t wait to try them all out! I chose grey tinted paper because I’m interested to see how drawing with a mid-tone background works, I know a lot of painters cover their work surface with a neutral mid-tone before starting too. I want to try Strathmore and Sonehenge paper too for my colour pencil drawings because I know they’re popular.

Another WordPress user (@lauralecce) suggested using a slow drying medium for my acrylic work, as I’ve been having some struggles with the rapid drying time. I’ve wanted to try a battery eraser since forever (I’m not even sure why?) and the paintbrushes were bought after extensive research on artist grade paintbrushes, I’ll make a separate post about them once I’ve used them a few times.

So there we have it! Happy art times 🙂

Think I may be starting to get a hang of my new paints, or at least I am thoroughly enjoying using them now ^_^. Definitely learning how to use the quick drying time to my advantage, it’s great for building up detail, and I feel like I’m starting to highlights in the way that I’ve always wanted to. This painting is of course done with acrylics paints on gesso primed canson paper.

I’m not really sure what to make next, I’m torn between doing further portrait studies, or doing more fun bits like this! There are always so many fun little ideas that I want to bring to life but don’t find the time for,  but I feel like that’s starting to change now, I feel free, and blessed with the gift of having a tiny bit more precious time to put towards my art now.

Etsy store now open!

My Etsy store is now live! It still needs tweaking, but i will work on it over time, and of course will be adding new things as I go ^_^

http://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/EtherealNightArt