After several people told me I needed to work more on the face (among other things), I made some revisions. It may...possibly...be done now.

"Sanguinary Whim" - digital painting

"Sanguinary Whim" - detail

So, a friend of mine convinced me to get a Moleskine sketchbook...bearing this new acquistion in hand, I'll try to post more studies and sketches!

Color pencil shell study

Color pencil fox study

Figure study

Ideas for my next piece...

A new iteration of Little Red Riding Hood:

"Sanguinary Whim" - digital painting

detail

detail

Just kidding: NOW it's done. That is, until the next person comes along and points out what I should fix! Next up...a kitsune-tsuki, I think.

La Perte du Minotaure / Loss of the Minotaur

Also check out this article about Ariadne's life, featuring my painting: http://www.atlanticharpduo.com/2013/12/16-glimpses-into-ariadnes-life/.

New piece! I think it's done...I think. I would love to do a big oil of painting of this! Just digital for now, though.

"La Perte du Minotaure" (Loss of the Minotaur)

I spent Thanksgiving in Quebec City with a friend of mine and did some sketching!

Minotaur

Kitsune-Tsuki

Red and the Woods

I plan to develop the Minotaur into a painting...stay tuned!

Sentiment 5 of 7: Yellow Angst

I'm still not satisfied with it, but I think I'm going to have to let it rest for bit. I'm not sure what's bugging me about it right now...maybe the composition. The great thing with digital is you can take a long break if need be and make significant changes later if need be. Despite the fact I'm not quite happy with it, I learned a lot--this was my first time painting something to look like glass! A huge thanks to this amazing artist for his all of his help and feedback: http://marconelor.tumblr.com/.

"Happily Ever After" - digital painting

Sentiment 4 of 7: Gray Regret

One more before the work week starts!

Sentiment 3 of 7: Violet Disbelief

Apparently, I'm on a roll!

Sentiment 2 of 7: Green Apathy

This is Sentiment 1 of 7: Red Ambition. I need a more consistent body of work, so I'm going to try my hand at a series of pieces. These are going to be two-hour digital paintings, focusing on staying loose and painterly.

Sentiment 1 of 7: Red Ambition

Just about done with this digital piece. Time to spread it around the internet and ask for critiques!

I'm struggling with the composition because I really wanted to convey a sense of depth and scale (and I made the file huge, so I would have no problem printing it out if I wanted to) but with this elongated vertical composition, the detail I've put in is lost. Hmm. I'm going to sit back and think about it.

The online JPG's are quite pixellated, too (they're not that way when viewed directly from my computer). I'm not sure what this is due to...hopefully, I'll be able to figure it out.

I'll write more about this piece later!

So, originally I conceived her to be a muse of passion, peace and poise, hence her name: "Aozora" (青空, blue sky). She stayed that way for the color pencil drawing, but for the oil painting she transformed into something else entirely. I call her the "Égérie verte" (green muse). I don't know her true name, but I do know her meaning: she embodies jealousy, pain, ire and delirium.

Here's the process:

I ended up taking a lot of photos of this piece because even though I spent what I thought was plenty of time laying out the composition beforehand, it still ended up lopsided, so I used my phone's photo editing app to constantly flip the photos.

Also, new studio! Turns out my phone can take panoramas (I'm not sure why the little panorama symbol appears on the photo...it doesn't on my computer):

So, what next? I dunno. I'm thinking of trying a new program called Art Rage--it's supposed to feel more painterly than Photoshop. Maybe I'll finish that darn comic I've been meaning to work on!

I was working on a study of this lovely model when I came across an awesome contest on James Gurney's blog. Now, I love Mucha and I love art nouveau, so I simply could not pass this up, and thus I decided to convert my study into a finished digital painting for the contest:

"Lionfish Shampoo" - digital painting
model credit: Chamberstock

I can't wait to see the other entries...I'm going to be in an art nouveau coma!

Why, hello there. Two things:

1)

"Portrait of a Gentleman", oil on canvas, 16 in x 20 in

From this, I learned it's pretty freaking hard to bullshit fabric. Well, lesson learned, I guess? It definitely made me think hard about the my plans for the next oil I had in mind...it was going to require a really lovely gown, and now I figure if I don't find the right references for that gown, the painting is not going to happen.

2)

"La Femme-bête", digital painting

Just something simple. I may explore this concept in a more detailed painting later, probably an oil.

Anyway, bye.

Just a small update for today because I'm currently fighting it out with an oil piece that's giving me a lot of trouble. I'll post pics as soon as it stops looking like a pile of crap, promise. So, two things:

1) If you haven't heard of Proko and you want to learn to draw, this is the place to start. His drawing videos are fantastic, and he is starting a series of videos specific to figure drawing, which I am very excited about. Now, I'm a big fan of art books and I have quite a few, and maybe you do, too, but seriously--check out these videos. They are very engaging and the concepts/processes are not only described but demonstrated marvelously. At any rate, I am going to go ahead and shamelessly link to the premium membership in the hopes of winning one. If I don't get it, it'll be at the top of my birthday list! :)

2) I have two pieces (L'Escargot aux yeux écarquillés and A Drawing in Likeness of the Queen, With Ceremonial Sword) in Gallery Provocateur's Modern Muse exhibition and the opening reception is this Saturday! The gallery is in a new space since last year with high, airy ceilings; as an aerialist, this is a vast improvement in my opinion, but I suppose the labyrinthine quality of the last one, albeit small, had its charm. When I dropped off my pieces, I had the pleasure of getting a glimpse of other artists' work there (some from the previous show and some that will be in Modern Muse)...beautiful, enchanting eccentricities that are not to be missed!

Well, here we are: almost June. That leaves me a mere two and a half months to get in as much art as possible before it's back to teaching French again. I've kept myself pretty busy these past two weeks, between recovering from a cold, teaching trapeze and making art. I have refused to wallow in a post art conference depression! Here's what's cooking:

"Aozora" in progress

I did the following sketch at Spectrum, soothing my deflated self-esteem by drawing spirals, like I am prone to do. I decided to pursue the concept with a finished piece. The color pencil drawing was "color study"; I don't know how effective this will end up being since oils handle pretty differently than color pencils, but I did really enjoyed doing it!

"Aozora" sketch

"Aozora" final color pencil drawing

There are a fair number of things I think don't work so well, some composition problems, that I resolve to avoid in the oil painting. I used vine charcoal to lay out the drawing on the canvas (a really old one that I re-gessoed to cover a truly hideous early painting of mine), which turns out is loads easier than using a graphite pencil because it erases much easier from the surface. It does get messy...

...but it cleans up really well once you trace over with ink and wipe off the charcoal with a wet cloth (let the ink dry first)!

I was debating whether or not to use this canvas since it's so old, and I've been wanting to try illustration board. When I visited the art store, though, and had a look at this thing called illustration board, I realized it really is just super thick paper, which means that I would need a large drawing table (the kind that you can tilt up) for me to be able to fix it down and work properly. This I don't have, plus there's some debate as to how much you can truly seal the paper from the paint, even if you coat it with gesso first (which you have to do). Lastly, I realized that this old canvas was exactly twice the size of the paper I used for the color pencil drawing, which made redrawing on the canvas easier. Someday when I have a bigger studio, I'd like to get a projector to help me transfer drawings to paintings and a nice big drawing table!

Anyway, the next step for "Aozora" is some digital color comps using a photo of the canvas drawing.

Moving on, the following piece was a long-overdue portrait I had promised One & Only to do of our dog.

"Portrait of a Gentleman" in progress

"Portrait of a Gentleman": first layer of paint being laid down

Final phase zoomed out, so you can see my delightful Omar Rayyan print

"Portrait of a Gentleman" : a bit closer

This piece made me realize how useful it would be to collect period clothing...fabric is tricky to invent.

Lastly, behold my lovely Travis Lewis print:

OK, signing off...be good while I'm gone, people.

This past weekend was spent at Spectrum Fantastic Art Live helping Aaron Miller with his booth. What a great learning experience and so much amazing art! It was kind of painful being there, though, for two reasons: 1) I couldn't afford to buy all the art I wanted, and 2) I quickly realized how much harder I will have to work for my art to be at the level I want it to be. 

I only got two portfolio critiques--one from Ryan Lee and another from Peter Morbacher--but combine them with being exposed to so much spectacular art at once was enough to make me quickly realize the truth about where I'm at right now versus where I want to be.

Some bright points: 

• Donato Giancola gave an oil painting demonstration, which was very enlightening, and now I want to try a bunch of new things on my next oil! 
• I sold my "Eye of Octopus" and "Eye of Chameleon".
• Aaron gave me an Omar Rayyan print as a thank-you!
• Travis Lewis gave me one of his lead holders because I was so curious as to what it was (and I bought one of his prints).

Also, look at all these amazing business cards and flyers I picked up! Each one is like a tiny work of art!

So, here is the final FINAL of "Madame Hélice de la Mare". Thanks to all those who gave me their input!

I think I'm going to take a break from digital for a little bit--I'm so tired of working at a computer! I have a couple oils I'd like to get started, although I also need to get back to "ORIGIN" (my comic), which does require digital work. At any rate, I have all summer ahead of me!

Happy spring! 'Tis the season for pollywogs (tadpoles)! Here is a new piece to celebrate:

"Madame Hélice de La Mare"

I have plenty of process documentation for this one since I was doing it as part of an online course. Honestly, I can't say I got that much from the course, but someone in an earlier learning stage might. You can, however, pretty much get the same amount of information and feedback from online communities like Awesome Horse Studios and Crimson Daggers. The main reason for my doing the course was because 1) I'm a huge admirer of Justin Gerard's draftsmanship, and 2) there was a promotional discount. 

So, here's the process:

Thumbnails (There were actually more, but I didn't see the point in scanning them all.)

Rough Sketch & Values

Color Comps

Final Painting

So, that's that...now to see if someone will critique it!

Here is "Paint" again, with a few tweaks, plus a snapshot of my work space with brainstorming and thumbnails in progress:

Maybe something to do with snails..

Hey, so you remember that "teaser" I posted a little while back? Well, lo and behold--I dropped that idea and went with this! I worked on my that first version for a few hours before realizing it wasn't what I wanted. I don't regret changing my mind--just goes to show that you shouldn't be afraid to trash an idea if it doesn't feel right.

"Paint" will be the last addition to my series based on dreams for a bit. There are more pieces to be done, but I need to work on some other things first.

Model credit: KristabellaDC3

I'm pretty pleased with it (at the moment), so I'm going to post it around for some feedback before I tweak it any further.

I made some more tweaks on "The Aerialist" thanks to some feedback from Monkeybread, which was greatly appreciated. I'm still not quite happy with it, though, so I'll move on and look back on her later when maybe I'll have a bit more insight. Here's the series so far with a teaser for the next piece: