Flower Power 2

"Ruby's Flowers" Pastel,  8.5x11

These are the same flowers from my mom's garden that I did a watercolor of back in May.  This time they are in pastels and for a sick friend.  Hope she likes it!

Farragut West Twisted Tree

"Twisted Tree"  Watercolor, 10x6

I painted this after a sketch I did in the park I cross on my way from my office to the metro.  The funny thing was that a couple weeks later after I sketched it it was cut down.  Just like that.  I have to admit that I was a little shocked.  I always enjoyed passing this tree.  The way it twisted over reminded me of a bent over dancer with her arms over her head. It was just a unique and beautiful tree  I'm glad that I got the courage to stop for a minute and capture this tree in my sketchbook.  Now that it is gone it makes this painting a little more special.  

Pencil Sketch of Twisted  Tree in Farragut West Park.

Snake Study

Snake Study for an up coming painting.

DC ZOO GREVY'S ZEBRA

These are Grevy's Zebra from the National Zoo in DC.  The intricate design of the two zebra's stripes interacting with each other caught my eye.  It was a very good exercise in patience and concentration when drawing them.   Learn more about the zebras here.

Mashup-WhiteNinja

I do these every now and then in my sketchbook to help loosen up my mind.  I start with one image ( in this case the guy with his fingers to his mouth ) and then I use the contour of that image to create a new one.  It's pretty fun to see what your mind can come up with.  After I was done I felt like there could be some type of story to this and, I decided to put the focus on the white ninja.

The main story I thought of was that the white ninja has to destroy the creature in the tank before it gets out of hibernation.  And there's lots of weird a crazy characters he has to face before he gets there.

Metro Portrait No.1 - Velma

MetroPortrait  No.1 -Velma
Watercolor 12x16

 I don't really know her name but she reminds me of Velma from Scooby Doo for some reason. 

Tried out my new watercolor brush that I bought today.  A 3/4 flat and I also got a rigger but didn't use it for this painting.  I tried to use more bigger strokes and work my way down to a smaller round brush only when I needed to.  

Below is the image with a threshold adjustment layer added in Photoshop.  It reduces the image down to just black and white.  It's very good to see how readable your image is in just two values.  I found the results interesting (and readable) so I decided to throw it up here.  

Here is the sketch that I drew on the bus on my way to work.  I later added watercolor when I got home.  Her coat wasn't originally pink and her hair wasn't orange but I thought they looked cooler.  So there you go.

Beach Week

Went to the Outer Banks last week for some beach fun.  Here's a quick sketch of a dad and his daughter mesmerized by the waves.

And here below is an attempt at a cloud study while at the beach.

I've always have been fascinated with clouds and wanted to paint them. This has been the first time that I had really made an effort to capture what I see.

The colors they take on and the way they show form are very intriguing to me and they are definitely harder to paint than I realized. 

 I don't get much time to sit around and paint clouds all day like I want to. So I'll have to come up with a way to take good pictures and quickly make value/color notes with pencil/pen. I hope to do more in the future.

RedDie No.1

At long last here's my latest piece. And it's all digital.

June Sketch Dump

Here's a big ole sketch dump from my current sketchbook.  Getting back into the habit.  Word.

                                     

                       

                                      

                                        

                                       

Flower Power

.

Here's a little watercolor I just finished up for my mom.  Took a reference photo from her little flower garden outside of her kitchen.  Hopes she likes it!

Practice Practice Practice!

Still consider my self a beginner at watercolor.  But Practice makes perfect.  I painted this from a photo I took of my wife.  On to the next one.

REVENGE OF THE NERD!

Here's the latest.  Inspired by Lupe Fiasco's Mixtapes. Pencil, Watercolor, Digital.
He's going to teach this town a lesson that they won't forget.  Never make a nerd ANGRY.

Contrast Study

After reading James Gurney post about how to eliminate the middle value I decided to try it out for myself.  I very much enjoyed just breaking down everything to just black and white.  It really helped me see the bigger shapes and get a better sense of light direction.  And I love applying it to watercolor it just makes everything easier.  I'll put this tool in my bag of tricks when I'm out drawing from now on.  Rock on.

Life Drawing 4-09-2011

More drawings from my sketchbook.  Don't worry I'm doing more stuff than my life drawings and I'll be posting them up soon!

Life Drawing 3-24-2011

Had a little fun making up the colors here.  Its Christmas Time in Washington!  Not really, but this week it feels cold enough to be.  Hurry up warm weather!  

Life Drawing 3-23-2011

Ignore the robo sale sign it was a concept for another idea that I just drew around.  I really wanted to let the water play here but keeping in mind the values and lighting .  It was raining when I sketched this and letting the water have more freedom seemed fitting.

SHARKS!

Every year my wife's family goes down to outer banks NC for a week of beach fun. Last year my wife, me and baby Yvette went to the NC aquarium while down there .




 It was pretty good and I took lots of photos.  The shark tank they had was huge and filled with  big sharks.  I painted this from one of the photos I took. The sharks had an eerie green glow to them due to the lighting in the tank that made them look extra cool.

  My main goal here was to get that same eerie glow feeling.  Some parts are hit and miss.  I probably should of took my time more and added more dark layers around the shark to make him/her?  pop out.  I started out good but was kind of rushing at the end.

 But this attempt was better than my first which I rushed through the whole thing and forgot about values.

 Oh well it was fun to paint and I learned something from it so I call it a win for me.

Life Drawing 03-18-2011

Another painted page from my sketchbook.

Life Drawing 3-16-2011

My daughter Yvette Has about 4 phases before she finally goes to sleep. 

This is phase 3 in the back of the car (my lovely and beautiful wife was driving). This phase includes thumb sucking ear grabbing and various moaning noise. 

She was out 10 min later and deep into phase 4. (usually mouth open drooling and rag doll like physics).

Life Drawing 3-15-2011

Did this one on the bus yesterday.   

Life Drawing 03-14-2011

Hey folks!  Its been a while since my last post (over a month yikes!) well never fear I'm still here.

Piano Man

Pen

Sketched this while waiting for my wife to finish looking around the store in the mall.  One of the few reasons that I agree to go to the mall with her is that I can bring my sketchbook and sketch while she's busy in the store. The mall is an excellent source for some life drawing.

 Our mall has multiple stories and its interesting to see people from above or from below. It also has a glass ceiling so with the sun shining through it creates beautiful patterns along the interior.  I just wanted to draw it all.  And that's something I need to work on is drawing backgrounds to place my figures in. This is a good place to practice it.

Pen

 In the Macy's store there is a piano guy that I always enjoy  sketching and listening to. He plays a lot of Beatles tunes and its awesome. I was sketching him yesterday and found it interesting that here we are two people doing art and doing it in public.  It was interesting because people would come and listen to him and I had a couple of people look over my shoulder to see that I was drawing him.  I love art.

Weather Sacrifices

Pencil, Digital

Noticed some  DC Gals on my commute have this mentality.

Oh Dandelion.

Pencil and Digital

Came up with this idea after brain storming on the Illustration Friday topic REVERSE.  Going to try to paint this up in watercolor.  But for now just some pencil and simple Photoshop coloring.  Thoughts and Critiques most welcomed!

A Wolf At The Door

Pencil, Digital

I love listening to Radiohead when drawing, or really doing anything.  Sketched this one on the metro took it home redrew it and added some color and text in Photoshop. Pi Yow!

Facebook Poking Gone Too Far

INK

Here is my submission for Illustration Friday topic Surrender.  Its a whole world where people use their hands as real guns.  My wife thinks I'm very silly.

Lil Riders - Rachel And Dusty

Watercolor

So here is the second pair in my Lil Riders series.  Rachel and Dusty.  I approached this thinking I was going to do all kinds of crazy detail but ended up making everything pretty loose. I like the way it looks and feels. I'm definitely getting more confidence in mixing the colors I want to produce.  I think in my next painting I'll try inking out stuff first and then coloring it.  We'll see how that looks.  On to the next one.

Metro Sketching Part 2.

So from Metro Sketching Part One we learned why we should sketch on the metro now we will explore a little more of the process and some tips.

SHE'S SO HEAVY!

ShesSoHeavy
Watercolor, Pen

This is based off an older sketch I had in my sketchbook.  I thought the idea was still cool so I decided to redraw it, add the eagle, and paint it up.  This idea was sparked after seeing Across The Universe.  I love the Beatles.

Lil Riders - Jesse And Jake

LilRiders - Jesse And Jake
Watercolor, Pen And Some Digital Enhancement

I've been playing with a short story idea I call Lil Riders. It's basically about people riding on ordinary animals that are giant size and they race each other.  These are the main characters (Jesse) and her pig friend (Jake).  This idea was inspired  by seeing my 15 month old daughter riding a rocking pig (like a little rocking horse but with a pig instead).



 I had a easier time painting this one out. But I did have a mess up with the pig's ear and had to fix with some white gauche. My wife (whose also an artist) reminded me not to piddle,play, or putter in which I think I did all three especially the putter part.  Lesson Learned. I have to be more confident with the strokes and have to leave them alone even if its wrong, watercolor is very unforgiving. I would also like to mention that after reading a wonderful watercolor article and watching a couple tutorial videos at create38.com I felt really geared up to go and paint. And I encourage everyone whose starting out in watercolor to go visit. That girl definitely knows her stuff.

 I think watercolor and pen is going to be the right combo for me.  Drawing has always been my strong suit and I really like how it combined here with the color.  So there you go.  My plan is hopefully is to finish out this illustrated story and get it published. Well See.  Here is some of the process below.

Pig Studies

Pencil Drawing 

Watercolor

And some of the other Animals I had in mind were
            * Elaine and a Crocodile (protagonist)
            * White haired boy with a White Rabbit
            * Red Head Girl with a Rooster
            * Peacock
            * Frog
            * Tortoise
            * Giraffe

The initial idea was to draw a racing scene with all the riders and animals racing but I decided to explore the characters a bit more and break them out into separate paintings. Stay tuned more to come soon. Thanks!

Lessons Learned #1 - Watercolor

Christmas Unicorn - Watercolor
Arches cold press 140lb 12x16

So here is my attempt at watercolor of the Christmas Unicorn I did earlier.  Some things I did like and  a lot of things I didn't like.

 Pros:  I like how the colors turned out. The camera I used didn't do it justice. If anyone has suggestions on good cameras and photographing art let me know.

Another pro and probably the biggest one is actually finishing a piece from start to finish. most of my work usually start off strong in the development stage (thumbnails, reference gathering, to even a value study) but usually it stops there. I usually get hooked on another idea I have to paint and push my current one to the side. Even though this piece is not as good as I would have liked it to be I think it's a huge accomplishment on my part to follow through with it.  There still could be a lot of work that could be put into it but I'm going to leave it as is and take what I've learned to apply it to the next piece.

As for the cons.  Honestly I like how my Christmas card turned out better than this one. It has more detail and the values are way better.  With that being said the colors were done digitally and for this piece and pieces going forward I'm trying to get into more traditional art. Watercolor is very tough to master (at least for me) and I think maybe I'll try to combine it with colored pencil or ink since I will be able to get more detail in.  

   Here's a little bit on the process I took.  To start out I practiced drawing horses for a good while to understand the construction. I referred to my trusted Weatherly Guide To Drawing Animals by Joe Weatherly (best animal drawing book out there). 

And also did some gesture drawings from images off the web.  An awesome gesture online drawing tool can be found here. 

 So after I gained a little confidence in my horse drawing abilities I went to Michaels and bought a toy horse and wrapped it up in wrapping paper. And drew it out a couple of times.  One thing I should of done here was to practice drawing it in the living room with natural lighting vs in the basement at night. I'll be sure to get better lighting conditions for my next piece.

So the drawing was all done and it was time to move on to the watercolor phase.  I've only messed with watercolor a few times to so I took some time to pratice a little before attempting to paint it out on the final paper.  Below you will see a study I did of Petar Meseldzija's The Legend of Steel Bashaw.  It came out pretty good and boosted my moral a lot.  I found that by mixing your colors before hand and laying them all out painting is a lot easier. That is easier said than done of course. But for the unicorn piece I didn't do that and found myself creating colors on the fly often resulting in muddied or unwanted results. I think in the future I will be investing more time into color studies.

After this, I took my value study scanned it in the computer and blew it up to match my proportions of my watercolor paper. Printed it out and used transfer paper to put it on the final paper. It took a couple tries to get it right as this was my first time transferring a drawing like this.

Then it was time to paint. It took about 3 to 4 hours. Most of it was me being hesitant to make a mark on the page. I think the hardest part for me was matching the values that I had established in my study. And some of the pencil lines didn't transfer properly to the paper so I was making some stuff up as I went (Def know better next time) I think I just need more patience in trying to match a color note. And if you don't know what I mean by note check out the Munsell Color System. So that's it; my process for my first watercolor only painting. It came out better than what I expected but not as good as I would have liked.

Here for bonus is the thumbnail that started it all. Drew it on my commute to work.

As always I welcome your comments and critiques. Thanks for reading!