Caravaggio - An Exercise in Fanciness

Caravaggio is by far my painter who ever walked the face of the Earth. This is one of his early paintings (before he started doing his bleak church-commissioned paintings) call the musicians. The man peering over his shoulder looking right at you is the painter himself. A lot of painters at this time didn't do many self portraits but they would sneak themselves in their paintings some way or another. 

So here it is, my amateurish attempt of replicating masterpiece artwork. I do say that even though I do like copying from cartoons, copying renaissance period paintings is far more stimulating. There are lots of subtleties to look out for.

At first, i was having difficulty with the lips of the lute player, here's a page of the lips. I found the lips on all of the subjects to be very difficult to capture. Once i got it I made sure to make lots of notes so I wouldn't forget.

I didn't work much on Cupid. He really isn't the most interesting part of the painting just a device to suggest that the musicians are singing love songs. I worked on the body's a little, I have a horrible habit of only focusing on the heads. 

At this point the features are being played around a little more. 

Problems lay with the nose and mouth the bigger the mouth was the smaller the nose got. Also, for some reason or another the nose went from slightly bulbous to flat. 

Fairly proud of my Caravaggio render here. Below are the placements of the head. 

Didn't have an easy time caricaturing Caravaggio but these are first attempts and i haven't gotten much further than this. The most intriguing part of this gentlemen in the background is the neck, it's very graceful and swan-like, beautiful s-curve in the front. 

I know these aren't incredible renders, but I haven't posted in a while. Not only that, but there's lots to learn from these painters because they were excellent draftsmen and they use lots of forms and shapes which can be applied to my own work. 

Huckleberry Hound - John K Style

Color

Line-art


-original-

Boo-boo

So i got Adobe Illustrator (finally!). I've been practicing with inking and it's pressure sensitivity, though i haven't gotten the hang of it completely It's pretty simple to use. I just need to fix little quirks here and there. 

For practice, I've been using some of John K's HB drawings. 

Coloring is a nightmare in Illustrator, i can't figure it out and when I do try something it seems to just ruin the lines. So i had to import it into photoshop and color it in there.

A House in Seattle.

For me, this is a study in perspective and making cartoony settings. Both of which are fairly difficult for me. This painting took me a long time to complete, I'm fairly happy with the finished product, but there's still some things that need to be refined! 

Below are the other drawings that were made in order to get to what you see above. 

This was the original concept for the house. The house is flat and therefore not very enticing to look at.

As it turned out to put that house in perspective was really difficult. So i made some sketches of a different but similar house, then i put that into perspective. The perspective drawing was actually made into a painting, but it turned out horrible. Why? The composition was very sloppy and didn't make sense. So all that was scrapped and had to be rethought. 

So I made some thumbnails trying to figure out the composition and try to get the house the attention it deserved. I moved it from the base of the hill to the top. I didn't really want to do it, but it made the most sense to do so.

Once that was done I made a rough drawing. 

That rough was scanned and i made a digital color key to figure out how it would be done, and to give me an idea if the drawing would work. All this while checking my email.

Once I approved the color key the rough was traced onto thick paper for painting.

A base paint coat was added to make sure everything still made sense.

Then i just kept painting and that's how I got what you see on the top of the page. I'm not a 'painter' by any means. But if anyone has any suggestions on improving my painting methods or would like to share their process please feel free to comment!

Hey Look! IT'S ME!

I have a droopy face and I'm no fun at parties.