Work, School, bleh

Haven't had a lot of doodling time lately. Hope that will change in a couple of weeks. 

I've been working a lot, almost 40 hour weeks. I work at a children's museum and I see this (below) a lot.  

I've also been slowly doing digital painting in place of traditional. So you'll be seeing more and more digital work in the future.

Coy Maid

Sorry I haven't posted any actual work in what seems to have been forever. I've been at school and working. But this is my last week of school before winter break. Hopefully, I'll be able to crank out a couple new paintings but then I have to get ready to move to Seattle (exciting and stressful)!

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. 

Having A Blast!

Make-believe time with Billford!

gouache on paper, colored pencil for detailing.

John Singleton Copley Study

Well. It's good for a first attempt. There is quite a bit wrong though. First being the mouth which is much too far out. The contour of the nose is a little off, also the edge of the face furthest away needs to come out more. Copley's self portrait is just filled with beautiful subtleties and it's hard to transfer the gorgeousness of this painting into a crummy graphite sketch. Oh well, i'll just have to try again. 

Ugh... the more I compare the more disgusted I am at my capabilities as an artist.

For any of you unfamiliar with Copley, he was probably America's first great painter. Sadly once he reached success and fame he moved to England and stayed there until his death. Though he had many of your standard portraits some he was allowed to play with and they had a charm and humor to them.

This painting is filled with suspense for me, look at her devious expression, with the bird and the dog everything seems to lead to her hand grasping the ribbon as if she were about to pull it at any moment releasing someone in a vat of molten lava. The pose is also really unusual to me, for a portrait anyhow. kneeling in front of the chair, it adds to the playfulness of the whole picture.

For any American history buff's you'll probably recognize this gentlemen above, it's none other than Paul "British Are Coming" Reveere. This painting is again strange, it's as if he started a standard still life and turned it into a portrait to have someone interfere with the objects. Now, I don't know much about Paul outside the famous tale, but maybe he was some sort of silversmith? not entirely sure, but this painting is just about as curious as his expression.

This is a fantastic group portrait. With children climbing all over the elders, I think my favorite is the older man on the left with the little girl looking at his wife pleading with his eyes for assistance, all is futile for she has two girls already crawling all over her. The man in all the way in the back is the artist himself, the reason why this painting takes so many liberties is the fact that this is his family and this is how he see's them. I wish I had a painting like this.

"The Sitwell Children," brilliant!

This is probably Copley's most famous and respected works. It was highly controversial at the time it was exhibited, but to me the crazy part is that this is a depiction of an actual event! The man in the water did survive, at the cost of one of his legs.