I’ve completed the Time For Tea cover for John Fulton and emailed it to him for approval. Hopefully the formatting etc … is correct.
This piece took me a lot longer than anticipated but has allowed me to cobble together the beginnings of a workflow.
Next will be a greyscale painting for the interior of the story.
Not being convinced about the composition, I’ve reworked this piece a bit by flipping it horizontally and also removing the teaspoon.
Also, the lighting is now darker and more yellow instead of orange.
I’m finally starting to get moving on the short story project with John Fulton.
Here is an in progress update on the first book cover, I’m probably 50% of the way through it. The colour block-ins are done, next come the details.
Here are some thumbnails:
A 3D layout I did in Blender to help with perspective and lighting:
The underpainting and line drawing:
The colour block-in and some early detailing and this is as far as I’ve gotten at the moment:
Felt compelled to do a figure study the other night as I’d been focused on other art for a while:
Here’s the reference photo of John Cena:
There’s a few accuracy issues with this. Once I started rendering I stopped putting in the effort to be accurate, something to improve on for next time.
On the upside, as I was painting, I found that my recent bumblings with traditional media has had an effect on the way I painted – I think this looks more painterly than my previous digital paintings.
Also I’m getting more familiar with Clip Studio Paint (formerly Manga Studio).
Here is my fifth acrylic painting and this time I was Learning How To Colour Over An Underpainting.
I tried using a grisaille (grey monochrome) underpainting. I then painted my colours over the top.
This seemed to work quite well as the paints I am using were transparent enough to let the underpainting show through.
I also had a go at painting “lost edges”. These are edges that are so blurred as to be “lost”. I love seeing them as they lend a real painterly feel to a piece of work.
I learned a few things on the way:
Anyway, here is the final result (sorry – I forgot to take some process shots):
I was determined to learn how to get better at mixing paint so I found the following articles on the internet and read through them:
What I learned from these articles is that you need to think about the following when you’re trying to mix paint to match a specific a specific colour:
Some people first try to match the value, then the hue and saturation. Others try to match the hue first and then the value and then the saturation.
Having said all this I reckon the secret weapon to mixing paint is …
… patience.
There is no secret weapon – you just gotta keep working at it until you’ve got the colour you want.
So here’s my attempt at mixing paint …
This is the reference image:
And here’s my attempt:
I’m a bit disappointed with the lack of light and shadow on this, I feel I could have done more to describe the 3D form here.
I think for the next painting I will do an underpainting to establish the light and shadow and then glaze colour over the top. I think the acrylic paint I’m using has enough transparency for this to work well.
Here’s my third attempt with acrylics.
I’m still using a monochromatic approach but this time using burnt umber paint (brown).
I’ve been 3D modelling an anthropomorphic rabbit for my project with John Fulton.
Here are a few process screenshots:
I learned a couple of nifty tricks in Blender doing this:
Here’s my second painting in acrylics, a labrador puppy.
I heard that at Watts Atelier, they have their students paint monochromatically to begin with so I thought I’d give that a go.
I’ve been meaning to try my hand at painting using a traditional medium such as acrylic paint for some time now.
I finally took the plunge and whilst I’m not completely happy with the result, I did really enjoy myself!
I started with a medium grey background and then did an initial colour block-in.
I then decided that my colours were completely wrong and did another colour block-in over the top. I tried to use an impasto (thick paint) technique as this seemed like fun, and it was!
Here I added a little more detail over the blocks of paint.
I struggled to get the right tonal variation whilst working with variation in colour as well here but I am calling this done and moving on. It’s so much easier working digitally since you can just set the value slider to get the right tones for the selected colour. Here I will have to learn how to mix paint physically!
