New Camera

After much frustration of trying to take pictures of some of my new works I decided it was time to go get a new camera. I did so and I have been playing with it non stop since. I will get good pictures of the two new paintings tomorrow when the sun is out. Here are some pictures taken while messing with it this past weekend.

busy

I am in the process of moving, again. This weekend I will be moving back to Maryland to escape the pay of rent and to sit back and think clearly about where exactly I am heading I guess. I have been drawing and sketching quite a bit though, but painting has been hard since a lot of my things are packed away and hard to get to. I did manage to complete one painting today though since I had all morning to do so and felt as if I haven't been doing so much lately. The painting is a remake of a really old drawing I did a few years ago, I'll post the original drawing, even though it is very sloppy and unimpressive. I changed it all around quite a bit though from start to finish. Anyways, here is the original, a progress picture and a complete.

The new sketch was changed quite a bit from the original
Here is a picture of the progress, with the background colors laid out and the base colors also.

Acrylic on paper

I am very excited about the other sketches that I have been working on and plan on spending a lot of time on them. They will most likely be watercolor paintings, when I get around to painting.
Since I am in the process of moving, it may take longer than I would like to complete but I'll post them once completed.

Looking towards the future

Wanting to paint something more realistic with my acrylics I decided about a month ago to do a self portrait. I wanted the figure to have a blind fold over the eyes though because doing a regular one sounded kind of boring to me. So I took some reference pictures and such and started painting. I was happy with the way it came out, having wanted it to be real clean and smooth but at the same time it was kind of boring too. I put it aside and moved on after that until last night. Having a bit of a break after a long week of stress and sketching and painting I wanted to just do something fun or messy I guess. So I dragged the portrait picture out and decided to get messy. I still preserved a lot of the portrait style but splashed a lot of whites off the blind fold and dripped the shadows down to eliminate the shoulders and all along with some other small details. This is a lot different than anything else I have really ever done and I was really excited as it was all kind of evolving. Anyways, here is the picture :)

So I came across a bulletin from a record label that supports a couple of my favorite bands that was asking for merch designers. I wouldn't say that I am much of a merch designer but I thought up a couple of cool things that I thought followed the style of the music the bands created and would look somewhat interesting on a shirt or hoodie or whatever it was needed for. I submitted 9 different images in all, with a couple variations for each. Some of the images were older paintings or drawings that I did that fit just fine but I did do 5 total new drawings and paintings. I originally planned on just drawing them up in pen and then adding color in photoshop but after doing so I just didn't like the way it looked and I thought I would like them better painted. So I did so. Since I didn't intend on painting on sketchbook paper, I didn't paint them the way I normally would have if it had been on watercolor paper instead. Anyways, here are 4 of the new drawings I did. I like a couple of them a lot and may redo them on better paper and expand on the image some more, but I tried to keep it fairly simple since they are for merch. If any get accepted, I will post up the final images after editing :)

This was a sketch I had been working on before I started with the other designs. The meaning for the image is not visible yet until I finish it and paint it when I get a chance to. I have another one similar in subject that may go with it also. sorry for the bad picture.

Misc.

So although I have been working on some things on the side, I have nothing finished at this time, but some fun ideas in mind. I have been working on a separate project on the side though that has had me very excited and will be shared later on once decided if it is for sure or not. Other than that I figured I would post up some Misc. things and some of the commissioned things I have done lately.

All of the above pictures are what i painted for my Uncles company in Baltimore. They are not anything spectacular in my book and to be quite honest, are a bit lazy on my part due to lack of motivation and interest in the subject, but overall a different style of work for me.



The pictures below are either sketches of some sorts or just unfinished or scrapped drawings that I have just never finished or had the desire to do so. I may end up doing so, or redoing them at a later date, but for now I have moved on and am past the theme behind them at this point. I hope to have two fun images done within the next week hopefully, but depending on class and if more work arises, that may not be very realistic.

3/25

Still in the mood to just draw something fun, I did a sketch the other night of something a little more strange compared to some of my more recent works. I liked the sketch a lot and almost decided against doing a painting and just keeping it all pencil, but I like color too much and of course decided to do so. Here is the sketch along with the finished piece.

I haven't had much practice with acrylics before so I wasn't too confident going into this one, but I think it turned out well in the end. I have been in the mood to draw/paint a lot lately and I am trying to take advantage of it while I can, but I have a lot to do at the moment and it isn't so easy right now. Other than this, I have been drawing/painting daily, I am trying to finish up three more commissioned paintings by this weekend. These are of trucks/cranes though for my uncles company. It's not a hard thing to draw and paint but it just isn't much fun and as a result the lack of motivation and enthusiasm sometimes makes me careless with them. I will most likely post pictures of them soon just because. Here is a progress picture I took of my last one.

Bird Knight Fight

So maybe its a bit of the nerdier side of me but I grew up playing video games like the Final Fantasy's, Zelda's, and all of that stuff. In fact I could probably say that those games were the reason I wanted to draw at a young age when I did. Anyways, I kind of needed a break from trying to draw something meaningful and just wanted to draw something fun. I did a sketch one night of two bird-knights fighting and had alot of fun doing it. The first picture was my very first initial sketch that I made of the image for fun. I decided I liked it enough that I took the concept and drew out a more refined drawing of it and would decide if I wanted to do a painting or not. Well I liked the second sketch alot also so I transferred it onto watercolor paper. I wanted to make this different than my recent works so I kept the colors kind of dull and more realistic. I focused alot on shadows and highlights on this one and avoided doing any pen or heavy pencil outlining also. I was happy with the outcome which can be seen below. Enjoy.

I have been painting pretty much every day now, mostly just commissioned work though for some cash. I should be able to post up this month's and last month's commissioned works this week or the next, not that it is anything too exciting anyways. I do have a complete sketch ready for paint and a rough sketch/idea for another personal picture to be done after that! :)