Dawn of Twilight: Starting Fresh

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Starting Fresh

I officially ended my vacation last sunday with this image:

I'm still thinking on whether the features line up correctly. I think I've spent around 8 hours just obsessing over the sketch. lolz. Since this is a practice piece before I work on the planned bather for my portfolio, I decided to go ahead with it. I set aside the thinking pose for now. That one ended up looking like an Egyptian catamite. lolz.

This is where I'm currently at. Just managed to pick the palette and lay in the basic light and dark areas last night. I'm thinking of changing some of the colors... particularly the cool shadow which seems more gray than I'm going for. Hope I get far enough tonight so I can keep the time frame for this at 1 week only... I can hardly find time to do these paintings. I definitely have to learn how to paint faster.

Don't grow too attached to the line art. They will all disappear in the later stages. ;)

**********************************Updated 8-16-06 **********************************

Worked more on this last night. This is basically the application of the warm shadow and the cool lights. I think I made a mistake with the process... not so sure if its cool shadows first or warm shadows. Anyway I'll just wing it. The cheeks look really flat right now. Haven't gone into those yet. Maybe tonight or tomorrow night. It is a different band of orange.

This is the first time I've used such bold colors. Usually I keep them somewhat tempered... but I guess I just felt brave. :D Hopefully the image will be more formed when the warm lights have been applied. If it's not then I've done this all wrong and I'd have to go back 3 layers...

--------------------------------------Updated 8-17-06---------------------------------------

Added the warm lights last night. It is starting to take shape. I also clipped the legnth of the nose and cheeks a bit. It's kinda looking like the ref a bit except my work is a little more saturated. I was supposed to block in the rest of the features and the background but I was too sleepy.

Thanks to Kelandra this image will be saved. She kindly pointed out the poor girl's missing clavicles. Lolz. This is what I get for painting half asleep. lolz.

Now If I can only remember how to define brushes in painter I can actually go ahead with the background...

--------------------------------------Updated 8-18-06---------------------------------------

Just managed to do preliminary work on the background and blocked in the colors to be used for the hair. Still no clavicle but hopefully when I come back on tuesday this will not only be finished but also anatomicaly correct. ;)

hmm... blue and orange color scheme. That reminds me something. haha...

--------------------------------------Updated 8-18-06---------------------------------------

Weekends never turnout to be the way you expect them. :D I wasn't able to finish but atleast I got to push it further. I worked in the facial features. Also fixed the eyes a bit. The following the first sketch made her right eye wander around. The distance between the two eyes too were off so I had to adjust that. Pushed the skin tones further as well.

Issues issues. Why are there always issues... with my painting that is! I see countless things that need fixing and there's nothing worse than remembering a lesson or a rule of thumb more than halfay thru your painting. Too late to go back and fix some of the issues. I'll just apply them next time. Here's some of what I missed:

shadows are supposed to be less saturated than the tones in light.
shadows are supposed to be the complementary of both the local color and the color of the light.
well it's no secret. she still has no clavicle. :P

I'm liking how this is turning out afterall. (here's where the fulfillment comes. lolz) Maybe she'll go into my portfolio after all. hmm...
--------------------------------------Updated 8-25-06---------------------------------------

I just worked on the hair. I'm finding it difficult and right now I have mixed feelings with the result. This is how it looks without the sketch lines by the way. I figure I need to define the image more. Also spent some time last night looking at the issues that other artists pointed out. I think I got it. I'll spend the weekend finishing up and hopefully start the bather series. :D

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Words of Wisdom

Leonardo da Vinci - "The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance"

Richard Schmid - "Remember--soft edges in a painting are not an end in themselves. They must be APPROPRIATELY soft and should conform to what you perceive them to be in your subject. That is what will make your edges look authentic. Arbitrarily softening everything is like intentionally mumbling when you speak."

"Real drawing is a discipline that must be maintained by constant practice. It is like staying in physical shape. Knowing how to do it must be accompanied by actually doing it. Tracing to get the drawing reduces you to the level of a child playing with a coloring book, and it's not as much fun as it was when you were three years old." "When you finish a painting started as a tracing, there will be little sense of achievement, except perhaps for the patience required to color it. Tracing is degrading because you will have denied yourself the freedom to use your own powers of self-expression. Is that really the way anyone should want to be an artist?"

Pablo Picasso - "From the moment that art ceases to be food that feeds the best minds, the artist can use his talents to perform all the tricks of the intellectual charlatan. Most people can today no longer expect to receive consolation and exaltation from art. The 'refined,' the rich, the professional 'do-nothings', the distillers of quintessence desire only the peculiar, the sensational, the eccentric, the scandalous in today's art. I myself, since the advent of Cubism, have fed these fellows what they wanted and satisfied these critics with all the ridiculous ideas that have passed through my mind. The less they understood them, the more they admired me. Through amusing myself with all these absurd farces, I became celebrated, and very rapidly. For a painter, celebrity means sales and consequent affluence. Today, as you know, I am celebrated, I am rich. But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the word: Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya were great painters. I am only a public clown--a mountebank. I have understood my time and have exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession, this confession of mine, more painful than it may seem. But at least and at last it does have the merit of being honest."

William Bouguereau" - One has to seek Beauty and Truth, Sir! As I always say to my pupils, you have to work to the finish. There's only one kind of painting. It is the painting that presents the eye with perfection, the kind of beautiful and impeccable enamel you find in Veronese and Titian."

"Each day I go to my studio full of joy; in the evening when obliged to stop because of darkness I can scarcely wait for the morning to come...My work is not only a pleasure, it has become a necessity. No matter how many other things I have in my life, ifI cannot give myself to my dear painting I am miserable."

Chris Saper - "It is a beautiful world out there. Someone has to paint it and it might as well be you."

Grab one. They're free!

Warm light = cool shadow & vice versa

You made a mistake and you hit control+z? You stare at your work and you realize it's traditional media. lolz

Shadow, less saturated than light

Skin. A question of orange?

Complementary? Stare at the color for a while then look into a blank white space. You'll see it there. I'm serious. You'll see it there! :P

Skin in Shadow = Not a darker version of skin in light. it is a different color.

Don't use black. It'll kill your picture. If you need to use one mix your own.

Grey= R+B+Y then add white.

Shadow = Complimentary of light

Nothing in nature is saturated. Saturated colors are all man made.

Brown = Violet + Yellow

Warms pop. Cools recede.

I was erasing my work on Painter the other day and I instictively blew on the monitor. lolz

Dawn of Twilight

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Starting Fresh

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