Natural History Museam - Stuffed Fox

This fox looks really stiff and lifeless (somthing which Luke mentioned instantly), but I can forgive myself this result since it was stuffed. It took about an hour. The legs and base are so bad that I can't bring myself to even post the whole image....

Natural History Museam - Mouse

I was going to sketch a few skeletons with pencil and paper, but this stuffed mouse caught my attention. I ran out of power after about 45 minutes, but spent about 10 minutes cleaning this up in a coffee shop

Frances Oneil's class

Another portrait from Frances Oneil's class. This was about 1.5 hours followed by 20 minutes cleaning things up.

Frances Oneil's class - portrait

I arrived a bit late, so this was about 1.5 hours in class. I wanted to see how far I could correct things from memory, so I spent about 2 more hours in a coffee shop working on this without reference.

I read a useful tip that might be of interest to other digital painters. Try saturating your main skin color layer a little more than you usually would, and then add a new layer. Pick a low opacity airbrush in a dull grey / beige and paint over the saturated skin with the dull color. It gives the image a little more life (you can think of it as a layer of dead skin cells masking the more intense skin tones).

15 Minute Jam Factory

This was a quick 15 minute digital sketch from a 30 minute pose. My laptop spent 15 minutes installing updates and then reverting the changes, which meant I didn't get this very far before time ran out. I might try finishing it later as a challenge of working without reference.

Ashmolean Skull Painting

I went to the Ashmolean today to try another sculpture, but got distracted by a skull that was positioned beside a bench. Unfortunately I ran out of power after about 50 minutes and had to clean this up in a coffee shop for about 30 minutes based on a quick iphone photo.

Portrait Class

Here is a 2 hour digital painting I did at Frances Oneil's portrait life class

Sculpture Speed Paint

I went to the Ashmolean during lunch with Luke to do a little sketching. Here is a 35 minute speed paint of a sculpture.

A few sketches

Nose Tutorial

Here is the result from the furiae nose tutorial. Now that I have followed all of her advice it is time to try putting it in practice on a complete face.

Lip Tutorial

Continuing with my attempts to learn how to shade different parts of the face I decided to work on lips for the past three painting sessions. They turned out to be a lot harder than I was expecting.

I have to admit that I am not happy with the results, but after an hour of unsuccessful attempts to get the highlights correct I figured it was time to move on. I will revisit lips again once I am done working on a nose.

Hair Tutorial

I spent a few hours this week working on a hair tutorial. The advice in this tutorial was incredibly helpful, especially after struggling with hair in a photo reference painting for a few days.

http://www.furiae.com/index.php?view=gallery

To follow the tutorial I decided to start with her base image but attempt a slightly different style. I think it worked out well, and I learned a lot.

Her is a quick before and after to show the base image that I took from furiae vs the final image:

Eye Tutorial

This is an image I have been working on for a while trying to improve my rendering of eyes. I'm not entirely happy with the result, but it is a start at least. I will write more about how this was created later

Figure Drawing

This is a 25 min digital sketch from my figure drawing class last week. After reading the blogger terms of service regarding nudity I think it is one of the few sketches from the Jam Factory classes that I will be able to post here. I am using Painter X for this sketch, which I was considering abandoning up until a few weeks ago. The natural media concept used in most of the brushes really doesn't help for realistic digital painting, but with a few minor tweaks you can start to create nice images. My first discovery was Rob's Brushes

http://www.ethereality.info/ethereality_website/goodies/goodies.htm

The basic brush and blending tools are much more useful than anything shipped in painter by default. The second discovery was a simple piece of advice - avoid using the colour wheel! Just use a few swatches for your midtones, highlights, and shadows. If your stuck finding good colours a great starting point is the Flesh Tones.colors colour set shipped with painter (Color Sets->Open)

Morning Sketch (10 min)

I have been trying hard to get faster with my tablet PC over the past year, and I was fairly pleased with this 10 minute attempt. Trying to paint in coffee shops teaches you a lot more than working from static references or long figure drawing poses because it forces you to remember the important aspects of the pose. I still have a lot of trouble with skin tones here, but I'm pleased about getting the overall form done in time.

Photo Reference Sketch

I sketched this by hand from a photo reference I found in the independent one day during my morning coffee shop sketching session. The thing that struck me about the photo was the way the layers of transparency in the photo posed an interesting challenge. A few unsuccessful sketches in pencil made me fairly determined to get it right digitally. I might post the steps later if anyone is interested, but the basic idea was to get everything roughly correct in B&W before moving to colour. I started with a very rough sketch at low res (400x800) before upscaling to work in detail. I'm not really happy with skin tones in this one, but it was a great learning exercise.