Office Characters - "Gossip"

As I should probably start every post... long time no blog!

I started what I'm hoping to make a new series called Office Characters. I feel like there are certain "characters" that appear in every office, the gossipy in-the-know people, the too-perky-for-Monday people, people who like to play games and pull pranks, the NEED-coffee types, health food nuts, etc. etc., so since I work in an office (and enjoy watching re-runs of The Office), I thought this would be a fun series.

I decided to start with "Gossip" because I thought it would lend itself to characters with interesting gestures and facial expressions. This painting is digital, painted in Photoshop.

This was really fun to paint so I'm hoping to do a few more in the near future. I found some brush stroke settings that make the tablet act MUCH more like a real pencil or paint brush and it made the results much closer to what I was looking for. I'm hoping that will help speed up my process so I can get more of these done and hopefully some Irish dance paintings too.

That's all for now! Thanks for stopping by!

Banshee Painting

Long time no blog!

Just finished a painting this afternoon, so it seemed like a good time for an update!

Banshee, gouache 2015

This painting depicts the legend of the Banshee. There are several versions of the myth so I decided to combine a couple of the lesser-known variants instead of painting the typical "wailing hag."  In one story I read, the Banshee was a young woman who kindly ushered the dead to the other world, in another, she was an omen of death appearing as an old washer woman.  I thought these had interesting contrast (and would read together as Banshee-themed :)), so these are the two I decided on for this painting.

This is my first full gouache painting since taking a workshop on watercolor and gouache a couple years ago, and although it took some practice and tutorial videos, I'm happy to say gouache and I are no longer enemies!  I actually really like it, it doesn't require mediums or smelly "odorless" mineral spirits, it can be diluted like water color, it can be thick and opaque like oil or acrylic, and with some water, you can even adjust dried areas of the painting.  Overall, I think it's pretty fun to work with!

Thanks for reading, more paintings to come!

De-Stress Sketch

This is unfinished and there quite a few issues, but today was a bit of a stressful day at work, so I thought I'd try what I read other artists mention in their blogs, a quick "de-stress" painting. 

Massive Update!!

So... it's almost the end of February...

It's been a crazy busy (and embarrassing long) time since I updated this blog!  So since I'm online for the first time in a long long time, it's well-past time for blog updating!  Believe it or not - art has been happening!

Here's what I've been up to...

In November my work asked me to design and illustrate their company holiday card again.  Here's what I came up with:

This is the web-blast version so it's single-sided, but you get the idea.  Just for fun, these are my alternate thumbnails. I did three designs and the company chose the one they wanted illustrated for the card:

Then... in January I did a commissioned portrait of this adorable dog:

 

Which brings us up to present where I'm working on a project that is still top-secret (because it's not done yet), but has been in progress since late December! Hopefully that will be done soon so I'll try to add it if I get permission.

In the meantime...

Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, Happy Valentine's Day, President's Day, Anna Howard Shaw Day, Groundhog Day, and Happy Chinese New Year! 

Hopefully more to come soon!  Thanks for stopping by :) 

Early/Late Holiday Cards

It's been a busy November already!  I can't believe tomorrow is the 10th already!

I recently started working on the designs for this year's holiday cards for my office.  Since I just finished the thumbnails and they haven't seen the designs yet, I thought I'd post what I came up with last year (it was well after December by the time I got this blog running... it just seemed out of season, so I saved it ☺).

2013 Holiday card design

I work at a tech company, so snowmen with network and telephony gear seemed like a fun theme for the holidays!

I'll post this year's card and work in progress after the final cards are sent out in December.  For now, I'm working on coming up with the theme for my next (un-related) project!

Thanks for visiting!

Finally Finished!

It's been a long time coming, but I finally finished this painting!

 

I learned a lot while working on this piece, most importantly: don't go crazy with the eraser unless you are absolutely sure you're on the right layer!

OK, maybe that wasn't the most important thing, but I think I'm finally narrowing in on a good process and technique so I'm excited to start the next project!

Thanks for stopping by :)

Still Working and Painting Backwards

Still not quite 100% on this painting, but definitely closer than I was before.  It's been a busy couple weeks so progress has been slow.

In other news, I finally understand why people flip their paintings upside down or reverse them horizontally - it's like a magic mistake-finding trick!

Rotating a painting is something my professors suggested when the class was working on oil paintings.  I did it a few times but eventually stopped because I wasn't seeing the benefit.  But, after watching a few videos on digital painting technique, I noticed that nearly all of the artists flip their work - usually several times during the process - so I decided I must be missing something and gave it another try... They were right, it works wonders!

Today I worked on this painting entirely flipped this way:

  

 

This is the current version flipped horizontally so I've fixed some of the errors, but it allowed me to see that the paint on the mountains was splotchy, the waves needed some work to be more defined, and the ships were blending in to the ocean, along with some lighting issues on the figures that needed to be addressed.  Clearly, I should have tried this a long time ago!

Here's the current version in the correct orientation:

  

And, here's last week's for comparison:

The differences are probably pretty subtle, but hopefully there is some noticeable improvement.  There are still a few more adjustments I want to make, just to tighten everything up, but should be done soon!

 

WIP - 99%!

So close!  I'm still adjusting here and there, but this is almost finished! 

I was hoping I could finish up tonight, but these last few stages always take me the longest! Just when I think I might be done, I notice something that needs a little bit more work ... and then find another thing... and another... and another... like when you give a moose a muffin.

Nonetheless, I think just a few tweaks here and there and this will be complete!

More to come! 

WIP Almost Done!

After a bit of a slow start this morning (I over-slept), today turned out to be a pretty productive day.  This WIP is not quite finished yet, but it's definitely getting there! 

  

I spent a lot of time refining the lines and details today so the changes since my last post are pretty minimal, but I think it is starting to look cleaner and more finished.  This is almost done, so more coming soon!

Viking WIP Continues...

Not sure how much further I'll get on this tonight, so here's the latest snapshot:

 

I'm still primarily working on rendering at this point, but I did experiment with texture a bit this afternoon.  I know technically that kind of detail is supposed be saved for the end, but I just couldn't resist! (Though, I did turn the texture layers off while I painted so I could pretend I wasn't skipping ahead, see what I was doing).  Textures are "on" in the screenshot above... I think they may just make it into the final painting :)

Still lots of work to do on this one, so more to come! 

Long time no post ... and Vikings!

I can't believe it's the end of September already!  It's been a busy summer of work, vacation, painting, sketching, cooking experiments... and not posting on this blog.  Sorry poor neglected blog.

I have a few other projects in the works, but I started taking in-progress snapshots of my latest painting so to get the blog going again, here they are!

Last week:

Today:

Only two so far, but I'm finding it interesting to look back at the progression, so I'm planning to continue with the screenshots (and post them more frequently).

More to come!

Fluffy Cat!

Inspired by my kitty who is sitting on my sketchbook, just a quick painting of a happy cat and her paper.

Monday...

Long time no post!  May was a pretty busy month and so far so is June!  I've been working on a few pieces that were not quite ready for posting but as of two minutes ago, one of those is complete!

If you work in an office like me maybe you can relate to this poor guy, I'm calling this one "Monday."

Hope you enjoy and have a pleasant Monday tomorrow!  More to come soon!

Vikings - Almost Done

I can't decide if this painting is finished or not... so I thought I'd upload another progress picture (and/or start something new) while I make up my mind.

Vikings - Update!

Finally got around to making some progress on this painting - It's not quite finished yet, but it's a lot closer than it was last week!

Hoping to get this finished up soon... maybe this week if I'm lucky, but hopefully next weekend if I'm not :)

Thanks for visiting!  More to come soon!

Illustration Friday: Zodiac

Success! My first-ever completed Illustration Friday!  And it's even before the deadline :)

I remember sometimes gathering up groups of toys like this when I little, so it seemed like my kind of interpretation of the theme.

Vikings

I'm not sure this is done yet, but after re-starting four times and trying three different compositions this is still a work in progress, but it's the closest I to what I pictured when I started this project.

Hopefully (and this may be wishful thinking), I'll have this finished by the end of this week, so more to come soon.

On an unrelated note, my computer thinks I saved this on 4/8 but today is 4/13, but that's another problem.

Tea with a Kitty

If you have a cat... or have ever spent time with a cat... this might look familiar!

This is watercolor.  I may have overdone the layers just a bit, which is why the scan isn't exactly true to life, but I'm pretty happy with it.  (I have a problem with stopping a painting once I've started).

And, discovered the magical effects of adding a layer of water over a water color painting! It worked so well I tried it three or four (or five) more times... until the paper just wouldn't absorb any more water... or paint for that matter. 

But all in all, I'm pretty happy with this... I think I'd go for a more dynamic composition next time but, I think it's an overall improvement in the watercolor department, so I'll take it!

More to come! (Still working on those vikings... I've restarted twice and I think it may take one or two more passes before it's suitable for the internet :) ).

Fishy Hairdo

I started this painting a couple weeks ago, I might touch up the contrast in just a couple areas but I think it's pretty much complete!

I was practicing drawing characters with different shaped heads and features and decided that a couple of them had fish-like qualities so I turned them into fish and came up with this composition. (I liked the suspicious expression and a fish haircut seemed like a good reason to use it).

Next on the list: Vikings!

Thanks for visiting!

New Blog, New Painting

Putting together a new blog/portfolio of my work (and getting into the habit of posting) is a major work in progress.  But, while I work on that, I thought I'd share a new painting...

This is watercolor, watercolor pencil, and a tiny bit of gouache.  The painting is loosely based on the fairy tale Snow White and Rose Red in which two sisters befriend and enchanted bear and later rescue him from the evil dwarf who cursed him.  The actual story is pretty bizarre, like most fairy tales, but it worked as a concept/starting point for this painting.

And, here are some of the bear sketches and a thumbnail of the preliminary drawing I worked from.  I'm glad I practiced beforehand, I think this might be the first bear I've drawn. :)

Thanks for visiting, more to come soon!