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. 

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!