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!

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! 

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!