In Sacramento for Mothers Day Weekend

And it's a nightmare to move my cintiq from home.

Will be here through Sunday evening.. 

And now I'm itching to buy some sort of really easy tablet that I can paint on..

Speed Painting #10

Ok.. reallllly tried to do this in 30 minutes.. definitely didn't happen. Ended up finishing in 40 mins. Slowly but surely I'll get there!

Hmmm.. I always see way more when I load these side by side here in the blog post. My color choices are obviously too bright.. I needed to paint this much more cool and gloomy. But on the sunlit rock area - needed to push the reds that much more.

Hmm.. I wonder if this has something to do with looking at the reference image on my other screen while painting on my Cintiq.. bringing the ref image onto my cintiq next to my speed painting makes it look like the colors changed a bit..... yikes, something to thing about. Maybe there's a way to keep my thumbnail in my workspace in Photoshop without having to toggle a thousand times. Thoughts??

Anyway.. here we are!

Reference

Speed Painting 0010

La Sirena Rojaaaaaaaaa

Day 8 (Speed Paintings #8 and.. a half?)

Alright.. tried doing 2 this evening.

#8:

Reference Image #8

Speed Painting 0008

Had major issues with flesh colors - hot sun flesh shadows = should be MUCH more red and deep than I took it. Ran out of time, I think I finally stopped at 33 minutes (technically 3 minutes over).


THEN - I tried to do a 2nd speed painting tonight..

Reference Image #9

Speed Painting 0009 : INCOMPLETE - Photoshop Crash

and THIS HAPPENED.
EUGH.  Thank you Photoshop.


I went for the color picker and these white windows happened instead.  I had 5 minutes left. I had a lot left to do anyway.. again, time getting away from me.  This is a really zoomed in view of the speed painting.


My process lately breaks down to:

- choose a medium value to fill the page
- do a quick sketch of the major elements
- start painting


We'll see how tomorrow goes :)

La Sirena Roja

Day 7 [man that's depressing, I need to step my game up!]

Hey all,

Apologies for how long it's been.. I had eye surgery and unfortunately the recovery didn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped.. because my prescription was SO high, the adjustment was pretty rough.. but the upside is that NOW I can SEEEEE!!!!!!!!!! :)

That being said, I have a TON of catching up and MAKING up to do! Today was my first hour back.. I had to take a quick 5 minute break because my eyes got really strained at one point but here I am. It's so hard not to get lost in the details..

To bring me back to the previous critique's questions - @Goro:

So in bright sunlight, local original color is what's there.. not a warmer, hotter version of that color? That says to me paint the original color in sunglight and be really strong with color choices for shadows to really tell the story of the sunlight and shading.. does that make sense?

Below was another attempt at painting light and shadow in a beach sun.  This time I applied the above.. let me know how it went :)

REF IMAGE

SPEED PAINTING #7 - 1 hour

 

 

 

On the positive side, due to giving critiques and working closely with many Creative Directors and Art Directors, I'm currently in training for Junior Art Director. Current plans are to continue to learn and train under my current Art Director and to work on my actual execution skills that match my ability to communicate feedback to get to a certain aesthetic.  Basically, they recognize my eye and my ability to catch and approve work.. however I've communicated my actual execution and painting skills are nowhere near what I'm able to critique..   AKA - work on portfolio work.  sooooo here we go! Either way, this is something I want to master and learn from the best [ahem, Goro ;)]


Here goes nothing :)

P.S. - what do you use to paint on when you're on the road or traveling somewhere over the weekend? I want to keep up painting and practice but i'm not always able to bring my cintiq and laptop.  If I don't have an ipad.. what can I use? My iPhone? I have a previous version of Microsoft Surface Tablet??



Gnite world!

- La Sirena Roja

No time to paint.. Apologies!

Had a lot of pre operation stuff to do after work and I can't paint at work... 

@Goro - thank you for the feedback!  I have some questions so that I can understand the feedback better. I'll list my questions later this week once my eyes are recovered. And thank youuuu for the extra ref images!!!

Thanks all,

Sirena Roja

Day 6

I think I'm finding that I like painting characters.. I started noticing that with the penguin draft as well.

Anyway, Day 6! here's the chicken! :)

Ref

Speed Painting

Now that I look at it here, the chicken I painted is a bit too cool.. and a bit plump. The anatomy is sort of off. That's something for me to work on.


By the way! I'm getting LASIK eye surgery on Thursday.. so I'll be recovering Thursday and Friday, but I think my eyes MIGHT be fine enough to paint at some point on Friday.. we'll see :)

Night!

La Sirena Roja

Day 5

Alright.. Spent an hour on the below painting, was hoping to do 2 but after how this one turned out, I was honestly too discouraged to try a second one.

I'm having a lot of trouble with my color picking for shadows.  I'm noticing this very quickly. I'm spending a lot of time studying the image, seeing why and how the color choices are happening.. as I try to mimic what's happening on the image it just turns into mush. The shading under the straw umbrella as well as the shadow on the sand of the umbrella itself - I think I spent 30 minutes on just redoing those 2 things over and over again.

How do you get a cool and warm shadow at once? The shadow of the umbrella on the sand is both cool with the warmth of the sand.. I'm squinting a lot, minimizing my image a lot to see it more clearly. Still stuck. I didn't even have enough time to do the Palm tree shadow on the left. boooooo.

Here's where I left with it:

Ref Image

Speed Painting 0005