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

Skip day - 2 for tomorrow!

Heya!

Working late tonight, didn't have a chance to sit and paint.. And I'm sad because I'm starting to really look forward to that hour of painting :)

Tomorrow I'll be doing 2 to make up for today's miss..

Night!

Day 4

Only had time for a 30 minute speed painting today..  yowza.

Reference Image - Beach Hut

Speed Painting.

Still not getting the lighting and shadows right.. especially on the house.. How do I capture the sky's blue fill light (cool) in the shadows when it's a warm sunny day? (warm key light)? It conflicts me in my color choices for the lit and shadowed areas. Obviously a cool shadow with a warm lit area isn't working, now that I step back, I see that the ref image has the shadow warmer (now that I zoom out more).. maybe i'll zoom out more to see the images better. 

Till tomorrow.

La Sirena Roja

Day 3

Still struggling with color choices. Spent more time studying the image and trying to understand how the lighting and the character are interacting. I didn't seem to capture how hot and bright it was outside.. here goes Day 3.  

I think I really like character painting :)

Reference Image

Speed Painting attempt - my water work is in serious need of help

Until tomorrow!

- Sirena Roja

Day 2

Ugh.

This is one of those moments where I swear I thought I was a better painter than this. But recent efforts really make me second guess.  I've noticed I'm decently strong at observational sketching, but creating out of my own mind is WEAK on my part. I thought that observational sketching would translate over to painting, but I was wrong.

Still trying to figure out brushes.. also still trying to establish a workflow. In my previous life I used to sketch every little thing out first and then paint. With speed painting and watching the pros (that's you Goro), and even watching the strongest of my own artists at work.. I've noticed they tend to just do a lot of color blocking and then further rendering and refinements in the shadows and highlights. This is what I've been doing lately and it's soooo different than pencil sketching and then painting. 

Anyway.. here goes Day 2. And I'm disappointed.. hopefully this daily speed painting thing will show some positive growth in the coming months...

REF IMAGE (Thank you Goro)

Attempt at painting

Until tomorrow! Obviously a lot of my color choices need work..

- La Sirena Roja

Day 1

Hey all!

As I mentioned in the description, this is a separate blog simply dedicated to working on my illustration and visual development skills.  I'm lucky enough to be mentored by the INCREDIBLY talented Goro Fujita on this journey.  I'll be posting reference images for daily speed paintings and Goro will capture his feedback here.  

Today I found myself spending more time than I think I should be on:

1) Finding a ref image to do
2) Figuring out brushes and what they'll do

I grew up sketching and painting in traditional medium, so I'm finding my way through photoshop painting.  Plus, I'm incredibly rusty so I'll be going back to basics and relearning everything.



Below is Day 1!

The first image is the REFERENCE image I used.

The below was my speed painting effort of the above image:

There we have it!

Tomorrow I'll be heading out of town for the weekend but I'll see if I can at least sneak in a 30 minute speed painting of some sort :)

- La Sirena Roja