Excavator

Watercolor sketch, plein air.

Sitting figure

Sitting figure with a cow skull. Oil and acrylic on board 29x 41 cm. 3 days. This is based on a similar life study drawing with sanguine pastel. I wanted to see if I could now render a more realistic result without copying from photograph. I did a preparatory color study prior starting. At first stages the figure was very dark in color so I wanted to test Delacroix's famous quote "Give me a piece of mud and I'll paint a light skin with it, just let me decide the surroundings." Well what do you know, darkening the background later with a mix of burnt sienna and ultramarine blue did make the skin look white.

Daily study

 

L. Ball photo study.

Plein air sketches

 

 Some plein air studies on watercolor sketchbook. Jean Leon Gérôme said to his students that one must paint observational studies every day to learn to mix colors as accurately as possible.

  

Doodles

 

oil pastel sketches

Rodent

Selected sketches

 

Bouguereau  study

 

Géromê study

 

Géromê study 

 

Géromê study 

 

Géromê study (left one only)

 

random doodle

 

leg study

 

Rafaello study

 

Rafaello study

 

Character design

 

Character design

"I don't know what to draw" is no excuse. One can always draw his or her arms, self-portraits, anatomy, and study old masters of different eras, as professional artists have to constantly improve and keep up the skills.

Doodles part 2

Drawing is thinking. Instead of forcing it, I start by scribbling light random lines of basic geometrical shapes and then let the mind fill the rest of what they could imply. Later I just refine the selected characters for further uses in comic or illustration. Drawing is like gymnastics, if you don't practice on a daily basis, raising the bar little by little, the muscles will wither.

Pocket sketching part 1

It's summer job time again which means plethora of pocket sketchbooking to keep me sane. Just mindless brainstorming without prejudices which usually produces surprisingly weird stuff, which is awesome. This is my fourth moleskine pocket sketchbook going on since 2009. A loyal companion that book is, always there to remind me to draw.

Self-portrait (updated September 23)

Academic self-portrait, Flemish layer painting technique, oil on canvas 46x54cm. Left: preliminary study. Carbone and chalk on tinted paper.

Edit September 23: Finished after four month break, on September 4, I took a more critical look and checked  the proportions from mirror, turned the piece upside down, sideways and evaluated, measured by eye sight again and again, squinted eyes and refined until every millimetre seemed right. The Rubens study I did this summer gave me the information  to refine this further from previous stage too.
Historically, for artists, painting a self-portait is not just an effective form of practicing skills and one's eyes, but a much more intense way of self-examination than just looking at mirror.

Color sketch (nude)

 

guache

 

 

This would be the last page from my moleskine sketchbook. I used one croquis drawing for reference and made a quick acrylic sketch from it.

Face studies

Analysing some faces and drawings (Raphael).

Master copy WIP (updated, May 4)

 See latest stage here (September 4): Ingres copy almost finished

May 4, working on background and details 

We're having a drawing and painting course where we need to copy some piece of art. I chose The Valpincon Bather by the French master Ingres in order to practice the very difficult nude painting genre, particularly depicting skin, as an arguably logical continuity for the intensive life study workshop I attended and also because figure painting and drawing is a classical measure of artists skills and some videogame, film and animation studios may ask for references of figure painting for evaluation of the concept artist or animator candidate's skill level.

Here's the initial charcoal drawing, then the underpainting stage where I have drybrushed titanium white on earth green. Then on to glazing and background.

Friday May 20 I added some glazing and worked the surroundings further. Sorry for the bad cell phone photo, the flash light reflects from the wet surface unfortunately. It was difficult to find decent reference images of the painting, some were obviously taken at close range, giving a bit fish-eye effect which explains the strange wide shoulders. This is 120x80cm, 80% of the original's size and I have to speculate the colors between several reference images, thus, I'm putting my expectations to 80% success for the time being.

Animal sketches

Random animal sketches. Ink and watercolor on moleskine sketchbook.

Easter meditation WIP

This Easter I thought it would be appropriate to explore some spiritual matters and meditate through art, seek peace of mind that way. So, Revelation work in progress:

Color and lighting experimenting in Photoshop. Still needs work on details, and outlines have to be removed for credibility.

 

About two hours of work and still going...
 Second stage: added round top, blocked character forms and worked an underpainting
Original red pastel drawing.

Hand study

Charcoal and chalk on recycled A3 paper