Lots of pieces

Hey everyone hope you guys all had a good thanksgiving.  Since I wasn't able to get to updating this blog last week I thought it would be appropriate  that I would have a very large post here today so whole bunch of sketches, finished pieces and also snap shots of some of the steps for this week.


First up some pages from my sketchbook.  Had some fun working with the dip pens and going old school.  I'm really liking my drafting pencil lately also. 

 

Last night I did something that I haven't done in awhile and just painted some fast thumbnail roughly 10-15 min.  I just wanted to experiment and let loose.  I sorta mixed these paintings up in both corel painter and photoshop.  I should do more these actually were really fun.

So most you guys might have known or maybe not that Bobby Chiu was doing a ustream with the awesome caricature artist Jason Seiler http://chiustream.blogspot.com/ .  Anyway there was a contest, basically you did a caricature of Jason Seiler and if you won he would do a original caricature of you.  Never ever did a caricature before so I tossed my ring into the hat.  I think there was over 200+ entries so it was nuts.  Anyways it was pretty fun, if I had more time I think I would of had a more defined light source and maybe pushed the shadows more but for what it was I guess it didn't come up too bad.

I put link in there.  If you guys don't know what the Chiu Stream is or don't know who Bobby Chiu is then please check it out.  It doesn't really matter if you are a artist or not.  It really inspiring what he's doing and it's great with all the people he is interviewing.

So yeah back to that piece.  I started mine all in pencil and then painted it in corel painter with the artists oil brushes.  A lot of people ask me how I get the oily effects in some of my work.  That's pretty much using those brushes.

Alright and I did this garlic study last week I think...sorta forget.  Anyway the thing was torn to shreds and I find I have a hard time depicting folds or you know crumbled paper or wraps so I wanted to challenge myself here.  I usually don't paint too much in bw but this one was all about values.  I had this piece of garlic on a white piece of paper so basically it was a white on white study.  Anyway...HARD!  But worth it in the end.  Honestly I might crumble a piece of paper and try that next on a white backdrop.  I really need to do this skull also.  Got the sketch but still haven't gotten to painting yet.  White on white and black on black studies I think might be a good way to push my values more so gotta keep up with them.  Study from life guys...it will help you alot...even if it does give you a migraine!  No pain no gain...

And last but not least I've been working on this sci-fi piece for awhile for this contest.  Really trying to push myself again with this kind of work.  After getting some good crits I'm going to push it some more.  These are some snapshots of it though.  Jeeezz...this piece honestly started as a mess.  My process is utterly chaotic sometimes.  I used a decent amount of textures honestly when I started on this.  Smashed all these city lights together...I painted over them almost completely at one point and started plopping them in manually again.

Well and that's it for now...