Little dudes

Little dudes

Having a bit of fun with these guys.  It was a welcome relief form a lot of administrative work I had to get through this week.  I did start an entry to the riot competition which finishes at the end of the month.  I have some decent progress on it beyond what has been posted there.   It is a departure in style and approach for me so I did not add a redesign challenge on top of it - which was allowed.  

Riot Contest - progress

Into 2018

Portrait study   Neymar

Portrait study Ridley Scott

Happy new year.  

Took a break over the festive season hence the lack of posting here.  I had hoped to keep posting but it was not to be.  I have been busy working on other art related activities which I will share in the coming weeks.  In the meantime here are some portrait studies.  The Neymar one is a still from a beats advert.  The Scott one is from a Guardian interview about his new film.  

Snowy Siege

Snowy Siege 

With Christmas holidays coming I have one snowy themed image. The other one is a  study from a photo.  

Study of  MELVYN GOLDSTEIN / National Geographic Creative

Beneath the Waves

Frame 1

 This week was all about the Artstation challenge beneath the waves.  I sat on the fence about jumping into this one and to be honest I left it  too late to give it a good go.  However I did pull together the requisite 4 images for the keyframe challenge.  If nothing else it was a good exercise in crunching a lot of work into about 5 days.  

Frame 2

Frame 3 

Frame 4

Thumbnails

Ant -Spider

Ant -Spider

The first 2 sketches in ink were following along with Bjorn Hurris stream on Twitch.  He streams early in the morning so its a good way for me to stay punctual with my day.  Besides that they are very informative.  The spider one I decided to work on in Photoshop just to play around.  

Troll -Dinosaur

The portrait is practice using a reference from  Grigoriy Peppo on Twitch.  He usually works traditionally but this one he also did digitally.  He has a lot of knowledge around traditional media and portraiture with a bit of philosophy thrown in and always entertaining.

Portrait study 33

 The others are just random figure sketches to practice poses.  

Sketches 38

Sketches 39

A little late -Steppes

Steppes 

 A bit late getting this post out this week.  I did want to finish the piece above so I delayed posting until I had got it to a point close to done.  A portrait study - trying to get likeness.  I have posted a few sketches of folks in different poses.  I have been doing these everyday.  I am doing them in pencil also.  With the oil painting I held off on the portraits until I got some zinc white - which I got today. I did push ahead with the wolf study.  I will do another pass to push the darks and lights and put in the tree.  

Portrait study 33

After Alfred_Wierusz-Kowalski_-_Samotny_wilk

Sketches 36

Sketches 37 

Revisiting

Revisited

 This is a reworking of a piece I did a while ago.  I wanted to go back and see if I could push it further. 

Still working on the oil techniques.  I changed it up and went to copy a work by Alfred Wierusz-Kowalski.  I also tried another Rubens.  This one definitely got away from me but I will keep working on it to see if I can get a better likeness.   

After  Alfred_Wierusz-Kowalski_-_Samotny_wilk

After Alfred_Wierusz-Kowalski_-_Samotny_wilk

Rubens_Pieter_Paul_-_Infanta's_Waiting-maid_in_Brussels

The messenger

After Rubens 

So got a first pass completed on the old gal.  The plan to complete these by doing successive layers was somewhat abandoned.  I didn't have any zinc white to hand only titanium white which is too opaque for glazing.  I also figured out I was not going to make it to the anything like the finish of the original progressing with glazes without the white so I compromised.  Regardless the grey layer really helped and after the colours were mixed the painting too no time at all.  
I got a second pass on bearded guy and here the glazing did help pick up the hue.  
I think it would take quite alot of playing around and adjusting to get a good process down. I have a few more panels prepped so I can continue .
  The last image is a copy of ALFRED VON WIERUSZ-KOWALSKI   the messenger.  Did this study because I liked the massing of dark and light.  

After Rubens 

 After ALFRED VON WIERUSZ-KOWALSKI  The Messenger

Mask

Mask Inktober 31 

 The last of Inktober is here.  I spent more time on them than last year and tried some different inking techniques.  The most useful thing from this year was coming up with the design in a more systematic way and drawing practice. The ones at the start of the month went straight to ink but by the end I was pencilling then drawing.  
Did a selfportrait for Nov 1st but kept it straight forward.  
I also kept working on the series of paintings using the Flemish method.  I have 3 running simultaneously now -all copies to focus on the process. 

Found Inktober 30

Selfportrait

After Rubens b

After Rubens a

Climb

27 Climb Inktober 

Managed to keep up the Inktober.  Cannot deny it has been a time sink but I think it has helped with my approach to the early ideas and planning.  The casualty has been working on finishing the current open work.  Only one completed study and no painting.

24 Blind Inktober

25 ship Inktober 

26 squeak inktober 

28 fall Inktober 

29 united Inktober

Figure study 2