Lots of WIPS

Unreal Bjornament WIP

Unreal Bjornament 2 is underway and I decided to take part again.  First topic Magical Powers.  
This is my WIP.  One of many WIPs in progress. 

House 2 pen and ink

House 2 pen and ink

Busy working on a lot of different projects but struggling to bring things to a finish.   Here is a second pen and ink rendering which I did mange to complete. I have some oil paintings in the works.  One is the largest painting I have attempted and I also have some digital work.  

House - Pen and ink

House - Pen and ink

I am working on a lot of things right now but this was a study I did to practice my pen and ink.  This was done with a dip pen.  The trick with these renders is to design the light and dark regions. It got to heavy in the lighter areas.   Was not so successful with this one but it was good practice.

Book cover

Book Cover - Immortality

This was a commission I did recently for a fantasy  book cover.  You can view the project here.  I have also kept working on the seascapes and lots of other stuff so a bit of juggling is required to keep everything progressing.  

Temple in Sandstorm

Temple 

Temple sandstorm

I have been working on a couple of bigger projects but I managed to play around with this.  I was practicing some basic isomorphic design and then went ahead and played with some more Photoshop animation. 

Seascape 2

Seascape 2

As promised another installment of the seascape project.  Still lot to work on here hopefully I can keep some momentum on these.  Other work going on but will do my best to keep it going.  

Seascape 1

Seascape 1

For as long as I have been painting this is my first seascape in traditional media.  Even this is a bit timid but I plan to do a few more of these.  On the other end of the spectrum I did a gif just to wind down.  I am streaming these warm down sessions on Twitch so you check out the VODs or catch me live.

HM Gif

Variations

H Matisse 1 

H Matisse 2

H Matisse 3

Its been a challenging week - some hard lessons learned.  Most of my time has been spent doing client work and that old classic freelancer experience of working and not been paid- watch out for that one.  Fortunately it is not my typical experience so far. Anyway I did get a little time to try out some simpler rendering - producing the 3 Matisse.  
I also returned to my roots doing pencil work.  It was what I started out doing and I deliberately avoided it for the past number of years.  Forcing myself to work with the unforgiving pen.  It was a bit of jolt to realise how imprecise the mark is compared to the pens.  I ended up having to take the image into Photoshop to clean it up. 

House - pencil 

Two Landscapes

Cottage Study

Forest Scene 1

Last week was a week of studies and trying out stuff some of it was more comfort zone like the cottage study and some of it was new like the forest scene.  The forest scene was an attempt to do a more stylised landscape.  I followed a Youtube tutorial   by  Andrea Gerstmann and learned a lot. I even used some features on Photoshop for the first time.   I have committed to doing a whole set of these to get some practice and get quicker.

War Kitty

War kitty

Pick me

Into 2019 - 
and what better way to kick it off than the internets faourite - kittys. 
They were done for an emote challenge run by Lirik a streamer on Twitch.  I get to experience all the new game releases vicariously from his channel and dodge the risk of spending hours playing them myself when I should be getting better at art. Anyway didn't win but it was good practice for creating emotes which I will hopefully have to do for my own channel at some point.

Merry Christmas

To all a good night

Thanks to all those who have followed along this year.  Wishing all a Merry Christmas.   

Having a ball

Having a ball

Another large piece I have been chipping away at for the past week.  I wanted to do an interior with some female figures so I thought I would hit a few requirements in one go.  I spent a while setting up the perspective and then the multiple figures took some time to design and render.  I was glad to get it to some sort of finish.  It was good to get practice at a more intricate piece.  I have one more to go for this year.  

War dog

War Dog

Finally manged to get this to some sort of finish.  The initial work on this went very quickly but other work took priority and I could only do bits and pieces of it until last week.  It would have been interesting to see how quickly I could have finished it.  The initial sketch did not require much modification.  I am finishing off one last large image you can see the progress over on Twitch. 

initial sketch

Landscape for

Landscape for 

This was a sample landscape I did for a project. It was rejected. For me it was the first time I merged gouache with digital painting.  They did not want a digital look but my gouache skills are not up to knocking this out to high standard so I did half and half.  It was not totally successful but there are passages that had some interesting effects.  I will practice this a bit more to chase those effects.  
I am still working on a larger digital piece and streaming on Twitch .  Hope to finish it this week. 

Cutie

Cutie

I have been doing a few different projects - the big ones for my portfolio and some commission work so I chopping and changing between diverse projects. I have the preliminary work for an oil painting.  I worked in stages including a dead layer.   For a larger portfolio piece which is an interior scene I did some quick value studies.  


I started that work and have started streaming on Twitch.  I am currently streaming between 9 pm and 11 pm  GMT weekdays.  Come by and say hello.

 Cutie was a break from all the serious stuff. 

oil painting lines

oil painting umber

oil painting dead layer

interior study 6

Interior study 7

interior study 8

interior study 9 

interior study 10

Moving on

Moving on 

Been messing around with this image for quite a while.  I am going to accept where it is at and move on to something else.  The good is it was a challenge and I pushed it to learn as much as possible but I am into diminishing returns.  I have another larger piece that is in a similar phase so I am finishing it and moving on to another large image.  All are to update my portfolio.  

Keg carrier

War dog sketch

 Decided to start another portfolio piece.  This is the sketch which I put together quite quickly.  I have kept working on it and am in final phase with this but I have been busy an have not had a chance to complete. 
Still doing the 30 minute sketches though they too have not had they attention they should have of late.  

Keg carrier 

Big gun

Joints

Rat King

Rat King

Still working on larger pieces so more sketching fodder.  The rat king was playing around with a traditional feel in photoshop.  

The ship sketches are traditional.

Did the obligatory self portrait for Nov 1.  

Ship sketch 2

Ship sketch 3

Self portrait 2018

Ship sketch

Ship Sketch 

Landing 

Did a ship sketch.  It fell out of some loose doodling.  It is in contrast to all the figure stuff I am doing at the moment so some contrast.  I decided to push it a little further.  Not much ink sketching this week which is ironic for inktober but it was nice to do some digital sketching for a change.  The second image is a work in progress.  Will finish it this week and get started on the next one.  The other mutifugure image I was working on got chewed up in a hard drive crash.  I will review and decide if I want to continue it.

Heloplane

 Heloplane

For those who are sticking through this diet of quick ink sketches - thanks.   I am working on other stuff but I cannot show it  and a lot of my bigger personal work pieces are taking a while to do.  I am trying to make a big push to the end of the year to get some regular work  so that has to be my priority.  In the mean time some inky breadcrumbs. .  . .

Ruins

 Actually used a ruler with this one - paper was not flat when I took the pic.  

Bike

Truck 

Bug

And for some colourful relief - a photo I took this week.  

Donegal