Mountain Top

Mountain Top 

A practice piece to try and get some atmospheric perspective going.  

Portrait study 28

Portrait study 28

Some more practice.  Did these a while ago.  The reference was from pixellovely.  I did them just before the site went down -  a result  of an attack.  Glad to see site is back up.  I think these were from a 2 hour class. 

Archer -Gouache study

Archer -Gouache study

Another gouache study. This one done from photo reference.  

Study Gouache After Carl Hagg

Study Gouache After Carl Hagg 

Trying something different.  
James Gurney has been running a series of articles on his blog about gouache. As part of that series he launched a competition to paint a gas station using black and white gouache.  I bought the paint but missed that deadline.  I haven't used gouache before or watercolour so I thought I might study first before trying something more challenging.  

Servant and Master

Servant and Master

Another character study.  
When I started trying to practice more seriously resources to help were numerous - folks had started livesteaming, Conceptart.org was a buzzing place.  Seemed like there were lots of people learning together. Over the past few years it has got a lot more fractured and harder to get that constant nag to work and get better.  There are still lots of resources - free and to pay for but it feels like you have to pick your was through things to find whats useful at the right time.   
Someone who was active getting better backwhen I started and has reappeared streaming is John Silva- you can catch him streaming on  twitch. 
I was listening to his stream when I started noodling with this.  He gave some advice to someone he was critiquing - keep your values close.  That was what I tried to do here. Thanks John.
 

Falls

Falls

Not happy with this one but time to move on. 

Retreat

Retreat

Built this up from a photo base. Nothing much left of the photos except the colour scheme and some texture.