Stream

Stream 

Sheep

Went back to oil painting this week.  Had some mixed results.  I plan to continue and try a few different approaches rather than the direct mostly wet in wet method.  The sheep is a mixture of watercolour and gouache.  

Clew Bay - Landscape Studies 15

Clew bay 

Forest walk 

Snowy mountain 

Changed gear and returned to landscape studies.  These were from photos.  I used one brush and tried to use the same approach if I were doing them in oil.  Just to practice planning and process - big shapes and values. I am working in oils this week. 

I did finish off the characters for the Wild West Challenge. I will try and put some more work into presentation.  

Barman

Judge

Gunslinger grandma

Gunslinger

Sheriff

Native American and bear

Wild West Characters

Wild West Challenge Line up 

The Artstation challenge finished yesterday.  Managed to work all 10 characters to some sort of finish.  I was in the process of building this image and my computer gave up under the strain.  It was quite a big file.  In hind sight I should have built it by flattening layers as I went along.  Anyway by the time I had realised what was wrong, shutdown and rebooted it was too late to meet deadline.  I was disappointed after all the work but the aim was to do alot of characters for a deadline and refine my process so I did achieve that.  I will polish the ones that need a little more love and post them on Artstation just to finish things out.   

Outlaw 1 safe cracker

Outlaw 2 -robber

Townsfolk 1 dancer 

Native American eagleer

Wild West Line-up

Wild West Line -up

Last week was all about the Artstation Wild West Challenge.  I played around with a few different approaches to this but opted for a more straight forward interpretation.  Part of the reason was I wanted to try a line based design process.  With 10 characters required I will have an opportunity to fine tune it.  This is the first outlaw - a safe cracker.  I plan to add flat colour and shadows to each.  The second is townsfolk no 1 - dancer.  This has the value work plus lines over the top.    Lots of work to meet deadline.  

Safe cracker -lines

Dancer 

Boros

Boros -Gwent 

I finished a version of this last week to enter in the Gwent Witcher card game competition.  I don't think I entered in time.  In any case the image was not finished so I spent this week polishing as much as I could.  It is of Boros a dwarf that got drunk and drowned trying to retrieve his ring. 
 The other competition that is running is the Artstation Wild West Challenge.  They require 10 characters and I spent some of this week working on those.  These are some playing around with watercolour and acrylics. 
After this I am going back to studies. 

Gunfighter 

Native

Watercolour and ink stuff

Snowfield 

 This week all traditional.  Broke out the watercolours which I have not used before this.  The landscapes were done from photos.  I think it would take a while to master this medium - a lot of it is planning and knowing a how the paint will move.  The sheep was the first one and was way too fussy.  

Misty mountain 

Sheep

 The rest of these are just fooling around with ink and watercolour mostly thinking about technique.  The ones from imagination are overworked.  Definitely need the design nailed before heading into ink or be prepared to redraw - a lot.   

Doodle

Little gunfighter

Ink tree

gunfighter

doodle2

photo study

Photo study

Dropping

Dropping 

Did this for the Bjornament  challenge even though I got knocked out of the winners bracket there is a best losers spot up for grabs.  Still useful to focus and produce a finished piece. Because it was not a so important spot I took some liberties interpreting the brief.  Used an online tutorial at Design Cuts to help with the ageing and grain effects.