Here’s a digital painting I just finished of Reggie, our eleven year-old border collie. I’m a bit worried about her, as she has been having some potentially serious ear problems. As a result, she’s been on my mind a lot, so I decided to do a nice portrait of her. I hope she stays around for a few more years…
Here’s another quickie sketch/digital painting. This took about three hours. I’m not crazy about Reggie – she’s looking right at the viewer, which makes her look flat. I might revise this in another version and turn her head a little. Boris has a huge head, which is actually pretty much the way he looks at times. Overall, I’m liking the composition and the forms work well together. The size of this image 18″ x 10″. Even though it’s a loose sketch, I think it will look good framed.
On future images in this series, I’m going to try to keep the loose strokes and color areas. They lend a real spontaneous feel to the image, which is very desirable. At any rate, these are very fun to do, and I don’t see an end to this series anytime soon – there’s a lot of interesting things to explore with these two characters.
It was a sort of slow day today, so I took the opportunity to whip out a painting of Boris at 16 weeks.
I set a goal on this painting to work on the areas that I felt were weak in my previous painting. That is, I set out to infuse more confidence into my strokes and to make better color choices. I think I did better in both respects.
One of my larger goals in all this painting experimentation is to break out of my obsession with details. The field of graphic design is one where attention to detail is of prime importance. I’ve been a designer for about thirty years; as a result, I’ve had plenty of time to develop that obsession. While it’s very helpful in my day job; it’s not all that helpful in painting, at least not at first.
As I try to improve my skills in painting, I have to learn to ignore many of the habits I’ve acquired as a designer. Posting these “training exercises” helps me track my progress. In the end, I think there will be a definite trend that will become apparent as more work is presented. As long as I remain honest in analyzing each piece, the work will continue to improve. It’s exciting to see this happen; it’s like being back in school again, without the parking hassles.
A new painting in which I concentrated on the larger shapes and tried not to get too hung up on details. Generally, I think that method is very helpful in establishing a strong composition. I see lots of areas for improvement, most having to do with gaining more confidence in my strokes, and making good color choices.
Here’s a digital portrait I just finished of my wife. It is based on a photo I took last year when we visited Alaska (here’s a link to a few other photos from that trip). We went on a tour of Prince William Sound on a beautiful sunny day. There was no wind that day, but the boat was going pretty fast (it was one of those tourist double-decker hydrofoil boats – very fun).
I was having one of those days when everything I tried failed miserably. By the early evening I was starting to question whether I was even worthy of the title “artist”. Nothing looked good. All my work left me with the impression that I lacked ability and talent. I felt like a hack.
I thought maybe I just needed a night away from the studio. When I went into the house the only option seemed to be Grey’s Anatomy. I hate that show.
So I shuffled back up to the studio for one more try to spark some artistic inspiration.
A few minutes later, I recalled our recent trip to Denver, and the great day we spent hiking among Red Rock Park. It’s a beautiful site full of dramatic red rock formations. I thought that might be a good subject for a painting, but I wanted to paint from memory to avoid my annoying habit of clinging to every irrelevant detail.
About 45 minutes later, I had something I sort of liked. It’s a quick color study from memory (digital painting 12″ x 7.5″). I’m happy that I didn’t give up tonight; I fought against my lack of inspiration and came up with something that might be useful.
Continuing the painting theme, here is another study in Painter X called “Golden pines”. The image was inspired by the way the evening sun turns the green pines a warm golden color. At least that was the starting point; as you can see, the painting took a bit of a different direction. Pardon me if I have posted this before, but I’m going through my painting files and couldn’t remember if this (or the previous image) had already been posted.
This is a study I did for an oil painting. I have yet to do the actual painting, but the digital study looks real nice, I think.
A small illustration in Painter X. Just having a little fun with scale.
Here’s a further exploration of my dog in repose (click for a larger version).
A quick study/sketch in Painter of my dog relaxing in her favorite chair. Sometimes, she graciously consents to let people use the furniture too.
