Weekly Update #6 (March 15th-21st)

I'm writing this post a little bit early to ensure that I post it so that my crit group can have a look at it on Monday while I'm not in. Unfortunately, I was not in for my crit group this week either due to a stomach bug but they gave me feedback anyway which was useful. My sister is visiting from America so I'm expecting to be busy with that instead of doing work so this week I've done everything I could despite me being sick and busy with other things...I think I did a decent job. Most of my work has either been speedpaintings or really quick pen/marker drawings but I've produced a reasonable volume of work although it is not the highest of quality. I looked at a few artists such as John Howe (one of my absolute favourite artists, who did concept art for Lord of the Rings), Mike Azevedo, and I started to glance at Wylie Beckert. I also found this article which I thought was very inspiring and interesting, about 'how to create without thinking'.

Digital Speedpainting of Sagazan using a sketch I made earlier ~40mins

I've done a couple of speedpaintings this week which I actually enjoyed doing much more than I expected. I tried experimenting with new brushes on my 'Sagazan' speedpainting as opposed to staying with my favourite brush, in order to experience the other brushes and their uses. I'm also still trying to organise my brush sets so this helps me select what brushes are best in what category.

Digital Speedpainting of a photo my sister took of me putting on blood at the Zombie Walk ~30mins

Wolf Skull Speedpainting, playing around with some Overlay Layers ~20mins

Lisa Lyon Speedpainting ~30-35mins

Rodin Sculpture Speedpainting using a photo I took in Paris ~40mins excluding time spent fixing a layer I drew in by mistake

However, I still do prefer my favourite brush over the others I've tried, I'm not sure why...the textured look of the brush I used on Sagazan and the zombie speedpainting above look somewhat more painterly, but I do think that a smoother brush works better for portraits/skin. I've also played with some overlay layers...I don't fully understand how they work but it gives some interesting effects. I think out of all of the speedpaintings I've made I like the Rodin one the most, I'm proud of how I made the highlights...I think it gives a good textured effect.

Some A5 fineliner/marker drawings...I know they're not the best, most of them were quick sketch ideas

More A5 drawings in fineliner/marker and two in pencil, there were more than just this but some of them I thought were really bad and I didn't feel the need to show everything.

I hope that I get some good ideas over the weekend while my sister is here, hopefully she'll be willing to look through my work and let me know what she thinks. If she does I'll probably write it down and put it in my sketchbook, I know she understands me and my work better then most people so I look forward to showing her my stuff. I hope it means a lot to her too, knowing that the majority of this stuff was directly inspired by her or came off of things related to her. At the moment I'm actually thinking about creating some sort of character and digitally painting it as my final piece, either that or some sort of creature. I'm going to continue to play around with realistic dogs/wolves, figure drawings, monsters, and some sort of character design like drawings. I also definitely want to continue with speedpainting and using the traditional sketches that I make as the building blocks of those images since it really decreases the amount of time drawing the outline.

Thanks for reading!

-Deanna