Arctic themed paintings

Underwater themed paintings

Art is like a Sport

I'm going to rack up my base mileage for my digital painting class with Mathias Verhasselt at Kazone Art Academy next term.

Art like a sport. This is especially true when you are learning a new style or technique.  Robh Ruppel compares art to cycling (link). In professional cycling, you have to ride 100-200 miles per week before you can start thinking about technique. Similarly, Mr. Miyagi had the karate kid wax hundreds of cars before he started actually learning karate technique. And in popping, you have to practice hitting for hours on end before you can start actually freestyling (Poreotics video).

Task: Paint 12 environment locations in 6 different genres. 72 paintings total.
Schedule: 12 paintings per week for 6 weeks =  24 hours of painting/ week. (Estimated 144 hrs total)

Deadline: Jan 1, 2012

Objective: Just get it done. Use any technique, method, style. 

Locations
1. Underwater
2. Arctic
3. Forest
4. Jungle
5. Ocean
6. Fire
7. Sky
8. Mountains
9. Desert
10. City
11. Interiors
12. Asia

Genre
1. Sci-Fi
2. Steampunk
3. Robots
4. Roman Mythology
5. Fantasy
6. Post-Apocalyptic

Sketchbook update

World of Kong Study

Gouache Study - practicing wet on wet blending

Warcraft Study

Color Roughs

RGB Color Wheel.

King Kong inspired Jungle environment

This is day 5 of my concept series. Today I continued to explore ways to produce a more finish painting in the digital medium. This painting is based on the cover of "World of Kong." Yesterday, I did a gouache mastercopy of that piece which I will post later.

 

I've made a set of brushes that I'm pretty comfortable using. I will be doing some figure drawing, plein air painting, and rendering exercises with my labtop in the following weeks to further strengthen my easy of use with the digital medium.

Warcraft inspired environment

Going for something a really simple (albeit cliche) environment piece.

Tom Brown's Landscape Painting Class Review

Recently I took a plein air painting class taught by Tom Brown.

First things first, the class was a great deal! 5 weeks for $90! A plein air painting class usually costs 4x as much. It was hosted by the Irvine Fine Art Center - a local community center.

Tom and I (above). Class Demo (below)

When I first started researching about this instructor, I noticed that he had a youtube channel full of instructional videos. This guy every lots of teaching experience! In addition, he sends out a daily newsletter that has a new painting EVERYDAY. This guy was pretty dedicated. How many people you know consistently paint every day?

This guy does landscape paintings as a job - it's his lifestyle. In contrast, when you take a landscape class when an industry professional at CDA or Red Engine - those guys are only doing landscape paintings as a supplement to their professional work. Tom's heart is really into his work. It's like taking a class with Bob Ross!

Some of my work from the class...

One of the differences between gouache and oil is the way you premix color. In this painting, I premix all my colors so I have a solid color palette. Then I just block it in. I fiddle with some edges and shapes, and it's done! It's not the way Tom teaches, but it's pretty fun way to work. 

Digital Plein Air

Okay - so I can paint digitally about the same I can paint traditionally in terms of plein air.  And if my environment paintings don't look good, it's not because of my lack familiarity with the digital medium, it's probably because I'm just not good at painting concept environments. Problem identified! :)

Science Experiment gone wrong

Day 2 of my concept art series...

based on a plein air painting I did on a raining day.

Tomorrow Land Concept Art

So this week I'm going to doing a series of conceptual art pieces. Just racking up some base mileage. 

Today I did a concept of Tomorrowland if it were real. I used to think those simulation rides like "Star Tours" and "Back to the Future" actually involved a flying car. The first time I went on "Back to the Future" I preyed that nothing would go wrong as we went back in time and hoped not to be eaten by a dinosaur. haha. 

Man... I really don't like digital I have no idea how to get fine detail with the brush...

Figure Painting - color study

In this painting, I was focusing on color. I premixed all the colors with a palette knife, and slowly tiled them in. I made sure the colors looked good on my palette before I went to the canvas. 

Just to let you guys know, I've been working on this new artist lifestyle blog (link) that focuses on the character of being a very dedicated artist. In theory, it's a blog not just for painters and designers, it's a blog for any person who is working on their artistry: musicians, dancers, designers, etc...

http://artist-lifestyle.blogspot.com/