Sooo close

Ack, stayed up late to try to finish the bookcover. I think I made large headway with the stained glass background but I still haven't done much with the outfit. I'm not really sure how I want to paint the clothing. I think I've spend too long thinking about the cover, too worried about having it look "finished".

I recently finished a personal picture, it took longer than I thought but I worked consistently on it with very little "dead work" going into it. Just having a lot of fun with brushes and expressing motion with the snake. As cheating as it is, I think its a lot easier working back and forth between a drawing and a solid form. I think it lets me be a bit more free with my brush stroke and texture. The snake on a white ground was really fun to do. In this case the background was easy to put in afterwards but I suspect most images aren't as forgiving as a densely foggy backdrop.

Tenoctris work-in-progress

I was concentrating on the background in the bookcover with Tenoctris. I was thinking about her symmetrical pose and I wanted something that had more movement in the background to give the cover some more dynamic movement. I also wanted to incorporate an idea that Bryan Leister suggested, a bird motif.

Painters, Paintings, and Paint

So, working on four different projects is difficult! But I'm managing them for the time being. I'm really running out of time to do my triptych for the thesis though. I did a photoshop sketch just to knock out a running composition for when I come in tomorrow. My friend Veronica's husband, Todd, is my model for the figure in the painting. It works out because his hair is great and he's free.

Came out of my meeting with Bryan with a lot of thoughts. Its funny that sometimes you'll know how to go about planning out a painting and then forget and then it takes someone else to remind you that paintings take research! So I'm going back to abcgallery.com and artrenewal.org to browse through some artist's work. Definitely Gustav Klimpt is sort of where I'm grabbing inspiration right now. I think I'm attracted to his work because his figures break "real space", which is sort of something I'm after right now. His figures are sort of embedded into the patterning and the atmosphere around them.

But this is the image I have so far in any case, I'm still meandering about what to do with the bottom spaces. I like some of the ideas going into it so far but the sketch doesn't interest me as much as I want it to interest me. I feel like I really need to break up the larger color shapes and really dig into it. Patterning makes it easier because it can take up space but have a lot of content. I just have to make sure not to overdo it. I'm also starting to lose what I really want to do in this painting. I have my initial conceptual idea that I used in my proposal, but now that I'm doing the sketch and looking at Klimpt, I realize I didn't really have a clear visual idea of what I want to do. My study set my direction but I don't know which road to take in that direction.

Also, after Bryan showed me all of these luscious oil paintings, I really want to start working in oil again. I like the idea that my acrylics may look like oil paintings, but theres really no way to get brush strokes in acrylic without difficulty. I have very little experience with oil, Mary is there to help, but should I be switching my last semester? Bah.

Oh, and heres the reference photo that I'd like to use for my Tenoctris image, my sister modeled for me.

Updated Tenoctris

Changed the design slightly with more information about some brocade along the sleeves and basic color and value information. I just did the background with random lines, I think theres some interesting things happening but theres too many central points, which will probably be reduced in the final. I'm wondering whether I'll have the background completely tiled this way or if I'll shape it as a slab board.

Work in Progress

So I had sketched out a rough of what I had in mind for Tenoctris so I have an idea of what to look for in reference pictures. The books mention that she wears a heavily-brocaded robe so I've been nabbing at those. Being a court-wizard, I also imagine her to be fairly well-dressed. A line in the book where shes described as a little bird helped me design her face and I hope the expression will help subdue her ostentatious clothing. The face is mildly abstracted, I rather like the long neck and the sloping shoulders.

I've also attached some reference pictures that I've just recently come across, a lot of Indian and that area. I'll probably incorporate more of the clothing design into the sketch.

Thumbs for Lord of the Isles & Strategist

Decided to post up the preliminary sketches (or in the book project's case, thumbnails). It was difficult working on the Lord of the Isle sketches because I hadn't read the book in so long. But I have a pretty good vivid vision of what I do remember from it.