Song of the North

So to retest my digital painting skills and try out newly downloaded brushes, I decided to paint one of my favorite "summertime" birds, the white-throated sparrow. Hearing their song takes me on a trip to the north woods, camping under the stars amidst pine and birch, and waking up with the sun to hear these birds singing endlessly, amidst the branches and just out of sight, or so it is with my blurry morning eyes. 

I used a photo taken by David Speiser for reference, as I wanted to actually use my eyes accurately for once. It's not 100% the same as the photo, though I did my best to capture the appearance and markings of the species. The photo can be found at his gallery here.

Photoshop CS3, Wacom bamboo tablet. Hopefully the new year will bring more bird art!

California Condor: Finished

"Fate of the Condor" 9x12" on cold pressed 140 lb watercolor paper. Watercolor, powdered graphite, charcoal, india ink, acrylic, and white acrylic ink.

I went with a less controlled approach for this piece, and relied on the wide variety of materials to bring their own character into the process. Of course, I wanted to bring a clearer detail to the condor's face, and further accentuated that with the sky halo about its head.

As a bonus, I will share some pictures I took as the painting progressed. A thousand apologies for the rather subpar lighting and inevitable blur that resulted! 

It's come a long way from the original sketch (thank goodness!) and turned out quite decently.

Adelaide: Refinished

It's good to revisit old works, time and again. I underwent such a project recently, the painting a 5 year old college project that was leaving many things to be desired. Thankfully, I was able to renew at least a small portion of it! 

The original is a far more complex piece, in watercolor and acrylic. Retouching/repainting was done in Photoshop CS3 with a Wacom Bamboo tablet.

Kelpie

A spontaneous project that I somehow managed to complete, despite the fact that I had little idea as to what I wanted for a final product. I would like to push my work a little more into stylized territory, but for now have some more "semi-realism" or whatever you'd like to call it.

I'd done many sketches of the mythical kelpie in the past, and always like the idea of a more or less approachable looking horse: Except, of course, for that terrifying, rotting skeletal head and writhing kelp-like... appendages? The (careless) victims don't know what they're sitting on until it's too late. How unpleasant!

Derwent Graphitint pencils, watercolor, and acrylic on Stonehenge, 4.75 x 10".

Happy Holidays!

"Winter Whitetail" 8x10 inch (20 x 25 cm) acrylic, ink, and pyrography on basswood panel.

Something fitting for the holiday season. Here's to a bright 2013!

Boar of the Woods

More pyrography/art for sale, as promised in my last post. Since I liked the initial (woodburned) stages of this so much, I scanned it separate so I could at least have a file of just the woodburned lines before going on to finish. I decided not to go the usual forest creature route (deer, owls, foxes, wolves, squirrels, etc.) and chose a wild boar. I gave him a little portable ecosystem to carry on his back.

Here is the piece with woodburned lines only. This piece (quite possibly due to the nature of the wood I was working on) was quite agreeable, and I made no glaring mistakes with the woodburning tool.

Here is the final outcome. The first layer (admittedly a bit of a mistake) was a non-waterproof sepia ink, which has a heavy red pigment to it. The darker areas were added with a more brown sepia acrylic ink, and for the highlights I used white acrylic paint.

I have one more older piece on wood to touch up, and then I'll be back to portfolio projects, etc. 

Dia-BEE-tus

It's actually been a good chunk of time since I worked with my acrylics. To save more important projects from being butchered by a rusty hand, I made a little painting of a bumblebee... With diabetes? Perhaps I'm not so good with puns.

On the other hand, it turned out alright. Golden OPEN acrylics are fairly forgiving, though they do get quite sticky if you take a bit of a break. Also, I feel that I need to push the boundary between stylization and semi-realism in my work. That's what experimentation is for, I suppose.