Marriage Equality - finished painting

An update from yesterday. I felt that this painting deserved a little more attention and so I took the time to clean it up and add color!

--:|:--

“Look at us, now. You’re no longer my secret."

“No, and I am finally free to love you.”  

Marriage Equality

What amazing news that I woke up to this morning. My social media feed was just full of rainbows and love, thus inspiring me to create a piece of art in tribute to how happy I feel!

I would love to clean it up a bit when I have the time, but for now, here's a sketch. :D

Another Study

Keeping up with my anatomy study practice. 

A sketch to help unwind from work. Practicing with some skin tones because I don't do darker skin very often.

I Will Never Reach You

The only thing I will say about this painting is that you should never, ever hold back from the things that you want because the opportunity is often only there for a short while and you never know just exactly when it’s going to disappear. Most people won't get a second chance.

Dream Pool - Work in Progress

I won't get into detail about the meaning behind this until I can post the finished version (maybe over this weekend?) But here's a sketch I started tonight!

Figure studies

Still practicing that anatomy! It's becoming fun the more I do it. :)

My Secret (painting)

"My Secret." This started out as a sketch and ended as a 2night painting. I've been studying shoulder/arm anatomy the past couple of weeks and put it to the test by seeing how far I could get without references. So, there are plenty of mistakes that I see, but I still liked how it came out and decided to post it. :)

Blue Colors

Some artsy stuff. Nothing too in-depth, but I was wanting to practice some color.

Shoulder-ish Studies

I was studying the neck, collar, and shoulder area today, but unfortunately so many of my practice sketches turned out awful. I'm too ashamed to show them publicly. :) Perhaps, eventually! For now, here are three of the sketches that turned out decent, as well as a portrait and side study.

By the way, I love doing my studies in black&white because it's much easier to just focus on the shape and form. Anatomy is easier to learn when I don't have to worry about color. 

Portrait Studies

I have been overwhelmed with work and projects and tasks that need to be done! Painting faces always makes me feel better, so I took some time tonight to do a couple. :)

Doodles and a study

I did a quick study and then just doodled some crazy.. face thing. I'm not sure where it came from, but I'm somewhat attached to it now. :)

More weekend studies - female back

Today was a rather unproductive day, I must admit. I spent a great deal of time writing up some application essays for the Motivarti mentorship program. It's exhausting, but completely worth the effort. That being said, I did get in about 2 hours of studying in my sketchbook, and then another 2 hours digital painting. The bottom left image and top sketch were done from reference, where the bottom right was me trying to test what I had just learned. I find it helps to do pieces from my imagination right after a study so that I can get the confidence to paint it on my own in the future.

Arm Studies

Did a lot of studying today! I realized that my arm anatomy knowledge is next to nothing, even when looking at references. So, I spent a good deal of time pawing through some Michael Hampton books, doing some gestures, some constructive figure drawing, and then some photo studies. I'm not too entirely pleased with the outcome, but it allows me to face my problems head on and work through them. I'll be doing some more tomorrow and  hope to see an improvement. 

Here are a few of the sketches and studies I did. The bottom two were done from memory/imagination. The arms a bit wonky and the muscles are undefined, but I feel like it's better than I've been able to do on my own in the past. 

Not much to report! Work, and Dragon Age again. I sketched this guy in about 5 mins as a break from doing character designs for work, but decided to post him because there was something about his "look" that I liked. Maybe I'll make a character of him later. My next art study will be arm muscles.

1.20 Sketch

I've been soooo busy with work (It was crunch this week) that I just didn't feel like doing art after 10-13 hour works days of doing... art. Dragon Age: Inquisition took up most of my nights. I took today off after working over the weekend, and sketched out this ... horned, knife-eared sorceress woman. I'm not sure what her story is. This took a completely different turn from what I had intended.

Sketches 1-12-2015

Nothing too impressive to show today! More studies and sketches, plus an elf guy with Sokka's hairstyle (Avatar).

Viking Warrior - Finished

Here we are, first finished painting of 2015! My goal for this year is to step out of my comfort zone a bit more, and this was my first test of weaponry, some sort of armor, a man, horns, and even a snowy landscape.

   It took a lot longer than I had initially intended, and I hope to resolve that issue of mine and become quicker at painting for future work.

More Viking Work in Progress

Again, today's update is just some more progress on this guy. I am pretty confident I can have him done this weekend! It's about time, I spent way too long on this painting and will resolve not to waste this much time on the next ones I plan to do for this year.

Viking Work in Progress

Instead of a new daily sketch today, I'm using some progress on this painting as my contribution. I've been feeling really tired and sick all day, and feel that I'm probably coming down with something. It's been going on progressively all week and unfortunately, seems to be hindering my art production. I'm hoping to push out of it over the weekend.

Daily Sketch 1.7.2015

Wednesday was a long and tiring day. I was exhausted from going in and meeting my managers and coworkers at Apple yesterday and focused most of my morning on errands and chores. My Cintiq21UX stopped working a few months ago and I finally called Wacom to get it taken care of. It needed to be mailed in, so I dropped it off and then continued with more mundane human-related things. I didn't start work until around 4pm, and so most of my evening was spent catching up on my job hours. I was incredibly tired in the evening, but still wanted to crank out a daily sketch to continue my new year's drawing-a-day project. Unfortunately, I didn't learn anything from this as it was such a quick doodle, but I decided to post it anyway to keep the momentum going. I will just need to accept that, sometimes, the drawings will be bad and that's okay. I also forgot to post it last night (bad!) so I will be making two posts today. ;)

Daily Sketch 1.6.2015

Tired, but committed to this daily sketch thing. I spent about an hour and a half on this study. I was looking at some detailed costuming to get myself familiar with it. It's super rough, but at least I got something that I can upload for today. I'm hoping to spend some more time on something tomorrow, maybe from imagination. :D

Daily Sketch 1.5.2015

"Please, save my people." Watched the first episode of Galavant and it was everything I had hoped it would be! haha, so much fun. I really loved the expression in this shot and wanted to do a study of it.