Back in the Saddle

Although both short and long term goals are in order, over the past week I'm settling for painting at least a little every day. The following images are the fruits of those labors; although, it should be noted that there are a handful of other paintings that never made it past the scribble stages.

Initially, this image was more geared towards the "Environment of the week" challenge hosted by conceptart.org, but after numerous (what I would consider to be) failed sketches, I decided instead to let my imagination run with various values thrown down by an airbrush...in retrospect, I lost focus. Regardless, I painted with values only and later applied color. The color was added on a "color" blending layer. As is apparent, not nearly as much time was spent with the color as with the values. Should also be noted that I'm still struggling with this approach (value --> color), and it would do me well to research and practice this...perhaps as a future short and/or long term goal. Also, this painting was done almost exclusively with an airbrush set to an extremely low flow rate (3%-10% depending). Generally, I find it both immensely easier, and faster, to paint with soft brushes, and I hypothesize that the various gradations that occur when painting in such a fashion make it easier for my eyes, and imagination, to see various possibilities. Although, given the variety of methods used to paint, it would seem that others think, feel, and visualize differently, and thus, paint differently. I suspect this relates to and can probably be attributed to various artistic styles as well.

The next painting was started last week, and painted over a period of 5 nights. The inspiration came from a brief on conceptart.org, which I adhered to for the most part. The brief was stated as such, "aggressive green, orange, & black single-seat anit-grav ship," and although I'm not satisfied with the colors, I consider it a successful WIP considering my substantial hiatus from any painting at all. In short...it's a start.

Finally, below are some 60 sec gesture studies based off images found from the "Figure & Gesture Drawing" site. I had drawn some last night as well, but failed to keep a record. While rendering these, it occurred to me that there are numerous different methods of recording a gesture, and that perhaps depending on the pose, some methods are better than others. For now, observation and practice are paramount.