Hey everyone, it's the 31st, that means this is the final update for March! I can officially proclaim this marks my 3rd month in a row that I've done a digital painting each day, and uploaded that painting with a critique to this blog! That's pretty exciting, this is the most art I've ever produced, and I'm really happy with almost all of it to boot! Just like last month, I'll be pulling 10 pieces to review, then the post will end with my last painting for the month. Let's get started!

NUMBER 10

This one's on the bottom of the list because it was a bit rushed, there are also quite a few issues with scale here. It's not really bad on its own, but it's a poor replication of the source material. 

NUMBER 9

I really liked this one at first, then I showed it to one of my art professors and she said that due to the height of his eyes he looked like an ape. Now all I see is ape-face, bottom of the list it is!

NUMBER 8

This one's at this place on the list because everything's a bit stretched, it's all just a little too wide. To be fair the perspective in the original image is really strange, and all that the artist rendered really only sank in after a few viewings (once I finished that is). Gotta analyze the work before I work from it!

NUMBER 7

This one's here because it's so damn boring, really boring, so boring. It's not badly rendered, I stayed true to the original painting (which was boring), but it's just kind of unfortunate looking.

NUMBER 6

I enjoyed working on this one a lot, and it was kind of tough, but I'm mostly happy with the end result. I had a few issues with resolving the shapes of the trees in the background though, and the color of the shrubs in the bottom right is a bit off. It's alright otherwise.

NUMBER 5

I very much wanted this one to be higher on the list, because I'm really proud of it, and then I looked at it again. The jawline of the figure in the background is completely wrong, it's angled too sharply upward. Now that's all I can see, bummer. The rest of it's really good though!

NUMBER 4

I wasn't going to place this one so high on the list, but I feel like there's one feature that really stands out, so that's why it's here. I really think the sky is so beautiful, on top of that I learned a lot painting it. It's definitely a technique I'll be using again!

NUMBER 3

I'm really happy with the way this guy turned out! The composition's really simple, there aren't really any crazy techniques here used by the original artist, but I just love this image. I also painted a smile on his face, the original painting really left his expression to the imagination, so maybe that's why I'm so partial to this one.

NUMBER 2

It was crazy difficult placing these last two, I honestly feel like they're both tied for the top spot, so let's just say the numbers at this point are here for organizational purposes only. I love this image, it's so beautiful. The grass, the flowers, the color, the color is spectacular! Of course I can't take credit for that because it's not my own work, but I'm really pleased with how I interpreted it. This one's just awesome.

NUMBER 1

I feel like I put this one at the top because I've got a soft spot for the progress gif I made. It's so neat to see something like this come together. From a bunch of random color placed on the page this emerged, and I think that's fantastic. It's so easy to focus on the end result of artwork, and something non-artists don't see is the process. That has been a really fun thing to share here, and it's honestly the best part of creating art.

Alright, now that we're done with our recap, it's time to see how the final second chance of the month turned out!

Here's the piece I reworked today.

"El Jaleo" - John Singer Sargent

This one needed another try. I believe I mentioned that at the end of my original post. I just wasn't happy with how it turned out. There was no detail in the background, everything was too big, it just wasn't great. Let's see how it looks now.

Much better! It's still not perfect, but I think it's a vast improvement over my original attempt. I wish I could have gotten the angle of the dancer's head right, it's still not quite where it should be. I feel like this is going to be a piece I come back to so that I can try and learn from it again and again.

Here's a gif comparing the original and my two attempts.

Ahh, much better!

Thanks for reading through this super long post, and thanks for viewing my blog for the past 3 months, it means a lot!

Check back tomorrow for a new piece and brand new theme! See you then!

Hey everyone, it's time for a new post!

Today we're going to be taking another look back at something I feel needed a bit of improvement. Here's the piece I reworked today.

"Sitwell Family" - John Singer Sargent

Take a look at my first attempt below.

There's a real problem here with the scale of the figures in this version. The husband and daughter in the background are positioned too near to the wife in the foreground. She's also a little too short as well, so is the table for that matter. So yeah, not a lot of good here, that's why this one's getting a do-over. Here's the new version!

This one turned out great, I'm so glad I decided to give this one another go! Everyone looks like they're just about where they're supposed to be. The scale issues are fixed, and the value is much truer to the original.

Here's another gif to compare the original and my two attempts.

Much improved over the original attempt! There are still a few flaws, mainly the size and position of the husband's and wife's heads. Other than that, I'm super happy with it!

Don't forget to check back tomorrow for my final update, along with my review of all the pieces I've painted this month!

Hey everyone, here's something new!

I decided that I'm going to spend these last few days of the month attempting to redeem myself for some pieces I felt weren't all that great the first time around. So this isn't really "new," but it's a new interpretation. For my first redux study we're gonna go back to the beginning of the month! This is the piece I worked from on the 3rd, it's the first painting that's getting a second shot!

"Young Man in Reverie" - John Singer Sargent

My first attempt was a little less than stellar, have a look here.

His arm's a little too short, the ledge next to him where the vases are isn't tall enough, and the angle of his face is way off. That's why I choose this painting to rework, it had a few obvious errors I thought I could fix. Let's see if I was able to do just that!

I'm really proud of this version! I feel like I was able to address all of the issues I pointed out before, and I also rendered a lot of the detail much better than last time. To think that I did this less than a month ago, and I've improved this much is really exciting. I may not be where I want to be artistically right now, but I'm well on my way there.

Here's another gif, this'll be a comparison between my versions and the orignal, take a look.

Pretty cool, right? The head's still a little too small from the looks of this, but I think it's a whole lot better than my first attempt.

That's all for today, check back again tomorrow for something new(ish)!

Hey everyone, here's something new!

This is the piece I worked from today.

Georges Seurat - "Gardener"

I picked this painting for today because I haven't really done too much in the way of painting people since the start of the month, so I wanted to get back to that. I really like the look of this piece because it that's just so real. The stance of the figure, the way his weight is distributed, the subtle gesture in his hands, it all works to create a really striking image. So, let's see how I did!

This one turned out pretty nicely, I don't think I got the hand holding the gardening tool quite right, but I'm happy with almost everything else. The color isn't exactly correct, my version's a bit greener than the other, but I think it's still quite pleasing. Nothing too challenging here in the way of composition, but I still had a good time working on it. I've got another .gif here so you can see how it all came together, check it out.

That's all for today! Check back tomorrow for something new!

Hey there everyone, time for something new!

Here's the piece I worked from today.

Georges Seurat - "The Stone Breaker"

I like the characters portrayed in this painting a lot, there's a nice relationship between them even though they're not interacting directly. There's a nice use of contrast here, the red-brown pants against the golden grass, the white popping out against all of the other darker values, it really adds up to make the figures the focus of interest. Let's see how I did!

I like the way this turned out, I did something a little different this time and sketched out everything first. I usually just block in color then rush into fleshing out all of the detail. It's not perfect, but it was definitely something I learned from. I tried to really get the position of everything right before I started painted, and I feel like I did alright in that respect. I did this painting in layers while I was working on it, that means I've got a .gif for you tonight too, have a look!

As you may be able to see, I moved the gentleman on the left over a little further, he was a bit too close to the other person in the painting. I feel like if I kept him in that position it might have changed the narrative there a little bit, but not for the better (at least not for the other guy).

That's all for tonight, check back again for something new tomorrow!

Hey everyone, it's update time!

Here's the piece I worked from today.

Georges Seurat - "The Bank of the Seine"

This painting is pretty straightforward, at least that's what I thought when when I started painting it. It's a little more nuanced then it seems. Let's take a look at what I did and I'll explain.

You might notice this looks a little bit different than my last painting, I'm still messing around with different brushes to try and get the right look. I don't think I have it just yet. Anyway, on to reviewing the painting! There are a few mistakes that jump out right away, the grass in the foreground isn't a light enough shade of green, the horizon's a little lower in my version, and the trees in the background are a bit darker. The figures are all a little larger too, but I suppose that's not too offensive. The main thing I noticed while painting this was how important the color of the water was. I sort of carelessly painted the water blue at first, but when I started painting in the figures I realized what a mistake that would have been. I sort of feel like this is what the artist experienced originally as well. From the looks of the brush strokes around the figures it seems as if the color was added in after, carefully brushed around so as not to disturb them. The reason for this was that leaving the color of the water blue would have caused there to not be enough contrast around the figures, they would have been lost in the composition without that. So that was the little trick I took from this painting. Painting with intention, and with the explicit purpose of describing your scene to the viewer in the most easily readable way, is what's most important.

That's all for tonight, check back again tomorrow for something new!

Hey everyone, it's late, but it's time for another update!

Here's the piece I worked from today.

Georges Seurat - "River's Edge"

This image is pretty interesting because it almost looks like the artist divided the image into thirds vertically, and struck a line through the center with the horizon, breaking the image up into six almost equally sized squares. You can also tell he's very much infatuated with the "golden hour," as it's called, the time of day just as the sun starts setting. At that hour your surroundings are bathed in a beautiful golden light, it's a great time for photography, and painting too! Anyway, let's see how I did.

It looks to have come out rather nicely I think! I tried a little something different with my brush settings in Photoshop today, I think it lent a more painterly look to the image, though it's still not quite like what you'd get if this were actually painted with a brush. I'm satisfied with where everything is, though it looks like the shadow of the greenery on the water is angled slightly as it extends to the bottom of the piece. I don't think that's a huge problem though. I still managed to paint over my underpainting somehow, I wasn't too bad about that yesterday, but it's something I apparently need to be very diligent about!

That's all for tonight, check back again tomorrow for something new! 

Hey everyone, it's update time!

Here's the painting I worked from this evening.

Georges Seurat - "Riverman"

This is another wonderful painting from Seurat, I really like the composition here. The man in the boat is a clear focal point, he's dead center in the image, and he's surrounded by oars (or lines) that lead you through the rest of the painting. The oar on the right points toward the shore, which then leads your eye further into the background. In the background there looks to be some homes along the water, you can see the blue grey rooftops above the purple swath of paint that is the buildings. It's positioned very purposefully to lead the viewer back to the boat, as they're both the same relative size, and have roughly the same silhouette. The space at the bow of the boat is almost equidistant to the space between the shore, and the houses or village in the background. This image is super balanced, and very thoughtfully composed. Alright, that's enough for analyzing, let's see how I did.

As soon as I added my version this post immediately saw where I went wrong, in more ways than one! I really think looking over these pieces critically, before I start painting them, would aid me in replicating them. I'm always so anxious to dive in that I think I end up missing a lot, and I think that's really apparent right here. I missed the mark when it came to getting the relationships between the objects correct, and the scale's a bit off as well. I'm gonna find myself some Post-It notes and put one on my monitor that reads, "look your references over first," that way I don't make silly errors like this again. At the very least I'm satisfied with my assessment of the original work, and I've got a plan of action for my next pieces that way I don't end up in the same boat. Sorry, that was a terrible pun I couldn't pass up.

Check back tomorrow for something new, later!

Hey everyone, it's time for a new post!

Here's the piece I worked from this afternoon.

Gorges Seurat - "Corner of a House"

I really like this image because the subject matter is completely mundane. It's not an epic battle, it's not a portrait, it's simply the corner of a house. The other reason why I like this painting is because of the way the subject matter is presented, it wasn't something the artist rendered with extreme accuracy, it's an abstraction of the subject matter. A very clever abstraction at that! I also like that the red underpaiting is visible to the viewer, it adds an extra bit of depth - the red contrasting against the green. Alright, let's take a look at what I did.

This one turned out okay, I think there's almost too much depth in my painting as opposed to the original. I can't really say if that's a good thing, or a bad thing, but it's definitely a difference. I also didn't leave a lot of the red underneath visible for some reason, though I did start out by painting the whole canvas red. I think I got caught up in showcasing the direction of my brush strokes, that was something the artist did to (I assume) further distinguish the individual parts of the composition from one another. I'm still pretty happy with it though.

Anyway, that's all for today! Check back again tomorrow for something new!

Hey there everyone, it's update time!

I'm a bit sad to say that today marks the end of spring break for me, so I won't have as much time this week to work on my art as I did the week prior. I'm still going to do as much as I can to practice and learn though! I expect things to be a lot looser in style than what I've just recently completed. To this end I chose one artist to work from that I felt I could emulate relatively quickly, and that would still teach me a great deal. Here's the first painting I used as reference.

Georges Seurat - "The Riverside"

That's right, this week is going to be all about the work of Georges Seurat. You might recognize this image, it's probably one of his more famous works. I remember my dentist growing up had that painting hanging on the wall in the room I always got my teeth cleaned in, funny how something like that would come up again! Anyway, let's talk about the image at hand. I really like how simple this piece is, it looks like a snapshot he took with his mind and then put on a canvas (although I would assume this would have been painted en plein air). It's got some nice dark bits around the edges that make your eye focus in the center, and there's a good positioning of the horizon in the piece so you get a doubling effect of the sky in the water. So, let's see how I did!

I really like how this one came out. The only trouble I had was getting the brush stroke effect to read correctly. It takes a certain finesse to make digital painting look, well, not digital. Luckily I made some brushes a while back that fit the bill perfectly for what I needed here, so I used them! If you ever need a set of cool and unique custom brushes just grab a canvas, some black paint, and a pallet knife. Lay down a couple interesting strokes from the pallet knife when it's loaded up with paint on your canvas, then photograph from directly above. Find a tutorial on the web about making custom brushes if you don't know how to do it already, and just use those images as your source material. They'll come out awesome, I promise. Back to the painting at hand, overall, I like it. There are a few areas that could be improved, such as the trees on the left of the image across the water, but that's not too much of a big deal.

That's all for today, look forward to another Seurat study tomorrow, have a good night!

Hey there everyone! It's update time!

I wanted to finish the week off with a bang, not a whimper, so here's the painting I worked from tonight.

Georgia O'Keeffe - Black Hills with Cedar

I love this image, it's incredibly evocative, provocative, and wonderful. I don't think I ever really "got" Georgia's work until doing a study of this piece. If my brain wasn't so fried from working on this for the last few hours straight through I might have gone into that, but we're gonna leave it at "this is awesome," for tonight. Anyway, here's what I came up with!

I'm extremely satisfied with how this turned out. I've really got to say this is probably the most technically accurate study I've done yet. I really got into the technique of painting the way (I think) she did, and I honestly didn't want to stop. I kinda thought this was going to be something I'd end up only "finishing," but I really think it's about as done as it could be. The best part about it is that I stuck with it and worked through to the end! Hooray for breakthroughs! I learned a lot painting this, and it was fun to work on too!

That's it for this week! I spent so much time on this painting tonight that I don't really know what I'm gonna do tomorrow. I like to prep all of my references on Saturday nights, and that did not happen this evening. I'm going straight to bed after this. Oh well, it'll be a surprise, for all parties involved! Hope you enjoyed this one, check back again tomorrow for something new! 

   

Hey everyone, here's something new!

Today we're back to what you've been used to for most of this week, check it out.

Albert Bierstadt - "Storm in the Mountains"

This piece also falls into the category of composition studies a little more than color studies, I seem to have fallen into this trap a few times this week already! I kinda picked from a selection of art produced by artists of the Hudson River School this week, with the exception of Georgia O'Keeffe yesterday. These pieces caught my eye, so I painted them. On that note, let's see how I did here!

I like this one! It's not super awesome, but it's good enough. I will admit this one was done in a bit of a hurry, but it's not bad at all. It still looks somewhat like the original, though I didn't really add enough highlights in the mountain in the background I see. Also, the area between the clouds and the valley isn't as round as in the original. That's an important piece of the reference painting's composition that I didn't get right, so that's not okay. The roundness of the clouds meeting the land and the curve of the land up into the clouds helps to move the eye around the image. The way I painted this sort of forces your eye into the space between, that's not so great. Oh well, lesson learned! Gotta pay attention to those curves!

Anyway, that's all for tonight. Stop by tomorrow for something new, later!

Hey everyone, time for another update!

Here's the painting I worked from today.

Jasper Francis Cropsey - "By the Sea"

Upon further viewing this one really appears to be a bit more about composition than color, but it was different enough from what I worked with last week, so I guess that's why I ended up picking it. It's a beautifully rendered image, the style here's a bit looser than that of Thomas Cole's painting yesterday. I really like how warm the image is overall, lots of golds, oranges, and greens (and the greens are almost a green brown). Let's see how I did!

The first thing you may notice is the figures in the foreground have been removed, they did not matter within my artistic vision so they were ejected from the piece (not really, I just didn't feel like painting them, I do what I want). I like it well enough, the rendering of the rock formation in the background's a bit crude, I didn't really capture all of the nuances for the form, and the shore's obviously lacking detail (and Snookie, but we'll not be complaining about that), I like the rocks on the left though. 

I think that's about all I can muster as a critique for this evening, check back again tomorrow for something new!

Hey everyone! Here's tonight's post!

Tonight's kinda special because it makes my 100th update! Pretty cool, right? I can't believe that's right, on top of that I've almost reached 2000 page views! Thanks so much to everyone visiting and checking out what I've been working on, it means a lot! Anyway, let's see how I did with today's painting!

This is the image I worked from today.

Thomas Cole - "The Oxbow"

I picked this image for today because it contained something I had some trouble with yesterday, namely that nice little tree in the foreground. Since it was a rather prominent feature of the composition I knew this was what I had to paint to redeem myself from yesterday. So, let's see how I did!

I'm really happy with the way it turned out! The tree here is 1000 times better than what I did yesterday, so I'm very glad about that. Everything's a little askew, but it's not bothering me too much. The clouds were kinda difficult to capture, so I don't think they look exactly like the original image, but I'm not worried about that either. It's very difficult to achieve the look of a painting with a digital medium, and this took a long time to do, so I didn't have a lot of time to polish it up. Total paint time here was probably four hours and forty five minutes. I know I'll get faster at doing stuff like this though, so that's why I'm trying to slowly integrate more detail into the paintings I'm working from.

Thanks for checking out this post! Don't forget to look for another one around this same time tomorrow! 

Hey everyone, here's tonight's update!

This is the piece I worked from today.

Fredric Edwin Church - "Twilight in the Wilderness"

Thankfully there are no sparkly vampires to be seen anywhere in this painting, moving right along, it's a very lovely image. I actually took a photograph of clouds that looked just like that, it's a very peculiar formation that doesn't appear all that often, take a look.

I can't quite remember the name, but they're extremely beautiful, right? That was what drew me to this painting anyway, let's see how I did with that!

I like it, kinda. I don't think it's bad, but for some reason I struggled with this one today. I feel like I gave up a bit, especially where the trees are concerned. I don't really have to much else to say about this one. I purposely chose another image with trees for tomorrow, I've definitely got to redeem myself!

Before I end this post, here's a little process gif I threw together, have a look!

That's all for tonight, check back again tomorrow for something new!

Hey everyone, sorry to keep you waiting! Here's tonight's update!

This is the image I worked from this evening.

Joseph Mallord William Turner - "Stormy Sea Breaking on a Shore"

This one's a bit of a departure from what I've done in the last couple of days, and that was exactly my intent. I wanted to move from something saturated and vibrant to something where the colors were more nuanced. Though there might appear to be a great many colors here, that's really not the case. The image is overwhelmingly a desaturated yellow orange, with a bit of dark green and burnt sienna. Let's see how I did.

I don't think this one came out so bad, I think mine's a bit more saturated then the original, but I'm doing this sort of thing to fix that. The painting didn't take too long, maybe about an hour and a half, picking the color was the hardest part actually. I'm gonna try to do a few more paintings like this as the week goes on, there might be a wildcard or two thrown in for fun, so make sure to check back tomorrow!