Saturday, January 31, 2009

Still Life Homework

1st painting homework of the semester. Had one week to finish a still life for my figure painting class, not the kind of homework I was expecting in this class. Lucky enough to get Henry Yan as my teacher, watching his amazing demos is reason enough to take his class.

Values and color mixing are still major challenges, but pretty happy with this one. Structure problems on the bowl set aside. Trying out Terpanoid as my thinner insted of just the liquin, and really happe with the results. Easier and more fluid brushwork. Next step is to buy some linseed oil and mix my own medium!


Friday, January 30, 2009

Tattoo, school assignment

Just started my first digital painting class with teacher Lawrence Valenti. For the first week he wanted us to create a tattoo, graphic or rendered. Knowing very little of tattoos I decided to make something in my own style, a cartoonish homage to my mother country. ;)

Fun fact (!?): In Norway neo-Nazis has taken over the symbolic use of Norse mythology, so vikings and the like quickly have bad connotations. Cartoon vikings still get to play though!


Tuesday, January 20, 2009

30 Sketches in 30 days

Spent the winter break back home in Norway, wanted to keep myself busy so I decided to create one sketch every day that could fit in the "daily sketch" section. About one hour a sketch, - some a bit more, some a bit less. Tried to do a lot of different stuff, a few landscapes, sketches from imagination, photo referance, color tests, croquis, pencil. Was really running out of ideas at the end, but at least I got some good practice before my first digital illustration class this fall :)


Sunday, January 4, 2009

Swiss Performance Enhancing Substance

Swiss guy beat the Norwegians in Tour De Ski today... obviously he was full of drugs :)



Still focusing mainly on colors these days. I am working on pushing compliments into the shadows, as well as juxtaposing colors in the image.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Sleeping Girl

I got this great little biography on the life and works of Alfons Mucha for Christmas. His poster work especially is incredible, some of it you can find here. All I could get with me on the plane home for Christmas was a set of gouache colors, so I got out my paints and decided to do something in his spirit.



Seeing as I keep hearing gouache is just opaque watercolor I decided to work on some watercolor paper I had laying around. This probably wasn't such a good idea cause the rough tooth of the paper made it difficult to achieve the smooth delicate application Mucha does so well. I think Illustration board will work much better next time. For the outlines I worked with Microns, which is ok, but I tend to create rather harsh linework. Next time Ill work a bit bigger so I can get in there with my brushtip pen (This one was done on an A5 piece of paper). Definitly enjoyed working with my gouache set, a lot more fun then the one pass solid application we were doing back in color and design class!