Colournotes

Here are a few colournotes, trying to work out some general moods in these. Have hardly done any oils lately, and only work with watercolour once a week so it been a while since I have had some fun with colour. Been doing a lot of these, the 5 here are a the once that I find most successful so far. Maybe I'll touch them up a bit one day. Still working on speed, and these are between 3-4 hours on average.

... still working on my Maltese WWII story

Isometric Perspective

Two quick Isometric sketches to get a feel for some of the elements that will play a part in a WWII story I am currently working on. First one is a crew working on a spitfire, second one is a Maltese airbase after a bombing raid.

Muir Beach

I went with Liz's painting class to Muir Beach, it was a sunny but incredibly windy day. It's just north of the Golden Gate bridge, and a short bus ride from downtown SF. Still working in watercolour, and I am getting more comfortable with a bigger more loose application. Liz agreed to dress up as an Eskimo, and pose a little bit. Nice to do some figures in the landscapes.

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

I am taking a visual development class this semester. It has proven very challenging since the concept of focusing on the development aspect over a finished rendering has been new to me. For my first attempt I chose to develop the old folk tale "The Three Billy Goats Gruff". Dealing with stylized animals, or animal drawing in general was a new challenge. I did learn a lot about animal drawing, but I still cannot say I am completely satisfied with what I came up with. I decided to wrap up the project and move on, so I quickly blocked in some compositional roughs and cleaned up my character designs.

I started working on a more comprehensive detective story set in Malta during the second world war. I am very excited about developing that, and hope to post some images from that story later.

Advanced Perspective

I am taking Advanced Perspective at school this semester. Great class! I am getting much better at perspective and speed. I did not time myself doing these, but if I was forced to guess I would say around 3-6 hours each from concept to finish.

Plein Air Watercolour

I have had the pleasure of going out Saturday mornings and enjoy painting the beautiful spring in the bay area. As part of the (very official) plein air painting league we even had access to a car one day and did some painting in half moon bay. It was supposed to snow (!) that day, but as you can see from The beach scene below we had a clear yet ice cold day. The other guys did some great paintings, big thanks to Mark David Noel for hooking us up with the ride.
I usually spend somewhere from one hour to close to two on these.




And a watercolour test I did on hot-press paper. Finally found a block of it, instead of individual sheets. Excited to see how it will work with landscape painting.

India Ink

I have been trying to do figure drawings with india ink and a brush. It's a lot of fun, but quite challenging to pace yourself right. If I go dark fast I don't get enough subtleties, too slow and don't even finish! Hope I can find some time do to a few more like these in the upcoming months. These are all twenty minute drawings.

motorcycles!

Some drawings I did for fun while dreaming of a motorcycle lisence, winning the lottery and riding around the world!

Some various stuff I did at the end of this semester :)