Figure painting

So I've been taking Figure Painting at the school now for five weeks. Last homework assignment was a master copy, our choice of reference as long as it was full figure. I chose to work from Caravaggio's "Boy with a Ram" Obviously rendering after Caravaggio on an 18x24 is quite the challenge, but it was a lot of fun getting to spend more then 8 hours on a figurative piece. On the other hand, when you really look at the reference for 20 hours you start realizing what a genius Caravaggio was. The subtleties and hue variations this man had, in a time where paints did not come on tubes in every color imagenable, is truly amazing. I think Ill try copying another one of his paintings in... lets say 20 years and see how much closer I'll be!

This second image is a painting from model in class, about 8 hours on this one. 12x16 canvas board. Face turned out nice, need to work some more color in there.



Another painting done in class, tried working a bit losser with some elements. 5 hours on this one.



Third in class painting, thats it for midterms :)

Still life hw. - Composition and painting

First homework assignment for my composition and painting class. "One non-traditional still life of one or more somewhat mundane and overlooked objects. Make an interesting composition, the use of shadow shapes and positive/negative spaces can aid you in the overall interest of compositional abstract shapes." Basically create something interesting through creative composition, not exciting objects.

Decided to string up my objects with floss and then paint them as if they were hovering mid-air. The final composition turned out pretty bad, the empty area to the left completely kills the painting. On the pluss side my brushwork and color mixing are slowly improving, and I got to try out an interesting wider format. Next homework will be a cityspace/landscape and looks to be very interesting.

In-class composition:

Photoshop Composition

Digital Imaging Class homework, we had to create a composition in photoshop from 10 different pictures or more. Threw together this little naval battle scene. The reference material i found decided more then I did, but it all sort of came together in the end.

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!

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!

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 :)

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.

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!

Summer series - Bislett

Spent the summer back home in beautiful Oslo at the wonderful apartment in Bislett. My god how I dream about that place when I sleep at lower bunk in my shared studio in SF. I guess you got to sacrifice to be an artist. Starving artist and all of that. For a some weeks that summer I worked exclusively on toned paper with coloured charcoal, and this series is part of what came out.

Madlib, El-P
Made this illustration surrounding a few of my favourite music producers and threw in a few elements related to their hip-hop universe



Rock out
Started the series with left over toned paper, a sienna charcoal pencil and my dads old cd cover depicting Jim Morriosn. From there on that deloped into some rock theme, which then led to the illustration above.


Obama Christ
Got tired of musicians and decided to draw a real rock star. Depicting Obama as the saviour seemed to fit the times (even more these days!). Still working on rendering faces, charicatures quickly lose their edge without an instant recognition. I still hope you can pick him out in the end?

Oil Painting

This semester i picked up a brush and had a go at oil painting for the first time. Took the class Still Life Painting at school with teacher Brandon Smith. Really good painter with a beautiful handling of colour. Having hardly worked in colour before this semester I found it quite a challenge not getting my colours muddy or chalky. But hopefully we learn from our failures and I did enjoy the medium a lot!

Emulation of an artist (Final homework):
Pick a still life artist you like and analys his work method and visual landscape. Work in the methods of the artist, but do not copy a piece he has made. Being from Norway I've always enjoyed Odd Nerdrums work and chose to work in his method. He works very thick with small brushes and rags in the larger areas. At the end of a pass he dries the paint and sands down. Seeing as I did not have time to work on dry paint I skipped this part but tried to stay true to his painting technique. I found painting thick to be constantly exposing my lack of painting experience and kept going back to a thin application.

I found this great Odd Nerdrum referance; derekvanderven. A site dedicated to analysis of his techniques. Be aware that these guys are happy amatuers so don't take everything they write as facts. The site did help me a lot tho, it has changed a bit from when I used it. But as I could see, mostly for the better.

Mine worked out better as a rendering than as a painting in Nerdrums fashion. The coulour scheme worked out better. I achieved this with working a lot with venetian red and other earthly colours. Might have been a bit too ambitious to emulate an artist as sophisticated technically as Nerdrum. I have to say that I do love his rendering and might try to work more in this old renaissance fashion next semester.



In class work
Our classes were once a week from 8:30 to 14:50 in the afternoon. The object of each class was to paint on still life working with different tasks life birds-eye, high-key, reflective objects and so on throughout the semester. This one was the second to last day of the semester and we could compose our own still lifes. I chose a simplistic setup with a blue to yellow-red split compliment. I threw the cube with the letter "H" in there cause this was to be a christmas gift to my sister Hanna. H for Hanna, get it!? ... Hey, poort art students have to improvise




Homework piece (from photo referance)
Second to last homework assignment. My shared studio does not lend itself easily to still life painting, and seeing as I had allready painted my salt and pepper shaker and my only other interesting subject (shoes), were dirty. I decided to work from photo referance I took of my lunch. Had only ever painted from life before this and the photo presented a few interesting challenges. I found it easier to figure out the colours and to stray away from the referance in deciding what would make it into my painting. On the other hand when I ran into some issues with tangents and arias that did not read very well in the photo it was hard to make changes in the painting. So will I work more from photos? I think I will, but only in cases where it is important to capture something I will not get a chance to study in real life, i.e. interesting poses, moving objects, food that is rotting.

Vampire

Got a bit further on this quick sketch from the other day:
Set the mood ok, pretty happy with the way the light is hitting the vampires face. Still need to work on the softness of light, especially in a night scene like this. Got about halfway done with this one, but now my shoulder is aching and I need to get off the computer, so I am gonna leave it at this.

Photoshop and Photography for Illustrators - Final

Final Project.
Brief: Illustrate one of the Greek gods through photography and photoshop manipulation.

Had few models and little time, and ended up posing as the warrior god Aries on top of a pile of myself. Tank god this class is over, back to illustrating ;)

Intermediate Anatomy - Final

Final project for Intermediate Anatmoy. The project was open ended, as long as you proved an understanding of anatomy.

God Jul!

Open (Arjuna)