Winter Sketchbook Painting #6

Been taking a bit of a break from painting until today. I felt that I wasn't putting out enough drawings in my sketchbook, so I ended up filling up about 8 pages of sketches during a trip to the Happy Hollow Park and Zoo.

However, I have been wanting to test out my gouache set. I didn't have a proper brush at the time, but I decided to experiment anyways on an older drawing I did that frankly didn't feel finished without color. And the result? Well, I wouldn't call this finished, but I will say that I've surprisingly fell in love with gouache. It is really the most flexible medium I've ever worked with.

Anyhow, I'm going to make a few tweaks to this later, but I'd say this will probably be the start of a switch to gouache for a while.

Sketch- Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables

Taking a break from painting today. Instead I bring you a sketch of Anne Hathaway from Les Miserables. Er, attempted sketch.

I have to say, the film adaptation of this musical was phenomenal. Easily the best movie I've seen all year. Be sure to bring a towel and a few buckets when you go watch though. Your tear ducts will be empty by the end of it.

Winter Sketchbook Painting #5

Fifth sketchbook. These are wooden duck figurines that have been in my house for as long as I can remember. I had forgotten that they were here until just now.

I'm not too happy with how this one came out. I will say I do like little bits and pieces with how the color movement came out. Getting through this painting was a struggle, however. I'm not really that fond of using flat brushes for these sort of studies.

But you know what, you win some and you lose some. This one didn't go quite well for me, so time to move on.

Winter Sketchbook Painting #4

Another day, another painting.

Actually, I took a day off since I had done two paintings in a row before. Now...well, I wasn't as productive as I should had been, so why not end the day with a painting?

This was definitely a challenging painting, but surprisingly one of my faster ones (about two hours?). The highlights were especially tough; I don't think I correctly painted some areas. I will say though, this was LOADS of fun. The more I paint in acrylic, the more I fall in love with it. I'm actually not sure how I'm going to transition back to digital. I mean, the tablet stylus just isn't the same...

Winter Sketchbook Painting #3

Since I was a bit disappointed with how the last painting came out, I decided to pump out a second one before going to bed. There are a good number of things that I struggled with while painting this setup, but it was definitely a lot of fun (and much less of a headache than the previous painting) and I’m generally happy with how it came out.

Acrylic, approximately 2 and a half hours.

Winter Sketchbook Painting #2 (Bonus: Awful Night Drawing)

I'm on a roll today...

...for being bad.

Jokes aside, today was a bit of a rough day. This painting didn't turn out as bad as I thought it was going to but man, those were weird colors to work with.

Yeah...I don't know where my mom found this thing but yes, this isn't from my imagination lol.

Winter Sketchbook Painting #1

Winter is here, so let the games begin!

This is a wooden puzzle dolphin souvenir that my dad got me many years ago. Strangely enough (but awesome for me), my dad and my grandparents has accumulated many interesting souvenir specimens over the years that they have bequeathed to my brother and I. I think many of them will make pretty cool still life studies.

I used a fairly limited palette here; prepped the page with raw umber and used burnt sienna/umber, yellow light hanza, cobalt blue, and white.

I am probably going to do the same plan that my roommate +Clayton Chan (check out his own art blog here) is going to do over the break, which is one still life painting a day. For now I will only upload those still lifes; the other drawings in my winter sketchbook will have a cumulative set of posts towards the end of the break. But expect this blog to get busier from here on out.