I’ve finally bit the bullet: I’m learning how to digitally paint! I have both Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop, and am learning as much as I can through an online course this summer semester at school. How’s it going? Well, learning a new medium is always tough. But that’s a physical medium. Learning with paints that aren’t real is a whole ‘nother world, and makes Joie rather cranky.

>>Egg Still Life — This school sure loves their eggs. Done in Corel Painter.

Turns out trying to digitally paint makes me forget everything I’ve learned about traditional painting, and it’s like I’m fresh out of undergraduate school again. It’s something about those pixels on the screen. They reach out of the monitor and suck all my practice and talent right out of my eyeballs in a screaming inferno of evil.

>>Copy of a Still from a Movie — I don’t know what movie. Anyone that identifies it gets a virtual cookie. Done in Adobe Photoshop.

I won’t even bother posting the ones that I turned in before critique. They were rather ghastly. But look at how much better I’m getting as we continue on! I like to think a quick study. Well, it’d be faster if parts of my soul weren’t be removed by those evil pixels.

A Color Comp — Planning for my first “big” painting! Done in Adobe Photoshop.

Aie! I’ve let things go on far too long without updating. The end of the semester had me so busy that it was easy to let my blog fall by the wayside. Well that’s all over now! Time to catch up. Most of this post is more stuff from my pastel and head drawing class. There are a few more after this, plus other work and things I’ve been up to, so I will hopefully post those soon.

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And now it’s time for a giant dump of all of the classwork I’ve been up to recently. I haven’t had the time to update in the last few weeks, so I’m playing catchup to the best of my ability. My other news is that I managed to finish a new primitive portfolio, and so I will be updating my website with those items very soon. There will be a few other housecleaning changes going on as well, to make navigation and finding all my art easier.

>> This piece is my best pastel as of yet, and even received a compliment from my program director. I’m pleased. And yes it still looks all orange and fleshy– that’s just the medium. It’s meant to be monochromatic, not real flesh tone. I’m following the professor’s instructions in how I make it.

>>A master copy of a Sargent painting done in charcoal.

Tons more under the jump!

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I’ve been really busy this week and last doing a poster design, trying to finish up a watercolor painting for a kid’s book, and putting together a submission for an important competition I entered. I am also working on putting together a new physical portfolio, update and print some business cards, and change up my online portfolio. I may even need to tinker with my site design to really get it the way I’d like it. I’ve also received a new commission– whew, I am busy busy! Of course also consider my actual school assignments, time for sleeping, eating, walking my dog, working on my personal art projects… ah well. It’s anyone’s guess as to how I actually have time to breathe. (Quick response: I don’t!) Anyway, on to some art for the week:

>> Another charcoal head drawing. I enjoyed the model’s smirk so I attempted to incorporate it into his portrait.

>> A first attempt at drawing the nude figure with pastels. I’ve not used pastels before so it was a real challenge. You can’t erase this stuff.

>> Nude Figure with pastels: this was my second drawing. Hey I think I’m getting it! As messy as they are, I’m still enjoying them.

The new semester has begun, and I’m getting warmed up and used to the heavy workload once again. Here are a few images of things I’ve done so far (some NSFW nude figures under the cut):

>> A portrait done in Head Drawing class.

>> A portrait done entirely from my imagination. Not TOO terrible, eh?

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