Feb '24

Two weeks of everyday studying in one image:

More finished experimentation (steps):

Final result:

21 days later

Mar '24
1

More study images:

More finished experimentation (steps):

Not finished, but I moved on to another image:

14 days later

Mar '24

Trying the red/green color scheme:

Final result:

11 months later

29d

Huh, what a year it was :cold_sweat: ...
Anyways, a recent new image - depiction of Lady Philosophy from Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy. Painted in Krita with some final post-processing in GIMP. Unintentionally, she ended up having a ContraPoints-ish vibe, which I don’t think is a bad thing! :smile:
(YouTube - full painting process video)


26d

Wah, your rendering is top-notch! Who are your main art parents/the people you ref the most?

26d

Thanks! I look up to old-school academic painters as the standard of quality yet to be achieved someday :smile: (Bouguereau, Zorn, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, etc). Sites like "The Art Renewal Center" (their museum) are my goto place for inspiration.

25d

Thank you! I've heard of 'Zorn primarily from his 'Zorn palette' and I really want to try it. (I've just noticed his 'blues' seem to be a little muted' ) How long did it take you to hone down this style? :relaxed: Never read the name 'Lawrence', but his work looks very familiar.

I would love to attend an atelier, but unfortunately they're only in the capital and way out of my budget. (Sad TARC got swindled so easily. :confused:)

25d

"It’s a feature, not a bug!" ) It's his "trademark" realistic harmonious palette with a very limited gamut.

It took me a while, couple of years. But, my main training and education were in applied math and computer science. I studied drawing and painting alongside partial differential equations and C++ :sweat_smile:

+1, same for me

12 days later

13d

Haha figured. I still hope there's a way for an audience to recognise a blue. I've seen a tutorial of the Zorn palette with coloured pencils, so it's nice to see it transferable to dry media. Ahh, it's good that you were able to learn art in your own time, whilst perusing something else professionally. I've been trying to draw for so long and part of me feels like it's 'Sunken Cost Fallacy' at this point, which is why despite doing it in my spare time, I'm glad I didn't chose it as a degree. Did linguistics, instead. Which swings and round about on that one. I still would love to learn how to code, tho!
Yeah, another reason I didn't study art at uni or enrol in an art school, is the teachers' are not people I want to be taught by. The ones that are are either in ateliers, really expensive American schools or online classes. So, I guess it's still the autodidact route for me

Not sure how do do that quote thing, to split up the response. Still a newbie.

12d

Me too. I love and respect Academia, but visual art departments no longer teach painting the way they did a hundred years ago :disappointed: . I suppose it’s a good degree for those wanting to work in a gallery, and it might serve as a ticket into the contemporary art world (which is quite closed to outsiders).

On PC, select the text you want to quote and click the blue 'QUOTE REPLY' button that will appear.

9 days later

3d

Thank you! It worked straight away. :smile: I completely agree. Most art teachers are like that now, because they simply don't have the knowledge of teaching, anatomy, value, perspective, colour theory, etc, because it was never taught to them. The places for that solid tuition are ateliers. They are few and far between and the vast majority you have to pay out of pocket and can't get government funding. Even with an illustration degree that trains students with meeting commercial briefs in mind, so they can eke out a living as a freelancer, are still more into the 'house-style' of flat images in a vector style. Colour theory, composition and advertising your skills to should skill be there. However, still no focus on anatomy, value and form, if that's more important to you.

I've seen quite a few 'I regret/hate art school' videos on Youtube and majority are from those that studied 'Fine Art'. It could be because they didn't know the difference between 'Fine Art' and illustration or Concept/Comic Art or that was the only art subject available at the best/closest university to them.

Not surprising really. Most lectures look down on 'figurative' art, where the latter falls. But, random things that need to be contextualised in a gallery space to make sense are praised. An example from a video paraphrasing her of a girl struggling to think of an idea and finish her painting, whilst her peer just got a pallet and trash, stuck it in the middle of critique, waffled to think of something and got kudos for 'think outside the box' with his original thinking. I'm sure you can imagine how demoralised it made her feel. It's one of the reasons she dropped out. They want students to be more 'loose' and 'expressive' and don't like tightly controlling academia art. I get that it can be stifling, but the other side is frustrating for students that want experienced teachers to be able to quickly spot and correct their mistakes and teach them the fundamentals. In 'Fine Art' context>>> skill.

This is why I never pursued a 'Fine Art' degree. A Level was bad enough. 😠 Pity decent Concept or Comicbook art degrees are few and far between. :pensive:

19h

Thanks! From the idea to the final image, it took a week, couple of hours per day in the evenings.

19h
1

A new image.

Story: Perceval, a young and naive knight, arrives at the Fisher King’s castle. That night, he witnesses a strange procession: a shining Grail, glowing like a star, carried by a maiden in flowing robes, and a bleeding spear, dripping with red, held by another figure.

The unexpected part I ended up struggling with was the gothic-like window behind the first girl. When lit up, the window muntins unintentionally looked like horns, so I added a few extra strokes to make them into a crown instead :stuck_out_tongue:

Painting process: YouTube

10h

Now I know what muntins are.

Really glad you've been back posting again I've watched all your art videos.

I'm quite interested in your first few seconds defining your dynamic symmetry in the thumbnail frame. I have a few sources on that I have saved for further study but have not dived in yet - but now that I see someone using it I have to ask if you dont mind.

Do you have a dynamic symmetry composition in mind when you start?
Do you wing it a few times to get some different thumbnails for the similar subject?
Are there specific shapes you are trying to fill the frame which fit the subject more appropriately?

It seems so fast and second nature to you. Any books or resources you recommend? I found this one and I'll share it here - and I might go through Tavis Leaf Glover's books one day.

Anyway, I have really enjoyed seeing the process and problem solving you go through with your figure invention and color.

I look forward to your posts.

1h
1

Thanks! :smile:

My philosophy is a bit naive - it comes from a UI design course I watched some time ago. They convinced me that any grid is better than no grid. I don’t follow the grid strictly, but I use it as "poles of attraction" to guide composition. Perspective grids, for example, are good grids by itself, but they’re not very dynamic by nature (unless it's 5-point perspective or an extreme foreshortening).

In the previous image, I used Loomis' subdivision method (from "Creative Illustration"), while in the latest one, I tried random uniform scribbles as a basis for composition. I have a rough idea and image in mind before setting up a grid. If the composition needs to be static, I use parallel lines and even divisions. If it needs to be dynamic - it's curves, fewer parallel lines and uneven divisions.

Btw, I had been searching for something readable and in-depth about dynamic symmetry for a long time when I first heard about its existence as a theory (from Marshall Vandruff somewhere YouTube). These books look really cool, thanks for the recommendation!