Norwegian Volcano

Last 90 minutes exercise of my sick leave (from tomorrow I'll be less productive with Photoshop).

This time I copied a coastal landscape from Northern Norway, but adding a completely new and odd subject, a volcano. I wanted to insert the new element so that the final effect would nevertheless be realistic (hopefully). My boyfriend complaines that it doesn't look enough epic and cool; well, I'll try something more cool when I'll became more skilled, since I don't want to paint something which at the end can for sure look ridiculous (this is a common mistake among beginners, I think...)

Pumpkins in 90 minutes

Another 90 minutes sketch from yesterday evening. This one also a copy from a old photo:

1 hour 30'

Today I'm sick so I've time to do something. To get faster I got the suggestion that I should paint some quick sketches in no more than 90 minutes each.  Here are the (embarrassing) results:

A picture of my son from a photo. I'm not happy at all with proportions and especially with the face, but I'll try harder.

Then, another landscape from a photo taken one summer from our cottage:

I think I must paint more and more of these 90 minutes-sketches, it helps a lot. I must admit that I feel much more comfortable with landscapes. May I'll get specialized on that stuff.

A Demoniac Vision

This time I decided to create a character completely new, just to test if I could get some inspiration, and find out a palette, instead of copying. I did a quick pencil sketch, which was scanned and used as base layer in Photoshop to develop it. The original sketch had such a bad anatomy that I had to take a picture of myself in the same pose, and use it as a model.

It should represent a female demon with a kind of double personality. Since I'm quite tired of the stereotipe sexy representations of females in the (male) world of digital art, I wanted to create a character which is more terrible than beautiful, and could suggest an aura of power around herself.

To be one of the first things I do in Photoshop, and thinking that I do not have so much time left for painting, I feel almost happy with this work. Nevertheless, much more training must be done and I whish I could be quicker.

That's why I've left it as a sketch and didn't try to paint more details, so I can go on with something else.

A Winter Story

At the end, our computer has been fixed and I could quickly finish a winter landscape, copied from a picture taken by my boyfriend some years ago, in the mountains of Lappland. This painting is intended as something in between a sketch and a more detailed work, anyway I didn't want to spend too much time on it.

This time it was not a problem to manage many layers to paint several levels (river, trees, sky, mountains, snow, and so on). I tried many kind of fur brushes in order to get a somehow realistic effect about the trees in the background. I know that there are special tree brushes which can do the same but in a much better way; maybe I'll try to get them in the future.

I realize that is quite convenient to get a palette directly from the photo where the subject is taken from. At the beginning I felt a bit reluctant to use this method (it sounds as cheating), but on the other hand it can be very useful to learn how a good palette should look like when you'll start to paint a similar but not copied image.

Forced interruption

If digital painting offers endless possibilities, I must admit that there are also some huge limitations about it: you need a lot of expensive stuff to realize your masterpieces. You need an adequate computer, a pen-and-tablet set (well, it is possible to paint with mouse as well, as I realized recently, but this is more difficult), and a quite expensive program, if you decide that Photoshop is the one you're going to use. Then, you are dependent on electricity to make all of this work. Fine Artist's Colours and Similar Stuff can be quite expensive too, but one can anyway use much cheaper material and doing something good as well: some paper, a pencil and eraser are always affordable, and can be used without other technological facilities.

Well, this was just to tell that I have some stuff waiting for this blog, but after the Wacom pen died, now it was the turn of the Photoshop program to quit in a quite crowded computer. The old tablet was replaced by a wonderful new one, as a X-mas present from my wonderful boyfriend, but the computer is in a need of some deep cleaning.

In the meanwhile, I have to decide which traditional technique I should practise in the new year. Maybe drawing some human anatomy would not be so bad, I'm very poor with it...

Swedish season greetings

A little late, because of some last details I couldn't finish before Christmas, here comes a first attempt to paint a character completely digital, without a previous sketch. This time I could use both mouse and Wacom pen.

It is a traditional Swedish tomte, a kind of funny and not so fair Christmas elf.

The picture could be used as a quite kitch X-mas card; it was painted with different layers for text, skin details, red details, beard, sky and wood.

Merry Christmas!

Another oil copy

I did not practice so much with digital painting in the last weeks, since I had another urgent project to complete.

This summer, my mother-in-law became 70 and was asked about a nice birthday present. Her wish, a painting to their flat, turned out to be one of the works of the spanish artist Ramón Pujol, who usually paints very beautiful coastal landscapes from Mediterranean. Unfortunately, such a painting can cost around 3000 €, which is quite above our budget, and we agreed that I would have tried to paint it as a Christmas present instead. I chosed to reproduce "Harbour at last light", which is a picture of Portofino, because of the pleasant bright palette and the many elements present in the composition (sea, mountains and buildings). This would have also been a good exercise for me to practise landscape, water and reflections effects on it, and a little perspective.

(picture taken from the Internet)

Here comes the result of my attempt to reproduce this painting (since it is a photo the colours aren't the same as in my painting) :

As a disclaimer, the latter cannot be considered a false, since it is quite evident that proportions, colours and especially the quality of the work are not close to the original.

I'm not really sure if I'm really satisfied with this work. Perspective at the boats is not correct, and the copy do not show the same clean realistic touch which can be admired in the original of Pujol. Some of the houses on the left side are not really parallel with the coast line! On the other hand, it is just my second oil painting after many many years. And, my mother-in-law has not the possibility to directly compare my work with the original one, so I hope she will not notice these details...

The mouse in the pumpkin

A second project was to paint a still life from a live subject. The easiest I hade at home was a pumpkin:

Its round shape is ideal for a beginner because it makes it easy to paint values and so on. The photo doesn't show what I saw from my point of view, so don't compare it with the painting.

Well: when I started, I realised that the precious old Wacom pen was dead. Dead! We'll never know if it was a question of age or the consequence of having a toddler going around and playing with everything interesting he found on his way. So I had to use the old dear mouse, instead. Maybe I'll think about a nice Xmas present to myself...

Dish and pumpkin are painted on two separate layers; it is wonderful to have the possibility to change the oval shape size and proportions if you realize that perspective is wrong. But I realised that I must begin to practice with textures. And layers, of course. And everything else...

The first digital: Northern Light

The very first time I start to paint digital was in October this year, when I needed a picture of the first northern light I saw, for my other blog. All I had were:

1) a quick pencil sketch taken six years ago:

2) the Photoshop program and a Wacom set (pen and tablet), that my boyfriend has at home (he is art director in a own computer game company, so he has a lot of these stuff).

I never hold a Wacom pen in hand previously and was quite unfamiliar with Photoshop as well. As a beginner, I found that there were many issues with this new technique:
- with the Wacom pen you experience a lack of direct feeling with the material you're working with: one cannot feel the texture of paper, or the pressure of pencil/pen/brush. Even if I feel a bit confident by drawing with pencil, I must say that I was completely handicapped with the digital one;
- what you're drawing doesn't appear directly under your hand, but in the screen: you need a new way to coordinate eyes and hand;
- it takes a while learning how to manage different layers in Photoshop.

On the other hand, the possibilities offered by the digital techniques are much larger compared with the traditional ones, so I thought it was worth trying. That's why this blog is called A Wacom Journey.

Here comes the final picture. It is a very simple work, nevertheless I can get the same feeling I had watching the Northern light six years ago. The first step was to correct all writing and other flaws from the original photo, then create and paint distinct layers for sky, landscape and northern light on the background base.