Flemish Flowers

One dream of my childhood, was to paint flemish flowers. Since it looked quite difficult, i never dared to do it, until I realize that Photoshop is easier than traditional oil. So, I spent almost all my free time in the last weeks to reproduce a Flower Garland from Jan Davidsz de Heem. The reference is one file found in Google, but resolution was not always sufficient, so sometimes I tried to guess some details.

This is the original of de Heem:

And here comes my repainted (no photomanipulated, if one wonders):

Painted using only the standard Photoshop chalk brush, with some jitter, to get a feeling of organic material, and sometimes a little texture.

A couple of flowers in the original seems to have been painted with pigments which have decomposed during  a couple of centuries, to judge from the almost absence of values: the red tulip and a jellow flower. The latter has been completely repainted using as reference a Rosa Foetida, which I guessed it was the flower represented in the original, adding some orange details, just for fun:

I added also a blue Morpho butterfly, just because I'd like to have a little more blue in the picture:

Then another couple of closeups:

Have a nice spring!

Another sea beast

This week I continue to sketch hands and people from magazines and live. It was a kind of funny try to sketch a someone's hand in 30 seconds during a long meeting (to the ones who will object that's not a professional behavior, I can reply that it has been demonstrated that drawing during meetings and presentations helps to keep alert). 

But, for my evening paintings, I did something in the same way and with the same style of the previous post. This time just a little bit prettier than the last one, a kind of mix between a fish, a blackfish and some other species which name I don't remember. I had fun also creating some custom brushes in Photoshop, which I used here.

A couple of closeups follow:

Another marine creature

I've realized that it's very funny starting with some casual lines on a dark background, and try to create something out of it. And, since my favourite subject are, definetively, horrific and a bit disgusting creatures, that's what was coming out from the experiment. (well, I love also elfs and similar beautiful things, but painting the beautiful is very difficult, painting the ugly makes much more fun, and maybe is even less stereotyped)

Here follows a couple of close-ups. I'm very well aware that one cannot expect wet surfaces under water, as the mouth of this kind of blackfisk-lamprey is depicted, anyway I find it enhancing the disturbing feeling about this monster. The delicate flowers are used by the monster to attract and bring food to his mouth.

Strange Creature

Since I seriously need a lot of exercise about human anatomy, I wanted to copy a reference photo from an old fashion magazine I had at home, and try to modify something in the composition. It was first intended as a quick exercise, but then I became more and more addicted to details. The anatomy is not satifying, but it looks like I'm on the right way if I compare with my previous works about humans.

Below there are a couple of closer views. I must say that Linda Bergkvist's tutorials are very helpful, even if I'm quite far away from hers wonderful pictures.

Limacina helicina

Today my boyfriend went out with our little child, so I could have some quiet hours to spend for copying a quite cool picture from my sea animals book. This is a snail called Limacina helicina which lives among the Plancton.
With this work, I realized that painting a copy is not the biggest issue. A photo has already a defined shape, correct proportions, perspective, palette and values. The big deal is to paint something completely invented. This one is my big problem, right now.

Jellyfishes

I need to speed up my way to paint. I love odd creatures, from every kingdom. Today I bought a wonderful book about sea life. Today I had a couple of hours just for myself. 

So, here comes three speed paintings: a Melicertum octocostatum, a Cyanea capillata and a Haliclystus auricula, about 20-30 minutes each. I enyojed it very much.

 

  

 

Genetically modified #1

This time I wanted to do something almost finished with Photoshop. The strange and odd shapes and colours of plants and mushrooms are always been among my favourites, so I did a quick sketch during a lunch break:

And here is the final version after several hours under the Wacom pen. I wish I could be a little faster.

The original psd. file has a much better resolution, but I had to resize the picture quite a lot to make Blogger accept it.

The Crystal Ball

It is not a mystery that I love Preraphaelites technique and subjects, so I felt ambitious enough to (try to) reproduce one of their paintings. Here I chose Waterhouse's "The Crystal Ball". There's a little of all: still life, architecture, a human subject with a not too difficult anatomy and simple fabric effects.

This is the original (from the Internet):

Then comes the 90' (well, i would say 2-hours) quick sketch:

I focused my efforts mostly on woman and still life. I couldn't manage to finish the furniture and give the correct perspective to the floor's tiles, anyway those details are less important to me right now.

Then, I wanted to give more details to the woman and the still life, so I worked it up a little more:

I love very much the potential gothic atmosphere which is hidden in this simple and apparently innocent subject: the Crystal Ball itself, book and skull have good potential to turn this painting into a much darker one.

So this is my dark interpretation of it: a sorceress doing divinations in the night. Don't think that Waterhouse would have liked it, but he will never know anyway.

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: