Do I know you?

One of my main problems regards anatomy and figure painting. 

Last month I decided to improve myself by sketching some portraits found in a old hair fashion magazine. The first sketch was so bad, and did not correspond at all to the photo, so I began, very frustrated, to change a lot of things in the face, until I got a completely weird creature. Back to my usual love for marine stuff, I start to add more and more elements resembling a sea monster. At home, we start to speculate that this creature could pretty much look like a hypothetic concept for the coming movie Avatar and the Deep Sea (or whatever the title will be): a humanoid sea alien depicted in hers first contact with a new species from the deep oceans.

My boyfriend suggested that she(he?) could very much do something, so I elongated the canvas and added shoulders, arms and hands. She is holding some kind of unknown and luminescent animal, for which I loosely got inspiration from googling radiolarian pictures.

Now I had to deal even harder with anatomy issues (well, I punished myself..) so we took some pictures of myself and my hands and paint them into the first concept, until I felt somehow satisfied or, better said, fed up. (I can anyway tell that I don't usually look like this, at least not in public). I'm still not very convinced about the result, but at a certain point I wanted to go further.

I need to find a way to get a more saturated image, normally I work at home and the colours look bright, but then, when I look at the pictures from another screen, the image becomes dark, desaturated and muddy.

And a couple of close-ups:

Queen Bee

Before Christmas time I was asked by a friend to draw a picture for a tattoo. Since it was intend as a present for her husband, I was allowed to publish it only after X-mas holiday. beeing intended for a tattoo, I felt the task quite challenging, since it implies that the drawing is permanently fixed on skin.

The requirements were to draw something inspired to this song from the Italian band Marlene Kuntz. The attitude of the Queen Bee must be aggressive, somehow insolent, and she must hold a pot with honey between her legs. I decided to draw a couple of doodles, with a robotic style, the second one with a more antropomorphic and sexy approach to the anatomy:

The first one was chosen and then refined, including both a colored and a monochrome version. Since the deadline was close, I feel that the result could have been improved, especially about boots and some details of head, which I would have made more hi-tech/cyber, lets say. Here come anyway the final drawings:

Swans

It has been long time since I posted some quick sketches.

Last Sunday we went to our cottage by the sea, and notice a couple of swans still staying here despite the hard, cold climate, and the ice slowly covering the sea surface. It would have been nice to take a picture, but the birds weren't that close, so I tried instead to take some quick pencil sketches while watching them with binoculars (not the most comfortable way to draw, but I think it is used by many birdwatchers).

Once at home, I sketched them quickly in Photoshop after the pencil drawings.

Madonna Lois Griffin

Again, I've got a new idea for the contest "From Comical to Classical" in the DeviantArt group The Digital Painter where I already participate with the Barbabella da Vinci showed in the previous post. 

This time is the turn of a much respectless subject, and the Madonna Colonna:

 

from Raphael Sanzio is the innocent victim of my latest work, since She and her Son have been personified by a couple of members of the Griffins family (the one of the controversial Family Guy series).

Given the subject, I had to paint something controversial as well, so I tried to depict their daily family drama in a way that Raphael and other more pious than the Griffin family would almost find blasphemous and surely irreverent.

Just take my painting with some irony rather than the original meaning of the true Raphael masterpiece, and don't forget what the cartoon is about.

Technically, this work has been done in a lack of time, since the contest deadline is very close, so I'm not really satisfied with its quality.

Barbabelle da Vinci

A couple of weeks ago I read that the DeviantArt group The Digital Painter announced a contest among digital painters. The subject is "From Comical to Classical", and, in the middle of two paintings which aren't satisfying me, I decided to take a break and participate in the contest, just for fun since I don't really hope to win something. 

The matter is, in short, to take one or more characters from a published comic, anime, or toon, and paint it in the style of a classical painting.

My son and his books inspired me to use Barbabelle from the Barbapapa family and turn her into the Lady with an Ermine from Leonardo da Vinci:

It had a lot of fun painting Barbabelle, and it went quite fast if compared with my usual standard. Even if I will be far away from getting some rewards, it was a good idea for finding something to decorate my child's room. A challenge was also to paint without color pickup, and also to get a kind of old patina to the painting itself.

Instead of the ermine I put a dog, which should resemble the Lolita dog of Barbapapa. I'm also aware that the real Barbabelle wears yellow flowers, but in this case I used red ones, since they better match the red dress, and, you know, she's a fashionist indeed...

I feel a little annoyed about the necklace not casting a shadow on Barbabelle's skin, but in the original da Vinci I cannot see that shadow as well, and I had to keep the same style as the original, so here is it:

Plus a couple of closeups:

And now I'm going to submit Barbabelle to the contest. Wish me good luck!

Medusinae

I painted this one from the idea I had in the previous post. I wanted a sea creature in human shape, but not the usual mermaid. This character is a sad one, longing for contact with the other creatures in the ocean, but she frighten away them because of hers beautiful, but poisonous and urticants tentacles.

The name Medisinae is an hybrid between the mythologic creature Medusa, who petrified everybody looking at her, and Medusae, or jellyfishes in zoology.

Painted in Photoshop, whith a custom brush for some of the tentacles. This time I tried to be quick, even if I wanted a enough detailed painting. Since she is not a human creature, I wasn't looking for perfect proportions in anatomy and face.

I put also a couple of closeups:

The beauty and the beast

This is a very quick concept for a children book I would like to illustrate one day, here I wasn't pushing too much for details.

I'm back to my beloved marine subjects, as one can see. The beauty and the beast aren't, apparently, very alike, but both of them are longing for hughs and both of them cannot be easily touched...

Alexander the Little

When your mother-in-law asks you for a portrait of your child, of course you try to do your best. Anyway, I decided not to paint something traditional, but a picture closer to my own taste, so I put a hint of fantasy in this picture.

Both subject and painting title ironically enough refer to the "dictatorial" attititude of our toddler, but more fit to his age: so, he wouldn't ride a powerful horse, but a frog; his head will not be crown with laurel, but with blueberry leaves and wild strawberries, which are the fruits he loves the most. The landscape and vegetation are typical of Northern Sweden, where he's born, but the dress has something to do with his half-mediterranian ancestors.

This work has experienced some annoying hardware problems (mentioned in the post below), so I had to re-paint it; however, I was happy to realize that the re-painting process has been much faster.

Anatomy has been a big issue in this painting, since it is very hard to convince a 2-years old to stay quiet a couple of seconds and pose in the way and light you wish; thus, I had to use several photo references to deal with it, and I'm still not satisfied. The child was drawn by pencil after photos, then scanned and painted over in Photoshop (I find Photoshop not very suitable for sketching, since its pencil is too slow compared with hand's movements), everything else was painted directly on canvas.

Other photo references of mine have been inspirating for painting the frog, some plants and the background, and much work was done going around in nature and looking at landscape elements. This painting has been the most demanding work I've done in Photoshop until now, but I hope I'll be better with time.

Below follow some close-ups:

Buahhh!

This is a Memo for myself: if you have a very important work, DO SAVE it, always, often, with several names, in different places, in your computer (it may crash), in a external hard disk (file will get corrupted), in a USB memory key (you can loose it): because there are infinite ways to loose your very important painting, and it will happen exactly when you're going to complete it.

This time the file went damaged in the external hard disk, don't know why, just that file, of course. Fortunately (or unfortunately?), I had a copy somewhere else saved in the computer since a couple of weeks ago, so I don't need to repaint from zero. But, I have to repaint all I did in the last twelve days.

Shit.

Scheisse.

Merda.

Transgender

I've not updated for a while, since time for painting has been scarce, and I'm actually working at a very detailed and probably too ambitious painting which takes me an eternity.

In the meanwhile, I had a very quick project, it means helping my boyfriend with a deadline. He had to produce some characters for a boardgame, and wanted to have some female ones. So, he drew this archer:

Which I chose for a very quick (maybe 1 h work) transgender-surgery:

The final drawing should be quite small so I wasn't requested to paint a well-detailed image. Anyway, it was funny; not least to see how a guy is more specialized in painting males, and myself drawing females, instead. In the future there will be some more female contributions from my side, I suppose, ahah.