Commissions/Studies

In addition to doing small studies, this break has been a good opportunity to catch up on some commissions. Recently, my studio mate Brandon Belote decided to merge spaces together in the studio we share with other artists. This has tuned out to be good artistically and financially as it saves both of us money and we've been both spending more time in the studio. Today I worked on a couple commissions and a small study.

This small study of my friend Blair was done in my sketchbook. Before I proceeded to ruin this drawing by using ink washes, I was very happy with the inked line work. It didn't help that the paper in my sketchbook isn't the best of quality. I might expand this into a bigger ink drawing later on.

After warming up with this study, I moved on to some commissions. The following commission was completed tonight: ( note to self, I need to get a good scanner instead of using my crappy phone camera).

In general, I'm pretty happy how this turned out. I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to achieving that fine line between " not too lose or too tight". Still have lots to improve on but I'm showing progress. One thing that has had a tremendous impact is working on paper again. My last few ink drawings have been on gessoed board. Since working in my sketchbook,  it's apparent that working on paper is what I should have been doing all along ( Duh!) After completing one more commission I think I'm going to attempt a larger project to finish up the year/winter break. Until then, Happy New Year.

Another Ink Study/I Hate Pro White!

I've been trying to stay busy this week so I decided to do another ink drawing in my sketchbook (apologies for the crappy cellphone pic):

 I kinda had Tony Harris in mind when I was drawing this with an emphasis on line work. I thought about only inking the line work but I really need to work on spotting blacks. All was going well until I messed up around the shadow under the nose. I tried using pro white but I always make the mistake of trying to water it down which always ends up looking worse. Never had great luck with pro white so I'm not sure why I decided to use it. At this point I just started spotting blacks more instinctively and ended up with this: 

Though it's a far cry to say this is good, I kinda liked how this turned out. I added some ink wash as well which is something I normally don't do. I think I'll add some ink wash in my next study since it was kinda refreshing.

All in all, I think I've been good on the productive end on my break so far. I was going to wait to do a few more studies and do a larger blog update but I figure I might as well do small one's since god only knows how often I'll update this as soon as school starts up again. Well off to the next one.

 

preparation

I've noticed in the past that when my winter break hits, I feel this momentary rush to work on my own art outside of school. The problem with this though is that I tend to put this expectation on myself to turn out a bunch of work which is honestly not a whole lot of time. I end up rushing into work and I rarely ever like the results. This time I've decided to do small studies and sketches to help flesh out ideas more thorough. I've sketched out a few ideas this week that could end up either being paintings or large scale ink drawings. Just today I completed this small study in my sketchbook.

I normally hate self portraits but I found this one kinda interesting. I ended up inking this one as well.

 In retrospect, I think the drawing looked better. I might do a similar portrait of someone else since I do like the concept Ive been developing in the last year or so. I'd like to continue to do more small studies such as this and possibly try to start a larger project before the the next semester starts. Well, I'm off to the 100 Grand Show. Hopefully I'll feel inspired afterward.

Ugh!

Since I'm preparing to publish my new website, I thought this would be a good time to update my poor neglected blog. The semester is wrapping up so it gives me some time to reflect on the semester. For a variety of reasons, this has been a very frustrating semester on an artistic level. It started off pretty good that culminated is this painting:

    This was a small painting that did as a commission for my old friends back In Jackson. I consider this one of my best paintings I have completed so far. Everything kinda went downhill from there.
    One of my goals this semester was to really push myself creatively. Take myself out of my comfort zone so to speak. Despite completing this goal, It really didn't leave me with much work to put in my portfolio. Experimenting with skin tones proved to be rather difficult for me as they became either too muddy or too chalky. Still not quite sure how I'm going to approach it in future paintings but I'm starting to develop a better color sense.
    I also began to do life painting which I had never done up until that point. It took some getting used to but I started to see some results by the end the semester. Here are some of the better ones taken with my crappy cellphone camera:

Despite what I consider many failures this semester, I did learn a lot of what to do and more importantly, what not to do. Because of this, I think I set myself up pretty nicely for my next semester. As soon as break starts, I'll probably do some small color studies to see what happens and hopefully complete my website I previously mentioned. Hopefully this we be the first in series of consistent blog updates....we'll see.