i demand more snakes!

i figured i should finally finish this, since its been on my clipboard for a month now.

4x4ish quick painting. id say maybe 25-35 minutes tops but its hard to tell cause it was done over an hour while chatting online and wandering around the internets.

spawned from a discussion over lunch yesterday of my hatred of drawing bowls of fruit and house plants, which i usually dismiss as useless in the overall scheme of drawing practice.

but just to show i can...

an excuse to use white pencil and draw boobies. the shading on the face is wonky, but this was about 90% done while on the bus and/or trolley on the way to and from work. i blame the bumpy ride for my lack of shading knowledge.

today's painting. the anatomy is poor and it didnt quite fit on my scanner, but here it is...

this painting is made of epic fail when it comes to the shading. i blame this partly on my lack of lighting knowledge and partly on the fact that id never used hotpress watercolor paper before, so i didnt realize how unfriendly it is toward blending layers of color.

size is about 8x10, slightly larger than i usually work... took probably, i dunno, two hours or so. ive given up timing paintings since im usually distracted by tv or AIM or whatnot while painting.

quickish watercolor i did the other day... i got up at the crack of dawn because i was told the water was being turned off to redo the bathroom at 7am sharp... needless to say, of course i didnt have to leave the house until 10:30 that day (and the guy still hadnt shown up by that time) so i had a few hours to kill. wanted to play around with keeping the background simple and fairly similar in color, but without being monotone. i like the way the trees turned out, especially the yellow one.

i guess the rabbit aint bad, either, but the shading is a bit wonky. oh well...

olivia and i went to the zoo and sketched giraffes and koalas. then we came home and painted our doodles. yay doodles.

and she did a very cruel thing and let me use her much nicer watercolors - so of course now i want them. le sigh.

tooling around with white pencil on brown paper - in this case a paper bag, hence the wrinkled scan. this is not a good example of giraffe anatomy, but i couldnt really be bothered to get it right, since mostly i just wanted to play with the white pencil. maybe i'll do better next time...

im in a silly mood. the question is, does this count as Fowl Play?

exhaustian and watercolor are not really things that should be mixed, im thinking. this is not impressive at all in any technical sense, but its got me giggling and only took about 40 minutes. i amuse me. makes me think i need to spend less time flipping through Ursula Vernon's galleries, though...

two new bookmark sized paintings. *yawn* didnt take too long, and was entertained by netflix whilst painting. good times.

Air to go with Earth, Fire, and Water.... there, happy now? And, man, you wouldnt believe how much my scanner hates the color purple. Its a pain in the ass to scan.

elements in bookmark form

more bookmark sized paintings today. Earth, Fire, and Water... hey, who needs air? took a couple hours to do the three of them, but i was bouncing back and fourth so im not sure how long they're taking individually... ought to time it one of these days. also, the tv is a distraction. yay random documenteries on netflix.

birdie

for some reason, i wanted to paint a bird today. went with the eagle, not because im patriotic, but because i like simple colors and im not that good at watercolor yet.

and hey, at least this one's alive. that's an improvement, right?

im really diggin' the sad pictures done in bright cheerful colors. makes a nice juxtaposition. i'll probably go back and add more contrast to the skin, it really does need it, but i wanted to finish up and still have time to play some WoW - told myself i couldnt play till i painted something.

more watercolor

painting is fun. i get to kill things. this one is 1.5x7 - bookmark sized. gee, i wonder what i'll maim or kill in the next one. lets find out!

second bookmark-size. it looks a little better in person. the background is much more purple. for some reason it scanned it as blue. i tried to correct it, but its not quite right. anyway, i know it needs more contrast, etc, but im done with it.

5x7 watercolors

since ive got some time on my hands, i figured i'd try to figure out watercolor again. here's what i came up with, dont read too much into it.

obviously ive got some work to do - least of all actually paying attention to making sure im masking off the edges evenly. these are both crooked as hell, possibly framed you wouldnt notice, i dunno. i like the first one better. i think i need to work on textures and stuff more before i do any more figures. and im not sure if the heart is cracked or if those are lines of curruption - started out as cracks, but i went a little heavy on the black and couldnt lift it. oh well, a lesson learned.

ariel's color pallet was still open, but this is not ariel. :P

second random doodle today. that's gotta be some kind of record lately.

 wanted to do something simple, so i went with disney's least-dressed princess.

here's a random doodle i pulled from my sketchbook and decided to color.  enjoy.

i am out of practice. this might be cured if i, you know, actually spent more time drawing and less time spacing out and doing nothing.

i wish my tattoo glowed...

watercolor angst

in a pissy mood. decided to take out my aggressions on a hapless piece of paper.  i fail utterly at watercoloring, and this did not help improve my mood.  i also fail at anatomy, and at noticing i fail at anatomy during the pencil sketch phase when its actually possible to fix.  oh well. time for bed.

im sensing a theme with the subject matter... bit happier with this one... even though the larger areas are still patchy im starting to feel like im getting the hang of it a little more.  

and i dig the horns on this one.

finished. tired. there are mistakes, but i'll just do better next time.

watercolor experiment

so here's my first ever attempt at doing a watercolor painting.  i didnt have any instruction on how to do it, just an order to go fourth and paint.  i made some (okay, a lot) mistakes but i learned a few things so next time i should have better results. 

and Larry Elmore said its "pretty damn good" for a first ever water color, so i guess i cant complain too much, eh? still, i think i like monochrome ink washes better... almost done with one ive been working on yesterday and today, so another post will be incoming when i get it finished.

ink wash, experiment #2.  this took all goddamn day - about 7.5 hours start to finish... im assuming this is because i havent a clue what im doing, and not because it acually takes that long to art.

ink wash experiment

messing around with ink washing. never tried it before, so im actually pretty happy with my first attempt. might have to try it again sometime with paper that's not intended for dry media... it got a bit warped by the time i was finished.

today's sketches. dragons were done on the trolley and bus coming home from work, sword girl dooled while watching a movie - turns out i draw like crap when distracted, whoda thunk?

dragon, kitty, dragon, dragon

one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesnt belong...

dragon #1 was done while waiting for a friend to show up. and waiting... and waiting. then waiting some more.  you know who you are.

kitties drawn between rounds of CoD4 - the sideways one was referenced from a leopard, but i was tired of filling in spots after the first one.

dragons done on the way to work this morning. they'd be neater if busses and trains didnt bounce around so damn much.

slow day at work = dragon on tally sheet. i need to either stop doodling this guy, or start being consistant about neck and leg length.

more dragons. heh... my sketchbook bit me tonight, leaving a nasty papercut across my finger. maybe i should stop filling it with toothy things...

couple quick doodles from today.  first took about half an hour, interlaced with chatting and making coffee, so im not sure what the actual work time was.  my buddy mez is having issues with his computer and i gathered from his tone of voice that this isnt that far from becoming reality.

the second is RandomDragon and is made of generic dragony goodness. not sure of the time on it, was working on it between CoD4 rounds.  i like this much better than previous dragons ive done lately. may have to do more... they're fun. :D

quicky sketch from my shiney new sketchbook. unimpressive, but posted for the sake of posting something. one of four different succubui on the page, but the only one i tightened the lines on at all. im diggin' the horns - stole them from an antelope called Kudu.  

i need to stop failing at this daily sketching thing, though im getting a little better.  we'll see. maybe that'll be my newyears resolution.