watercolour landscape progress - part 3

broke some of the cloud up to add hieght and depth. still need to do alot of work to make the latest mountains/rock formations more 3 dimentional. i think its going well though. i think the plank bridge needs muting a bit

more tomorrow. happy drawing/writing /whatever you guys do.

cherie

watercolour landscape progress - part 2

this picture looks lighter then this in real life. my camera is not the best and so doesn't always capture images brilliantly. one day i will get a better camera, not only for photographing my art but for capturing good reference pictures.

the plan is to add more detail the further forwards this is so the illusion of distance is achieved. i plan to add more colour the further forwards the mountains get also. the next layer of mountains i'm introducing greenery and some sienna and umber, maybe a smidgen of orange once the rest of the layers bases have been built up i will probably re visit the back one and add a little more detail. but for now its important i don't over detail it.

happy drawing/writing/whatever you guys do

cherie

watercolour landscape progress.

after a talk with a friend in a weekly art chat i visit, i decided to do an environment/landscape painting. environments or what people often dub as backgrounds don't get as much love in the places i visit. people seam to care more about characters more. so I'm painting a fantasy landscape or an environment if you want to call it that.

firstly i opened manga studio. i kinda use this for sketching and ideas. regardless of the fact this is planning for watercolour. as you can see its very loose something of which its going to retain. based on a piece of stock i found of some mountains on deviant art http://beefstock.deviantart.com/art/beefstockpic0035-29930422?q=&qo=, balianese temples from my photo album one of which i think is of tanah lot (its a temple surrounded by ocean very pretty), balanese palaces along with the memory of a plate i have in my verey bitty pots and pans that are in my mums garage.

next i printed the image out backwards. this is important as when i trece it ont tracing paperand then copy it to watercolour paper the image will be backwards to what i intend it. i clean up the sketch directly onto the tracing paper i also change the mountains in the forground.

next i mask of the building, the path and the litle wooden bridge. once the masking fluid is dry i wet the whole paper and attempt to do a graded wash wet on wet. i can do a graded wash when working wet on dry sadly there was too much water on the paper and the colours run :( i'm going to have to practice this some more. i lifted the clouds out before the paint dried using the tissue. some imperfections have been left behind but the cloud texture will be worked up eventually.

using more of the smale wash i pull the far mountains further forwards washing it over the clouds as i go and lifting most of it back out again. after letting that dry i work on the next mountain area. i repeat this adding more coboltblue to the mix the viridian green the further i get forwards. hopefully this sets the tone of the picture and creates a sense of distance in which i will be working on top of.

tune in next time for more progress of this painting. hapy drawing/writing/whatever you guys do

cherie

sketchcards

i aim to do ione of these everyday i dont always succesd but i have done quite well so far. sadly on saturday i used my last sketch card. to add to the annoyance when i went to the art store near me i found they didnt sell them... i'm really not enjouning having to cut my own. so tedious.

i'm thinking of doing an enviromental study. i like painting backdrops and with my latest pictures all i have been drawing is sky so i think i just want to do an environmental study. should be fun, i've already got a scribbly sketched out idea :)

a quick update

time for another sketch book update. first up i was reading an how to draw hands tutorial over on da and was practicing. heres what i came up with so far. need to practice drawing hands more

next up really quick studies of poses most are done in 30 seconds

as you can see there very scribbly, because well thats how i sketch. sorry this ones so short, i have sketch cards to update and some fantasy/childrens book style drawings to update also.

happy drawing/ writing/ whatever you guys do

cherie

the process of "the moon goddess"

so this is what i finished recently. i sketched this a while ago and are not sure if i put the sketch here or not. i proberbly did anyway here's the creation of this image from start to finish.

for this piece i started in manga studio. apparently this is an odd approch as i like sketching digitally. i feel it helps my compasition and its easyer to correct anatomy problems.

once i was happy with the sketch i printed it out onto cheep paper and lightboxed it onto a piece of A4 watercolour paper. i then tape the paper down using masking tape and then layer the wash of cerulean blue, turquoise, ultramarine prussian blue and purple lake. once done i speckled watered down acrylic onto the background using a tough brush to create the most distant stars. i masked some areas off making it easier to paint.

next i painted he cloths using pure purple lake and mixtures of purple lake and ultramarine

using paynes grey i did a light wash over the clouds. once the initial was was dry i used lemon yellow to put in the stars and there yellow glow. i waited for the paint to dry between each layer building the clouds up using paynes grey and the ultramarine/purple lake mixture. i paint her skin using a mixture of lemon yellow and cardium red and ultramarine and purple lake for the shadows. i rosey her cheeks with pure cardium red. i build up the skin until i'm happy.

i build up the clouds in the same way as before. darkening them until i'm happy. i paint her hair with really watery ultramarine.purple lake mixture, building it up in many layers. i also add some pure purple lake to her hair. i lift some paint to create hallos around her head and the stars, i also lift some of the paint of the clouds where the light would fall from her moonlight hair. using cardium yellow and cardium orange i finish the stars. i also add a hint of cadium yellow to her skirt. i darken the shadows on her dress using a mixture of purple lake and prussian blue, i also apply this mixture to the shadows of her skin. for the darkest shadows on her skin i add burnt umber finally i splatter white gauche onto the background blurring some of the stars edges in once dry to give them a hazy look.

hope you guys like it!

happy drawing/writing/ whatever you guys do

cherie

some books i bought

i love books, its why i'm gonna need a new book case soon... well i could already do with one now since theres that books under my bed that i have no room for (there oversized and the oversized shelf is full) doesnt help i keep buying more XD

anyway recently i bought dreamscapes:creating magical angel, faery &mermaid worlds with watercolour, dreamscapes myth and magic: creating legendary creatures and charecters in watercolour and Avatar the last airbender: the art of the animated series. really glad i bought these books there fantastic. so lets look at them

dreamscapes: creating magical Angel,faery and mermaid worlds with watercolour.

i have several watercolour books, and often there very similar to each other. a list of techniques maybe teach you how to paint a hay bale and mostly landscape painting... useful but i want to illustrate so sometimes landscape painting isn't alaways helpful. john howes books did help me a lot however i still sometimes feel that i'm stumbling in the dark when it comes to painting white things, gold and other metals...and glowing effects also getting distance so there where plenty of things i still need to work on and if i hadnt read john howe i wouldn't have gotten into backgrounds, i love painting backgrounds there just as fun for me as painting the charecter, so i did take something away from it... i started useing washes because of them too... not that i did it brilliantly at first and i learned alot from trial and error. eventually i started creating pieces that where catching peoples attention... and all of a sudden everything started falling into place... which is awesome... and had stumbled across an artist called Stephanie pui mun law who had some tutorials that are very useful in her blog (i did a blog post about her here

http://wildhaggisis.blogspot.com/2010/02/im-going-to-talk-about-another-awesome.html) and well she had some tutorial books... for a while i debated if i should get them... and well decided to since i love her art work and even if there wernt as useful as i hoped they where they would make nice insperation books... lets just say they havent let me down so far...

i decided to read them in order of relese starting with creating magical angels, faery and mermaid worlds in watercolour. origanally i was skeptical because only 3 subjects seamed to be well limiting... but now the shere amount of detail she goes into is amazing. this books is good for those who are beginners, covering the very basic flat wash. graided wash, super imposing dry brushing and what not to the more advance salt, rubbing alcohol (or nail varnish remover in my case), cling film (plastic wrap) lifting paint and masking fluid. she goes int colour mixing making some briliant suggestions for skin tones, so you needent worry about not been able to buy skin tone paints. at the end of each chapter (except the first chapter as that ones about materials you will need) she brings eveerythng learned in the chapter and does a more complex piece tutorial.

my only complaint is the laytouts as i find it alittle annoying that the text isnt directly next to the corrasponding photo in most cases. with tutorials i prefer the text to wrasp around pictures so i can look from the tutorial picture to the text with ease.

dreamscapes myth and magic creating legendary creatures and characters in watercolour

the second watercolour book covers a more broad rage of subjects. it looks at 13 diffrent topics, for each one she touches upon painting different things. theres a very useful colour chart for painting diffrent skin tones in this one. she also talks about pattened fabric. the first chapter is almost exactly the same as her first tutorial book, but saying that it has to be for those who havent read the first. the layouts are still the same so theres still that issue, however this book is juat as informative as the first one, and i'm still learning new things from it which is good. not as many new things like the first book because many techniques you learn are repeated over and over again, but that strengthens the process. i especially find the different skin tone suggestions in this book to be very useful. hopefully i will branch away from my purple/alzain crimson mixed with lemon yellow or yellow ochre or raw sienna combo.

avatar the last airbender the art of the animated series.

art books are something i like but find very expensive, so i dont have as many as i like. i have the art of the fellowship of the ring, tara mcphersons lonely hearts club, and uzamaki the art of naruto and the book that i'm about to talk about. taras been the only one that doesnt have text talking about the creation process (she has an interview in the back but thats it) and the naruto one not been as inciteful as it could have been (i was dissapointed buy the fact it didnt have any sketches and was mainly the covers of the manga) eventually i would love to buy some more art and art of books, there very insperational to me however if i have enough money to buy either an art book or a tutorial book the tutorial book usually wins.

thank god i had some birthday money to spend thats all i have to say... and i did get this from amazon so i saved some money there. i loved reading this book... it has writing throughout the book talking about the creation, and how it changed over time, thes glimpses at the storyboards, the key animation, the design work, the backgrounds, how the charecter design changed, the origanal concept and how that changed, press art and dvd covers... theres a lot of art. whats good about this book is it doesnt resort to captured screens from the show itself, the backgrounds are charecterless and you can wow over the sheer beauty of them without the charecters stealing the lime light, the facial expressions are often drawings are oftern as sketches to get a feel for the charecter, the scribbly cabbage guy yelling my cabbages is a good example of this, at the beginning of the book they kinda stated the animators have a whole 3 series singing their praises lets look at the artwork done before it even reaches the animation stage and thats exactly what it does. i would love to have seen more of the story boards. defently glad i got it, its going on the most flipped though for insperation shelf with john howe, tara mcpherson, imagine fx, and stephanie pui mun laws books.