Category Archives: painting

Not my style, but sure I’ll give it a go #2

I foolishly/recklessly signed up to a ‘one week challenge’ for digital portrait painting, via @paintable.cc . I call this finished for now, if not really finished-finished (luckily, digital paint never dries). Following someone else’s process made me explore some bits of my drawing programmes that I’ve never used before, and it was all very frustrating at times, but good to do.

Tools: Autodesk Sketchbook on a Surface Pro for the sketching and most of the painting parts, and Photoshop with an elderly Wacom tablet on my desktop for the Photoshop finishing and detail parts.

#digitalart #portrait #portraitpainting #oneweekchallenge

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Another Thursday, another profile

The casual portrait group I go to more-or-less weekly is quite popular, and unless you get there very early, chances are good that the only seats left will be on the outer edges – but happily, I really like drawing an interesting profile!   2 hours or so on the Surface Pro, using Autodesk Sketch.   And, so bold, I even tried a little colour this time around.

Digital painting of an older man

Scaring myself by trying new stuff . . .

I’ve never really tried watercolours, maybe because I’ve always vaguely assumed it would be hard to get beyond corny seascapes. However, this weekend I signed up for a two day watercolour portrait course at the Hutt Art Society.  Yesterday was all about colouring in little boxes and getting control of the paint – today was putting into practice what we learned.  Now, I can see all the bits I did wrong (argh, those shadows), and I still think watercolour is a weirdly backwards process painting wise, but the weekend was definitely the fun-stretch-your-brain kind of hard work.

Nb: my choice of style may have been somewhat influenced by the “Picture of Dorian Gray” (as read by Stephen Fry) I listened to recently.  I will leave it a few days, and then go back and add proper wrinkles and enhance the sneer.  If it’s not going to be pretty it should be really not pretty.

old man in watercolour

Picking up the ol’ digital paint brush again

Miss Amanda Fish
Not nearly finished, but well underway- Presenting Miss Fish.  Based on this lovely tintype photo from the 1880s.   The tiny original is, in the manner of its time, Photoshopped, with the eyes retouched, and colour added to her cheeks and earrings.  This one, painted using my trusty Wacom Intuos 4.