My summer works: part one

Apart from the reassessment project to do, I really wanted to get some digital practise in.  I am really proud of myself, not only I thought I did some great pieces at my level for now, but really felt a better connection and improvement, upon everything. I should of worked along side, learning the fundamentals of art, but at the time didn't find it fun, I just was happily-happy to paint what I felt like doing, yet I know it was majority of 'reference studies' but it something that got me back into it all and as I said I learned a lot from it, :)

"Any drawing is better than none"

I firstly did this back in May, was excited to get the chance to play the Phantasy Star Online 2 Beta with my brother , so I thought to give a go, painting our avatars: SaiYaMan is the NEman- Force, is my  character and the CAst - Ranger is my twin brothers. I am pleased with this since it gave me a great understanding painting this character and figuring out giving that brush texture correctly, given it a dramatic difference. The background was a screen shot from the game, but manipulated to fit the character for a good backdrop, so no credit for me on that.

The finals

SaiYaMan

Yami-Ryu

At this point I did stop for a while for unknown reasons, though I wanted something to get myself motivated into practise again, so I did a portrait painting of my girlfriend. (Who is officially now Ex.Girlfriend) Nonetheless, really felt this was one of my best paintings I have done, especially portraits. I started off in greyscale first so the tonal values would be a lot easier to understand and paint.

I used a reference that I took on my phone at one point when she was cat-napping, though due to my camera quality the reference was low, however still didn't stop me, trying to do my best!

After I completed the painting in greyscale. I converted it to colour. Added an Overlay layer and then painted in the colour. Keeping it close as I can to the reference. What I thought was a good decision is when I added an effect on a layer that gave it a grainy kind of quality, which gave it a bit of vintage.

Well I am unsure if she was pleased with it, we broke up in that week, guess it was a nice last present lol.

I did this little mess about, from my imagination. It has alright design but wasn't executed properly, however, I still enjoyed what I did and learnt from this,  I guess this looks a bit graphical design?

I thought to attempt a master study. From artist Carolus Druan. That I don't really know of to be fair, but came across him and I like this painting of his and thought to attempt it.

I tried to get  some sort of traditional painting sense. Learnt a lot from this piece when painting, understanding the values, light, darks and seeing the shapes that build up something when you step away.