Today's version of the painting is more contrasty than yesterday's. This is because I've prepared the underpainting for the final stages of glazings. If one puts a layer of transparent color onto a surface, one always darkens and reduces the contrast of that part of the painting. Today I added bright highlights to the parts of the red jacket I want to pop out more after I glaze again. I also blocked in the hair with highlights that are lighter in value than her real hair is. This will give me some latitude so I can glaze the hair area more than once to find the best color combination that works. I'm trying to deal with the hair as a sculptural mass that has form and waves. Later after I have glazed the hair and knocked down the values, I can add more highlights or shadows and even individual hairs if I need to.
For the past three days I've been posting images depicting a small 5x7" oil portrait I'm doing of my daughter, Zoe for my step by step album on facebook. Each image represents about an hour's worth of work. I may end up spending 8 hrs. on this sketch. I'm working with real paints again. And my goal eventually is to get fast enough and accomplished enough that I can do at least one of these 5x7's every day. I'm just not fast enough to do that yet so I've been posting in stages. These three images were my sketch of the day July 23rd, 24th & 25th, 2010 on Facebook. I'm using water mixable oil paints. I really love them because they have no odor and are wonderfully easy to clean up and clean the brushes. Only complaint I have is that they seem to be more like alkyds in the way they handle. They are not quite the same as fine oil paints in the way they cover and blend and mix. But I'm slowly getting the hang of it.
This is a sketch I did today for my One Painting or Drawing per Day albums on Facebook. I'm also doing it to submit in the Caricaturama Showdown contest group on Facebook. It took about an hour and I used an old wacom tablet and photoshop 7.
Today I visited Henry Mayo's facebook pages and I was browsing his great monster concept art, when it suddenly occured to me that I still needed to finish the study after Fragonard's "The Reader". This is what I usually lable a "brain phart". Just a quick rendered doodle. The sketch took me about 20 minutes and I used an old Wacom Bamboo digital tablet and photoshop 7.
I got so pumped up after looking at some plein air paintings by Larry Seiler that I actually went outside today and did a watercolor of one of the local oaks near my house. This is watercolor on watercolor paper and about 5"x7". It took about 20 min. to sketch
I'm still slogging through this study at about one hour per day. The painting was more complicated than I first thought it would be. lol
This is a 20 min. sketch I did for the caricaturama showdown group on facebook. I used a wacom bamboo digital tablet and photoshop 7. 
At first I started this thinking that this painting was about compositon. After spending some time copying it, I am realizing that this painting is ALL about color and light. This is a truely amazing painting! All the reflected colors bounce up from the model's bright clothing and material in very complex and beautiful ways. I never gave Fragonard much thought before. But now, I have a new respect & admiration for this painter. This isn't as easy as caricaturing is for me. I'm pushing myself when I work on this. I've been trying to match the colors by eye, not by eye dropper in photoshop. And that causes me to paint slower. There are some drawing mistakes in the copy, I know. And sometimes I get impatient mixing just the right color and I start to cross hatch or scumble colors on top of each other to get the desired value/chroma I'm looking for.
Part of the daily sketch deal I have made with myself is that I will put in at least a few minutes every day, no matter what, on some sort of art related project and then post the results. Today was full of busy family, shopping and running errands. I was interrupted several times while doing this and this is only as far as I got today. My goal is to make a rough copy of Fragonard's "the Reader" and then do what I did after copying N.C. Wyeth's painting a few days ago. So first, I'll copy this masterpiece. Then the next day following that I will sit down cold and copy it again out of my memory without looking at the original reference print. Then the day following that I will make another painting using the same color scheme and abstract layout/compostion but make it with original object shapes.
For the past few days I've been studying a painting by N.C. Wyeth. Today, for my sketch of the day, I copied the color scheme and the basic composition of shapes and I tried to apply that to my own illustration. Instead of the dark blue shape in the background being the ocean, I tried to make it into a rain forest far far below the foreground. Instead of a sandy beach in the foreground, I took that light blue / grey shape and turned that into a stone outcropping or maybe the top of a very tall tower. Instead of the beach grass clump on the camera left side of the picture I put a pile of decaying bones and I placed a character of my own making in place of Wyeth's figure of Crusoe in the right foreground. To see Wyeth's orig illustration simply scroll down to yesterday's blog entry. I spent my usual 1 hr. on this. Tomorrow I plan to do the same thing I have done for the past few days, but do it to a different painting by a different artist. Again, it will be a compostion that I feel is a good one.
Today's sketch is really a memory experiment. I got up this morning and did not look at the image I painted yesterday from NC Wyeth's illustration of Robinson Crusoe. From my short term memory of copying it yesterday I put together as best I could the painting again from memory. Above is sketch from memory. Below is orig. wyeth painting. It was maybe 12 hours since I viewed a version of this image. My theory is that by sketching a comp like this and then later from memory, I actually reinforce my memory of the painting and will later have a far better recall of it.
This is a study after NC Wyeth's painting of Robinson Crusoe on the beach. I had a copy of this painting on the screeen as I painted my rough study out. The top is my copy and the bottom is wyeth's orig. I'm going for basic forms and the important shapes only.
Mario Magnatti Marion is a facebook friend from Italy who is a fabulous artist. He does caricatures too. He did one of me about a month ago so now I am getting him back. hehe. This took about an hour to draw and I used a Wacom Bamboo digital tablet and Photoshop 7.
Today was the last day I am doing a sketch of anyone on my facebook friends list that requested it. I'm going to move to other subjects and directions for awhile to keep the daily sketch posting fresh for me. This was done with a wacom bamboo brand digital tablet in photoshop 7. It took about 45min. to complete.
This is the 100th speedpainting video I've made of my daily facebook sketch posts. Today I decided to draw a caricature of John Cleese since the deadline for submitting a caricature of him for Caricaturama Showdown group is tomorrow. I decided to draw a younger Cleese from the Fawlty Towers days. The sketch took about 30 min. to draw. I used an old Wacom Bamboo digital tablet and Photoshop 7 on a PC.
Wow! This is the 99th speedpainting movie I've posted that shows the process to completion of one of my daily sketches that post on Facebook. Today's sketch is a caricature of Facebook friend Dave Berns. The piece took about an hour to do. I used an old Wacom Bamboo digital tablet and Photoshop 7 when I made it.
Rocco is a friend I met on Facebook. He bravely volunteered for my daily friends' sketch project. This took about an hour to paint / draw and I used a Wacom Bamboo digital tablet and Photoshop 7.
My pressure sensitive controls went out today and I had no control over pressure. I plowed through this anyway despite this. When this happens its like painting with a crude paint program and blending colors is almost impossible. Rebecca wanted her caricature to reflect the mood of a popular big eye'd cat painting from the 1960's. I did this in Photoshop with a Wacom Bamboo digital tablet. It took about an hour to sketch.
Shannon is a friend of the family and a friend on Facebook who asked me to do a sketch of her when we saw each other on the 4th of July. I used a wacom tablet and photoshop. The whole process took about an hour and a half.
Caricaturama Showdown 3000 group on Facebook is having a one day self caricature contest today. This was my entry. The b&w drawing took about a half hour and the color version took about 30 min. more for a total of 1 hr. I used a wacom digital tablet and photoshop.
This was done yesterday July 5, 2010. Bookface Caricature Contest Group on Facebook is having a Sean Penn caricature contest. Total time: about 4 hrs. I used a wacom bamboo digital tablet and photoshop 7 for this one.
This is a preliminary sketch for the current Bookface Caricature Challenge at Facebook. This took about 30 min and was done with a wacom tablet in photoshop.
Jack Black is this week's subject at the Caricaturama Showdown contest on Facebook. This is the preliminary sketch of my version of Jack. It took about 30 min. to sketch and I used a Wacom Bamboo digital tablet and Photoshop CS4.
I was sitting in my hotel room in Olympia Washington looking for something to read because I forgot to bring a book. In the little tourist guide on my table was a small article about the mysterious Mima Mounds Natural Preserve. I had never heard of it before! These giant mounds of earth lay in very regularly spaced intervals and from above look like the bumps on a non skid bathtub mat. So the next morning my wife and I drove over to check this natural wonder out. I originally posted this sketch on facebook July 1, 2010. I sort of let my imagination run away a bit. It took about 10 min. to draw and I used my laptop pc and a wacom bamboo digital tablet in photoshop cs4.
