Billy Goats Gruff Progress

This is still in a rough painting stage, but I'm liking where the color scheme is at. Now onto the detail phase.

Trying new things

I rarely experiment with different types of media these days. After finding one medium I was comfortable with (acrylics) I've pretty much stuck to that. But I discovered (by accident) a few days ago that a set of toned drawing pencils which I bought years ago are actually water soluble. So that's what I've used as a partial 1st layer here- drawing with the pencils and then using a brush and water to blend it. I may end up painting over parts of it, but it has an effect that I like so far.

Drawing drawing drawing

This is one of those ideas that I could't get out of my brain. So I just had to submit and draw it so that I can clear my head and move on to my other work.  Don't know whether I'm going to paint it yet, we'll see how it goes.

It did free up some creativity though, because as soon as I was done drawing this I was able to make progress on the Billy Goats illustration. More on that soon.

Finished Piece

I'm finally done with this piece, and I'm very satisfied with it. I've posted it on my portfolio website here.

This kind of whimsical, fantasy stuff is something I really want to do more of. It's so much fun! I will be designing my postcard this week, and hope to get them ordered soon so I can begin sending them out to the companies on my mailing list.

I made a few adjustments to this piece in Photoshop after I scanned it in. As I looked at the painting something didn't seem quite right. The cliffs and castle in the background were too saturated and did not look far away. So I made a new layer, used the magic wand tool to select it, and overlayed a transparent white layer to give it some atmosphere. I think it made all the difference.

Also, something I learned today (which you probably already know if you payed attention in Photoshop class, unlike me): When I posted the piece to my website, the colors were so bright, they looked radioactive. Then i found that if I chose "save for web and devices" in the file menu in Photoshop, the problem is solved! It's the little things in life, really.

Well, I guess I won't be working on that painting right now.

No no, don't get up. Please make yourself comfortable.

No art today. There are several things that are almost ready to post. Probably later in the week! 

Hopefully at that point I also won't have paints strewn all over my table. Or a cat laying on my paintings. He's lucky he's pretty.

Things are coming along!

I'm finally at a stage where I feel good enough about it to show the whole painting. It's needs some more work, especially on the cliff and the castle. I like where it's headed, though.

I've started drawing out Three Billy Goats Gruff. The ogre came out nicely scary! It took several tries to get the goat horns correct on the biggest goat, and I ended up needing to make a maquette to see how to draw it from the angle I needed.  Good thing there was some Sculpey handy.