ART – Drawing: Getting Over the Hump

This week I managed to finish coloring my drawing.  I think it turned out okay.

It was a huge struggle and more than once I wanted to quit.

I’ve found that, the creative process often throws curve balls at you.  I’ve found myself struggling with drawings more often than not.

There are times I quit and there are times I don’t.

The times I quit are usually, strategic.  It usually means that I discover I’m truly over my head. My skills are just not ready for the work and I need to practice more before I try again. In cases like those it’s better to count my loses, learn from my mistakes and let the work go.

The times I DON’T quit are different though.  Those are the times that I KNOW I can finish, but the work is frustrating me. It’s tough work and it feels like it might be out of the reach of my skill set, but really, it’s just my frustration telling me that.

How can you tell the difference?

The more work you do. The more you push your skill sets, the easier it will be for you to tell the difference.

Once you get over the hump, you’ll be glad you pushed through to the end.

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Learning Color: Theory vs. Practice

ART – Learning Color: Theory vs. Practice

This is a work in progress coloring job:

Problems

I have no idea what I’m doing.

Well…I kinda do.  But all I know is theory. As this coloring job is showing me, there’s a difference between theory and practice.

Let me quickly explain what I’m talking about.

If you notice, some of the colors in the above drawing look finished while the others are all weird and dark.

This is because those dark areas are meant to be the shadow colors I’m going to be using.  Then I’m going to put in brighter colors on top of them.

Betty and Veronica, for example are mostly done.  But if you notice, some of their shadow sides are a tad odd.  Veronica’s pants are a bit red in the shadow.  Betty’s shadow is purple, her shirt is green, and her pants are yellowish.

The reason for all these odd colors is because I was using the complimentary colors for the shadows.  The opposite of the main color for each thing.

The problem is, I don’t know if I actually go the true complimentary color.  It both looks right and wrong to me.

On the one hand, I don’t want the shadow side to be too dark. And  I think that’s exactly what’s going on with Veronica.  Her shadows are too dark.  I wanted this to be more of a day light scene.

Betty looks better but I’m not sure if the shadow side is working.  I tried darkening the shadows on her but it looked too dark:

I just don’t like it. It’s not what I want.

What I’m Learning

Turns out, that knowing color theory is one thing, but there’s more too it.  Color does stuff…weird stuff.

If you read anything about color theory, you’ll know that colors look different depending on the colors that surround them.

Thing is, you have to actually color and see what happens through trial and error.  Someone could show you what color does in certain circumstances but still, you have to do it yourself for it to sink in.

This means you have to experiment a lot.  You have to color, paint, use colors and mess with them.  You have to study.  Copy master paintings and simply paint.

All these things have to be done before you begin to start figuring some stuff out.  And even then, you will probably be surprised by what color does.

I don’t know any of this stuff at all so, I have no idea what I’m doing and if it’s going to work.

Moving Forward

I’m midway through coloring this drawing.  I have no idea what it’s going to look like once it’s done.  I don’t know if it’s going to look good or not.

Right now the drawing is a mess of colors.  Colors that I’m not even sure are really harmonizing. Perhaps I should have done a quick thumbnail color study to get everything working before I actually started coloring.

Still, it’s a work in progress, and I’m learning new things as I go.

Hopefully, I’ll be done next week and you’ll see how it turned out.

To See The Finished Version See:

Drawing: Getting Over the Hump

ART – Selling Your Art: Diversifying What You Sell

 Why Diversify?

As much as I still have to learn about painting, I’ve got to put that aside for the moment and turn to other projects.

The Month of May is going to be a busy month for me.  I’m going to have a table selling my books and art in two different venues that month.

Thing is, from past experience and from experiences my friends have had, I realized I need to diversify what I sell.

I have my books, but there are many people who would like to buy something from me but are unwilling to spend the money on those items or they’re simply not interested in them.

How I’m Doing It

For people like them, I needed something that is of greater interest and/or at a lower price point.

Turns out there’s a lot of people who really like my “versus” drawings.  So I thought, why not sell those?  I could make prints, magnets and postcards and those items could be at different price points.

Some would be less expensive and some more.  That way, anyone who wanted to get a little something, could.

Also, from the experiences my friends have had, putting prints up on their booths draws attention and makes it easier to see what you’ve got that they might like without anyone needing to approach your table.

Getting to Work

The only thing is, I never intended to make the versus drawings available for sale.  They were only meant for fun.

Some of them were never inked and all but one, didn’t have color.

This means that I now have to go back and ink the ones I need to ink, and color the rest.

That’s what I’m now doing.  Beginning with the drawing above of Batman vs. Spider-Man.

For the next few weeks, I’ll be posting the more “final” versions of my “versus” drawings.

Hopefully, I can learn a thing or two about color in the process.

Art – Painting Learning Moment: Knowing When to Walk Away From an Unfinished Work.

In my last post, I set up the line work of the painting I was going to work on.

I also wrote that, if I messed up the painting, I would simply stop working on it and move on.  Well, turns out I’m going to be moving on.

Not because I think I messed up but because something else came up, that needs my time more.  I’ll write about it next week.

That said, it didn’t help that I’m also in the process of writing another drawing book which takes up a lot of my painting time.  I really didn’t get to put in the time on the painting that I wanted to.

In any case, let me share with you what happened, and a few tips about what you should take away when you walk away from an unfinished work.

Applying What I Learned

Since I was done with the line work and since I had already spent a lot of time with a painting that didn’t work, which looked like this:

I thought I’d combine the two.

Taking the line work I had done, which looked like this:

I put it on top of a copy of the painting that didn’t work.  I used a copy in case I needed the original for whatever reason.

I then sampled the colors of the copy and proceed to apply the colors within my line work.  It was a lot like coloring in a coloring book.  I stuck mostly to the darkest areas of the painting.  I rarely touched the light side.

Although it doesn’t like like it.  Mostly because I had done so much work on the light already.

Here’s what it looked like:

It looked much better even at this stage than the other one.

I didn’t put any details in the shadow areas and just kept them as one mass shape.

So I can now pat myself on the back for successfully applying step two…or is it three? Since the drawing should also be a step…

Anyway, I thought I’d start doing the next step.  Thing is, I didn’t quite know what that step was.  So I made it up. I thought I’d finish the eyes and nose.

After I began working on that, my painting took a turn for the worse.  I ended up with a bug eyed monster. Take a look:

Yeah, the eyes are just wrong.  They stuck out and looked unnatural. I think the colors I used where too bright. Also, It thing I drew the eyes too big.

It didn’t help that the nose was giving me trouble as well and I couldn’t quite get it to look right.

This was frustrating.  This is as far as I had gotten before I had to stop and work on my drawing book, but I didn’t want to leave the painting there if I was going to write about it on this blog post so I thought I’d try a desperate thing.

A few days later, I took the eyes from my original failed painting and pasted them onto this painting.  Then I blended them in as best as I could.  Here’s how it came out:

I was surprised it actually improved the face.  Those eyes where nowhere near as colorful or as big.

After that, I touched up the face a little more and stopped.

With more time I suppose I could make the painting actually look good, but I just don’t have the time.

I learned a lot, but it looks like I have to abandon this work and move on. At least I’m leaving the painting feeling like it isn’t a disaster.

Perhaps once I get better, I can come back and finish this up.

I doubt it though.  It’s better to just keep moving forward.

What to Walk Away With

The best way to walk away from a drawing or painting that didn’t turn out the way you wanted, is to have learned what you need to work on next.

If you don’t see a plan of action for what you need to study or try next, you haven’t been paying any attention to what you were doing.  And it’s possible you don’t even have a process at all.

You need to sit down and honestly analize what problems you where having when working on your drawing or painting.

Then break down those observations into a plan of action.

For example, here are my take aways and my plans of action.

Take Aways:

• Beautiful women have less landmarks on their face than men. Their faces are smoother.  It’s more difficult to find anchors to work on. Because of this, their faces are more complicated to paint. I need to start on a simpler subject. Possibly men’s heads.
• I’m not exactly sure I know I can do a finished digital painting yet.  I have yet to finish one.  I should therefore start simpler by taking away elements to worry about. I this case,  color. I should practice black and white paintings before going full color.
• I obviously don’t have a full grasp on how to approach painting, eyes, noses and mouths. I need to practice painting these feature before I do my next full head painting.

Action Plans:

• Practice painting noses. In black and white and in color.
• Practice Painting eyes.  In black and white and in color.
• Practice painting mouths. In black and white and in color
• Paint male heads in black and white. Then in color
• Eventually, paint another female head.

I hope you find these tips helpful.