Daily Paint #6

Been re-watching some Games of Thrones lately. Cant wait for the new season!!!

Daily Paint #4 and #5!

Had to write an essay for my History of Animation essay yesterday, so I made it up today! Headed out to Echo Park with the Landscape Painting Club at USC and tried out open acrylics for the first time. I love the fact that they dont lift like gouache and they go on with no effort. It almost feels smooth like my wacom tablet in a way. I always have different phases, but for now I think ive finally found a medium that feels right so I'm happy about that.

Did a cloud study later in the day. I've always had a lot of trouble with clouds and it's still not feeling right to me. Gotta do more and try to lock down how to make them look believable.

Daily Paint #3!

What do you do when you dont have much time? Just throw a bunch of shit into silhouette! Loving doing these speedpaints though! Now off to write my essay....

Daily Paint #2

Speedpaint 2! I've been itching to do color, but I still need to work on controlling my values. Threw a little warming photo filter on there just to appease myself for now.

Daily Paint #1

Trying to start doing more of these quick “speedpaint” studies. So here’s #1! I want to make it a daily thing, but at this point im not fast enough for that, so I’m gonna limit it to 2 days for a couple of hours each day.  Don't really know what they'll be about, I guess maybe just whatever I feel like painting that day. Eventually I will move to color sketches, but i'm still trying to get comfortable with value. 

Lighting and Material Study

Lighting + Material study from a photograph. I still find drapery really challenging to make look right. Still not 100%, but I learned a lot of things! Taylor Swift cause…. I dunno, who doesnt like a little Taylor Swift?

Some Practice

Just some practice!Still getting used to digital. I can really feel my plein air work having a positive impact on my digital work. I feel like I'm more aware of what i'm doing and the colors that I'm picking because of all the color mixing that I have to do with traditional gouache. Its inspiring to see some progress!

This was definitely not inspired by Tomorrowland....................yup......

SNOWPIERCER

A color study from the film Snowpiercer. Awesome movie and beautiful lighting and composition throughout <3.

Sick

First digital sketch in a while! Feeling a little sick today 

Beautiful morning

Starting to feel like I'm getting a handle of gouache! It's exciting! Still a long way to go but at least there's some improvement. Really tried to pay attention to my value range in these as well as getting the perspective right with a more careful drawing in the second one. 

Some plein air studies from this morning at Peck Road Water Conservation Park in Arcadia

Some 25 min poses over at Studio117B in San Gabriel. Starting to get a bit more comfortable with the charcoal, but still too reliant on the outline right now.

USC campus!

Painted this on a break between classes!

Yay, naked people!

5 min

25 min

Sunrise at Elysian Park

Sunrise at Elysian Park, Los Angeles. 3x5 Gouache. 

Daily Plein Air Paintings

Recently I've realized that there's no point in trying to create full digital illustrations without fully understanding foundations. I'm gonna put down the stylus for a bit and really drill the foundations of landscape and figure drawing before I try something that's beyond me at the moment. Here's a  couple from the rose bowl this morning. 3x5 in gouache as always!

More Plein Air

30 min value warmup

Mountains above Santa Anita Park

Doing a few hours of plein air a day to try to improve my sense of light and color! Here's a few from today :].

Quick Value Study

A quick monochrome value study from life! Pooh!

Palisades Park Plein Air

Went out for a plein air trip with the Landscape Painting Club at USC! Palisades Park was beautiful, but because I was near the beach I wanted to paint the beach and I struggled to find a composition that included the sea. I ended up just sitting down and painting what was in front of me, but now that i'm looking at it, Im not a big fan of the composition I chose. Good practice either way :].

Homemade Pochade Box and Plein Air

Finally got around to building my own pochade box for plein air painting! The cheapest plein air boxes i've found is around $75 and I managed to make one for around $20!

                                             

  Homemade $20 Pochade Box!

I've really been getting into it lately and trying out different mediums. I've tried watercolor and gouache and this time I tried out super cheap Reeves oil paints ($7 for 12 tubes wtf?!). Even though they're cheap, I really like the feel of oils and I think its feeling a lot more intuitive to me than the other mediums. Cant wait to see what higher quality oils feel like after I finish this pack!

5x7 -Santa Anita Park -Oil

Welcome and New Project

Welcome to the blog! I've started a bunch of blogs in the past, but have never been able to keep up with them. I hope to keep this one updated as much as possible!

 The new personal project I've been working on is the visual development of the children's book The Giving Tree. This book means a lot to me, as it does to a lot of other people i'm sure, and I hope to do it justice by designing it to be an animated movie. I'll be posting more progress as I delve into character designs and mood paintings in the next few weeks. Trying to get this project done by the time CTNX rolls around so I have a nice portfolio to get critiqued! He are some Tree silhouettes as I try to establish the shape and personality of the tree. I'm currently leaning toward the bottom left option because to me it has the kind of gracious and inviting personality that I think The Giving Tree should have. The lopsidedness gives it the impression that it has a hand out and is reaching out to help you. We'll see as I flesh out the character more. Oh also, I guess the tree is supposed to be a girl according the book so.... I guess I'll start referring to it as "she."