Definitely finished this time

OK, so after some feedback from the client I have made a few alterations to the portrait. I took the red out of the cheeks and lip, and made the lip a little less fat too. The badge on the guys cap had to be totally redone also as he had been promoted since the picture I was given for reference was taken but nobody told me :) such is life, I actually much prefer it now, I think it looked a little cartoonish with the rosy cheeks but I was going to the reference, I have since been told it was a very cold day the day the picture was taken, hence the redness. But it's all good now. The colour in the picture doesn't match the actual painting but I'm not much at photographing my work.

Finished portrait

Thought I would post the finished portrait of that guy from the navy I was posting the process of last time.
I'm not happy with it really, but I never am.

More portraits for the Navy

Well look at that, almost a whole month since last I posted something! I have been a very busy boy with this course I am on, just finished the latest module, object oriented design in java, three weeks to learn everything up to an intermediate level, Ill be lucky to retain half of it I think.

Well, this weekend I get to settle into the over-whelming heat to do a commission I got to do a portrait in oils for some guy in the Irish navy.

Apparently they saw the one I did of my Da a long while back and thought it would make a nice gift for whoever the guy is. As always the picture I got to paint from is crap and fuzzy, but what can ya do.

I started this at about 2 pm today and its now 3 in the morning and I'm at that stage where I swing between thinking its OK and wanting to take a knife to it. What do you think? Also, feel free to be jealous of my totally professional studio setting, i.e. the kitchen table.

The center one is a bit terrifying, granted, but everything looks crap in the middle of being done. I always want to stop at the point of having blocked it in with the brown, if I could just do painting like that I would be a happy chappy.

Anyway, apparently some other guys in the Irish version of a Navy are waiting to see how this turns out to see if they want to get commission me for their own, so who knows, maybe Ill be posting more of these.

Image of the day

I got image of the day on imagine Fx's website woooot LINK TO AWESOMENESS

OCTOPUS FIGHT!!!!!!

Mad-Eye Moody

Holy crap, even more potter fan art

Shiori and Gnaf

My girlfriend is a writer and two of her main characters are a young mage named Shiori and her comrade Gnaf the wolf, they travel their world fighting monsters and demons and righting wrongs, all that good heroic stuff. I painted this for her.

 I started off painting this piece with acrylic, but didn't like how it was going, so I scanned it and carried on digitally.

I block in random colors with textured brushes.

 

I don't usually use textures, but it made life a lot easier to use some for the forest floor here. They were used sparingly and blended in.

 

I painted up everything else, trying to keep detail on the main focus of the image and painted into the textures to help them disappear.

The whole point was to create a feeling of comfort, warmth and safety, whilst also giving the odd feeling that they are being watched, hence the point of view, I don't know if I achieved that, but I do get the smell of campfire when I look at it so that makes me happy :)