Showing posts with label landscapes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label landscapes. Show all posts

23.9.14

Park test

On to the equipment!
I sat down and did a quick study of my backpack and bag. Might as well practice at drawing inanimate objects, which I've been ignoring for most of my life. It shows.



My cellphone was in my pocket and my money & documents were tucked away in my bag: they were virtually weightless and I didn't count them in the overall weight.
Both pieces were very small and light and I could barely feel the pack on my shoulders. Splitting the weight was a good move, especially if I can avoid having it all on one shoulder. My spine thanks me kindly.
Finding stuff was not confusing because everything I needed to use often was in my shoulder bag.
Although. The ideal condition would be dumping the unnecessary and only have one bag with me.
A waist bag would be perfect, too bad I don't have one big enough.
Until then, we'll see how I can refine my packing strategies so that my back doesn't get hurt and the stuff I need is ready to be plucked out of the bag at any moment - which is not going to happen if I'm only carrying a backpack.

Anyway, I sat down again and tried to paint the meadow and ruins in front of me. I know I have a problem with large, deep fields of a single color. I struggle with depth.


Yay. Just one week before I'm finally able to replace my old scanner

I had a hard time beginning this because I couldn't place the objects correctly. I needed to frame the scene with my hands and then my camera to see it more clearly! Sheesh.
There was a hint of blue sky, but my scanner is flipping the bird at me and some color and detail got lost. I have a couple ideas to make this thing better next time:
- I should choose a place where foreground, middleground and background are more evident. I feel the need for a foreground to frame the image
- Perhaps a path in the grass, going off to the background, could help communicate better perspective and depth?
- I'll use a dry brush (or I'll use the brush sideways) to get a more randomic, leafy shape for the trees

There were lots of huge colonies of those cute red "little devils", as we call them. I noticed there was a more slender, "tattooed" type and a fatty variant with less black markings. I thought it was because of gender (especially funny considering the rounder variant has some kind of bikini top marking!), but turns out the fully tattooed ones are adults, while the others are not fully developed.


Firebugs. Firebugs everywhere.
And this was the smallest patch I could find.

I didn't do much more. I had a fast walk, some stretching and a good book. The bag and backpack never felt heavy, so I guess I can go ahead and try a proper field trip.
I noticed I didn't feel comfortable using the gray sketchbook for landscape sketching, and I might as well bring less pencils with me anyway. I should be able to reduce the weight if I focus on watercolor only, and I prefer copics to pencils for gesture drawing and tonal sketches.
That's all for today!

17.9.14

Plein air

Lack of motivation hits hard, but I've got to the core of the problem.
I'm setting two new goals for myself, and boy do I need to achieve them for my own well-being.
I'll talk about it later - now have some watercolor stuff I painted on the spot.



Prunus log. My grandma's garden in the countryside is always my favorite place to be when I need a break from technology.
Still flat, but I feel I'm improving in rendering volumes and textures in watercolors.

A red house I could see from the balcony at my grandmother's house. A sudden storm drove me away sooner than I hoped. I struggle with trees A LOT. I'm so inexperienced at drawing buildings, but I'm starting to put more time and effort into the sketching phase. I really can't afford to paint directly with such an alien subject.

A sleepy old man I sketched on the train and painted later while relaxing in Verona with my boyfriend. Lovely trip if somewhat short!
This was painted on bad generic sketchbook paper so yeah, the texture sucks and the colors look so dead. Watercolor paper is so expensive




23.11.13

Ski season

Why do I crave snow so much?
Speed painting from reference of Ovindoli, a mountain place I miss very much.
All together now:
- one brush
- no color picking
- no lineart


  • This took very little - between 10 and 15 minutes
  • Contrast looks a little better-managed than usual 

  • Those clouds suck, no matter how stylized they ended up looking
  • I'm not happy with the general feel of the textures. Time to make some good brushes


Experience gained: 2 points!
- I feel I need a "multiple strokes" brush. Scribbling with a single tip is fun and all, but I feel it doesn't simulate the effect I'm after well enough. I also need brushes that are better suited to painting environments - more texture, less control
- I realized I have little to no experience with rendering clouds. Practice needed!

    29.10.13

    Outdoors speedpainting

    Grabbed my laptop, sat under a tree and speedpainted what I saw. This was my first excercise of this kind and I improved a lot since then.
    I'm still not happy with my landscapes and similar things, but this first attempt sucks big time compared to the latest crap :D
    Let's break it down:


    Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

    • Although I couldn't use any form of color picking, the colors came out quite faithful
    • The building looks more solid than I expected, for someting I painted with a soft brush with a lot of Transfer
    Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

    • Soft brushes: they are BAD for this kind of things. In my experience, that is
    • Those tiles are horrible - that soft brush didn't help
    •  I'm seriously bad at stylizing foliage



    Experience gained: 4 points!
    - I'll avoid soft brushes for environments and speedpainting in general; solid ones help block out volumes fast and find new graphic solutions
    - I need to create some good brushes with which to paint foliage effectively...
    - ... AND practice on drawing and painting foliage without them!
    - My environments need more contrast - something to keep in mind during next painting sessions