28 octobre 2013

Another vulture... I love vultures



I didn't check the time but I'd say it was a 40-minutes study.

A fine gentleman

I finished this gentleman today.
I would've loved to sit with him and chat a bit... I think.

But I'm afraid he's taken to the sea now, and left for R'lyeh.

Here are some process images and crappy shot of the finished painting.
I'll photograph it properly and post it here soon.




  

17 octobre 2013

Security caps

I showed Mr. Dammar who's boss today.
Let this be a lesson to other varnishes who are reading this blog.


On a side note. My blog stats tell me I have readers as far as Russia, Ukraine, China and Saudi Arabia.
Are you guys for real?

My guess is that you're really crawl bots... but I could be wrong.  ;-)

10 octobre 2013

Sneak Peek

Hey! Painting process shot.
I've been trying (and trying, and trying) to give life to this gentleman for the better part of the last decade.

I'll keep you posted.


08 octobre 2013

Morning warmups

Hey! A couple of pencil sketches. These are warm-up drawings, nothing fancy.



Also, while you're here, go read this wonderful piece on roadblocks by Jon Schindehette. I really, really like his outlook on... goals, creativity... life.

04 octobre 2013

Inspiration

Hmm... I put Inspiration in the title, but the real subject is Motivation.

I thought I'd share with you a couple of quotes and concepts that have kept me motivated over the years.

Here's a recent picture of my easel.


You can see a lot of thing abut me right there.

There's my workspace (with the kind of pencil I use, the mahl stick I made to fit the exact format of my easel, my iPad to look up reference and my palette—which I find is one of the most personal items in a painter's gear.)

There are also a number of things scrawled at the top of the easel. These are what I want to talk about today.

Let's start at the far left.

— The black & white sticker is from The Art Order. That's the name of Jon Schindehette's blog and it's the catalyst in my whole fantasy-paintings-new-portfolio endeavour. Jon (look him up) is an amazing prize-winning art director whose insight and profound love of illustration is a gold mine for artists of all fields. He probably doesn't know it, but I know he made a huge difference in my life.

— Then, there are two quotes from Steven Pressfield. Man. Steven Pressfield... If Schindehette made me realize fantasy was still a thing, Pressfield made me sit my ass in front of my easel and work.

The first quote is: Resistance is always lying and always full of crap.
It's from his book Turning Pro and it's in a chapter where he explains his concept of Resistance and what to expect from this internal foe.

And: This fucking trilogy is killing me!
Which is basically the big difference between amateurs and pros (two specific concepts of his), basically, the amateur is all talk and no action and the pro acts, even if his project is "killing him".

Done is better than perfect is from The Done Manifesto at Lifehacker.

Fast, Cheap, Good. Pick two. Is the short version of the project management triangle and it helps me stay focused when I feel an urge to rush things.

Work like your life depends on it is taken from a talk Adam Savage gave and which they summarized on Boing-Boing. I found that it made a lot of "Pressfield" sense.

Draw the art you want to see is from Austin Kleon's wonderful, wonderful book Steal Like an Artist. Read this book. Now.

Make Mistakes Deliberately/Faster is my personal favorite entry in Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.

Stay on the bus is the central idea in the Helsinki Bus Station Theory. This text is one of the best pieces of advice I've read in my life.

— At the far right, the box with the column of words is my personal reminder for Greg Manchess' great post 10 things about… planning pictures. A great hands-on set of advice to plan a good composition.

I also have a Memento Mori in the form of the japanese character for "death" scrawled in the center of the easel, right where I put the paintings I work on. If the spot is empty, I'm reminded that I'll die soon and that I should try to paint one more piece before it's too late.

So... there.
I wanted to share.

02 octobre 2013

Urban Plein-Air [Painting]

Awright!

Today was my first real attempt at urban plein-air painting. I was (obviously) inspired by James Gurney and the Urban Sketchers online community anI wanted to give this a try for a long time.

I chose to paint this derelict car wash sign that's a 10-minute walk away from my place.



I set up my easel.



After the drawing was done roughly, I prepared my palette...



And painted away for a solid 45 minutes. I didn't really check the time.

[Note to self: If your subject is in direct sunlight, 
you'll also be in direct fucking sunlight. Bring a hat.]

And that's the final result.


The acrylic paint was drying as it was leaving my brush. It was pretty hard to work the edges correctly and to think about my strokes. Also, I need to find a way to use some sort of mahl stick... I'm used to hand stability when handling a brush. But still... Oh! And I forgot to apply a underpainting which I regretted 10 minutes in.

So... yeah. It was fun and I'll venture again with my stuff to try some more painting before long. 

01 octobre 2013

Voodoo gris-gris — oil study

Hey!

Another study. Another step in a long self-discovery process. (More on that later.)

Let's just say that at the time being, I'm very happy if I manage to paint something. And more so if I manage to paint it with my guts. So I'm experimenting with paint application, palette and other aspects of a painting I never really cared about... foolishly thinking I had it all figured out.

All the while building my practice (in the Steven Pressfield sense of practice).


I'd also like to finish on a criptic—and maybe a bit uncivil—thank you note. I don't even know if he'll read this, but here goes: Thank you Dorian, you're showing me what real work is and giving me a huge boost doing so.